No surprise, Activision has another 007 title returning this year however this time it will be in celebration of Bond’s anniversary. 007 Legends is a compilation of Bond’s greatest moments seen throughout his 50 years of existence in film. From raiding Soviet intelligence to eliminating corrupt leaders in rich economies, Bond has a plethora of set pieces for 007 Legends to draw from. Post Goldeneye 007: Reloaded, which released on HD consoles last Fall, let’s see what 007 Legends has in store.

Immediately upon jumping into the presented Legends demo I noticed not much has changed since Goldeneye. 007 Legends runs on the same engine Eurocom recently developed and used for Reloaded however the visuals haven’t improved, in fact they may have possibly gotten slightly worse. The 720p resolution the game runs at exposes weak textures in most enemy models, making the game initially disputable as a native HD title (visually).

The level demoed was a scene from the Bond movie Moonraker who’s plot revolves around attempted mass genocide. With an immanent space shuttle launch – one critical to Bond’s mission  - approaching, 007 must salvage imperative data to save the world. The launch base at hand showed Eurocom’s engine pushing the scale of environments beyond what we seen in Goldeneye. It’s possible that perhaps larger environments have caused the game’s visual fidelity to suffer; we should remain optimistic however due to this only being the post Alpha build of 007 Legends.

The history of Bond titles hasn’t exactly given it a plateau of the best graphics in action titles, but the gameplay is often rewarding and fun. In the launch base, Bond mostly played with stealth to get to vital points within the level. For the first time, you can actually fail missions within this game that’ll have consequences later such as a returning catalyst that’ll make completing a mission more difficult. Returning gadgets, such as 007′s trusty Smartphone that allows him to hack and gather intel, are at your disposal. In Goldeneye the Smartphone was needed to complete additional (but not essential) missions that would have earned you trophies/achievements and other rewards. New to Legends is the ability to upgrade physical attributes of Bond such as sprinting; the customization efforts are looking to be a breath of fresh air. Although I’m not exactly sure what will be available for customization, we can expect to be able to enhance the most common physical abilities.

If you’re a hardcore bond fan, you can expect Legends to hold all of Agent 007′s greatest moments into one collective piece to celebrate his 50-year anniversary. Returning multiplayer will make your local (or online) experiences fun with more classic 007 gameplay. 007 Legends releases October 16th, later this year.