Playing every PS1 game - 007 Racing & 2002 FIFA World Cup

The final game beginning with “0”, and the last of the Bond games making a berth on the original Playstation is 007 Racing. The following game alphabetically is a FIFA game; I only got hold of a selection of these as they’re mostly just copies of each other.

007 Racing

The thing which knocked me for a loop the hardest upon turning this on for the first time (I’d never played it, nor did I know much about it) was that this game, 007 Racing, is not a racing game. It’s not even racing-adjacent. I want to say it’s more like Carmageddon or something, but it’s not like that either really. All I can say definitively is that it is a ‘car game’.

007 Racing is a game where you drive a selection of James Bond cars through twelve objective-based 3D levels. There is some sort of ‘plot’, and the levels roughly follow a narrative, but it isn’t one that you’re supposed to think very hard about, and indeed is primarily explained via nothing more than expository walls of text, which can be optionally read at the beginning of each level. I’ve already forgotten it. Suffice it to say that it’s all an excuse to let you go hog wild driving Aston Martin DB5s and using associated gadgetry to blow things up.

You have to go out of your way to read the plot exposition.

It’s such a slam-dunk pitch that you can see how the game got commissioned. The thing is, when your entire game is based around a single idea, you really need to make sure that your single idea is well-executed, and In this respect, 007 Racing’s drive-and-shoot mechanic just about limps through as acceptable, but it’s a very near run thing. The cars handle atrociously, and despite being sold as a showcase of Bond vehicles, they are functionally identical beyond the difference in 3D model. The cars are constantly spinning out, and they have a strange habit of flipping over theatrically at the slightest bump or change in elevation.

It only manages to save itself with the ‘blow things up’ bit, which can be fun… sometimes. Using the built-in machine guns to gun down the human goons (in a rather unsporting and un-Bond-like manner, it has to be said) and then switching to rockets to take out a tank, or some other enemy vehicles, or a helicopter, is obviously the gameplay they were going for, which makes it all the more puzzling that you can only do these sorts of stunts on less than half the levels.

Don’t be deceived; swerving wildly on a straight road is common and unavoidable.

The other levels are totally different. Some are simple ‘drive fast from A to B while dodging enemies’ levels, some are ‘drive fast around the city Crazy Taxi style while picking up MacGuffins’, and then you have ‘drive fast while ramming a commercial airliner during takeoff [seriously]’ and ‘drive fast while shooting lasers at the wheels of a lorry’. The variety isn’t a bad thing, but the difficulty swings up and down harder than any other game I could name from the top of my head. The hardest level in the game is level 3. The easiest is level 4. Level 9 is easy, apart from the very last bit which is so hard as to be almost broken; there are no checkpoints either, so expect many restarts.

One level has you driving your remote-controlled BMW using CCTV cameras, in an interesting concept.

What’s weird is my feeling that this game got half-decent reviews when it came out. If you’re good enough at it, you can complete it in an hour or so. There is a two-player mode entirely separate to the main scenario, so maybe that’s the real hook (obviously I haven’t bothered with it). To be honest, I’m just glad the Bond stuff is over.

It’s rather funny reliving the Brosnan-era Bond produce, as it’s a reminder of what the vibe used to be like before the twenty-year Daniel Craig shift to moody drama and ‘grit’ and whatever (I didn’t like any of the Craig films other than Casino Royale, by the way). The game is like the movies were in 2000 - you’re a superhero spy guy who blows things up while everyone makes dry remarks. It’s supposed to be silly. Consider this - the last Bond videogame to be released was in 2012, and it was called 007 Legends. People always go back to the old Bond eventually.

The last level has you stopping the take-off of a plane by ramming into its engines until they blow up.

Kept my attention for: An evening
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 5/10

2002 FIFA World Cup

Between 1998 and 2018, EA Sports put out dedicated versions of FIFA every four years tailored specifically to each World Cup (and another for each European Championship) - after that they simply became DLC for the annual FIFA/EA Sports FC microtransaction cash cow. In 2002 PES - still ISS Pro in those days - was yet to take off and become the threat (and eventual usurper) to FIFA that it was in its mid-00s heyday, and despite it being a time of a relative abundance of lower-key, less-licensed football games (think This Is Football, UEFA Striker etc), EA Sports more or less had a clear run to ship whatever they liked, whenever they liked, and people would buy it regardless. Plus ça change.

‘Extras’ is actually just a video advert of EA Sports’ other games released in 2002.

So 2002 FIFA World Cup, then, is just a rebadged FIFA Football 2002, only without the club teams and tournaments, and really, anything that doesn’t directly map to the World Cup that was going on that summer in Japan and Korea. In practice, that means you’re left with a game that has two game modes: a friendly match between two of the collection of 32 teams which qualified for the World Cup plus a load of other European nations in which EA Sports felt they had a market (apart from the Netherlands, who got the shaft in favour of such European football heavyweights as, er, Finland), or playing the World Cup itself. No team editors, or custom tournaments, or training pitch stuff. Nope, it’s the 2002 FIFA World Cupᵀᴹ or nothing.

All the motion-captured player remonstrations are here. Pretty good for the time in fairness.

I owned FIFA 2002, and played the hell out of it (the soundtrack was a banger). I’m now thinking hard about my rose-tinted glasses, as this game is terrible. I’ll save judgement for when I get around to playing FIFA 2002 proper, but the cliche “it’s not aged well” is understating it. The game uses the ‘press and hold to set the power of your pass/shot’ mechanic which I think was introduced in FIFA 2002, but it’s rubbish - when passing, you either pathetically phutt the ball a few floaty yards ahead of you to nobody, or you launch it straight past your intended recipient (who because of the TV camera, you usually couldn’t see to begin with - nor could you spot the opposition player stood between the two of you). Overpowered shots will fly over the bar even if you’re two yards away, and you never feel like you have any real control over the direction in which you’re hitting the ball. Was it really like this in FIFA 2002?

Apparently every single World Cup venue was modelled for the game.

The football simulation failures keep coming. Crossing the ball is a pointless endeavour - even if you get the power right, it will float toward the goalmouth devoid of pace and rarely are your AI teammates switched on enough to be in the right spot to receive it. Players loaf around the pitch with all the intensity of a funeral procession. The risks involved with attempting any sort of passing game mean the most effective option is to just take the ball with whoever can get it first, and run with it until you get close enough to the goal to let off a shot.

The big red arrow is a trick - trying to score here will not work.

You can set up formations, and there is a ‘fatigue’ level in the players which I suppose is there to encourage you to make substitutions, but it’s all a waste of time in reality (this is a criticism I do remember from the old days). Winning the World Cup itself nets you one of a handful of bonus teams for you to play as in the Friendly mode, but that’s all there is to the game really. Oh, and the music is shit.

Your reward for winning the World Cup is, er, this short scene.

Cheers then.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: Yes?
Overall: 2/10