From Russia With Love [PSP]

A few months back, Earth resolutely failed to move as Sean Connery returned to the role of James Bond in Electronic Arts' console release From Russia With Love. But after a post-holiday cooling off period, a PSP port is set to release in March. This edition tweaks the single-player game somewhat and adds a few new multiplayer options to sweeten the mix.

The big surprise is that, as ports go, From Russia With Love looks and feels great. What felt overly linear and simplistic on a console feels much more at home on the PSP. The load times are relatively short, the graphics solid and seemingly free of hitches, and the audio excellent. (We did notice some of the PSP's signature smearing effect, though not in any distracting quantity.)

Much as in the original game, Bond's adventure begins in London and travels to a number of exotic locales that approximate those of the film. There are eight missions in all, subdivided into more than thirty stages, with a handful of unlockable bonus stages thrown in once more. The gadget lineup returns from the console release as well, and is bolstered by the new Q-dart, a sort of smart grenade that can quickly and efficiently take out key enemies.

The controls are similar, with shoulder-button shooting and multi-tap melee mini-games, though the PSP relies quite heavily on one of the shoulder buttons to lock Bond's sights on a target. The same shoulder button can be used to pan the camera freely when not in combat. Fortunately, it's easy enough to snap the target lock to the closest enemy, then cycle quickly through all combatants.

As in the original release, however, there's an option to zoom in on a goon to shoot a grenade at his belt, or to pop the gun out of his hand. This Bond vision requires a bit of manual aiming, and the PSP stick seems to handle the function just fine. Furthermore, using this more difficult aiming instead of the simple lock-on will earn stars to automatically upgrade Bond's weapons. The upgrade process is hidden, keeping the focus on the real action.

A handful of multiplayer games will also be on offer, including deathmatch and domination, and what amount to variants on those types with all players wearing jetpacks. Bots and some strange new power-ups (not unlike what we saw in the console Goldeneye: Rogue Agent release) have also been added.

More than anything else, it's great to see EA streamlining the process of creating games for the PSP, and reducing load times to boot. A year ago, any of the levels in Russia would have taken three times as long to stream. Even if you're not a fan, that's reason enough to be aware of 007's latest.