007 - The Spy Who Loved Me

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Both the British and the Russians have had some of their submarines stolen by a madman named Karl Stromberg. The British Intelligence sent out James Bond to recapture their submarine, while the Russians sent an attractive woman named Anya Amasova. This is the last of the five James Bond games released for the CPC and includes five levels taking place on both land and sea! All levels involve steering your car or boat (the modified Lotus Esprit that can be transformed into a fast boat, like in the movie) and avoiding being crashed. The Spy Who Loved Me is a game similar to Domark's License To Kill and still ranks quite low since it’s actually a basic car/boat driving game where it's hard to avoid obstacles and enemies! You have to collect tokens in the first three levels to buy the equipment needed to proceed to the next level. Driving the Lotus, you must avoid oil leaks not to lose control of your car and shoot enemy cars. During the boat sequence you must avoid enemy ships that will not pose any problem to our hero as well as shoot missiles towards incoming boats and helicopters controlled by Stromberg's agents. All the levels have you doing the same thing and there's very little variety, but the game remains fun!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The level design is good and includes several details like city blocks, shipping docks. But the scrolling is slow and has framerate issues while both your car and boat turn slow making it hard to control so you ultimately crash on enemies and obstacles. The CPC version is a port from the ZX, but with more colors on-screen. The gameplay is quite slow and the gameplay area is small! The sound offers the usual Jame's Bond Theme at the main menu, but it is poor during gameplay with some minimal spot sound effects.