In this day and age, having a game filled with Hollywood likenesses and voice acting isn’t that shocking. Most AAA titles will have at least one famous actor in one of the main roles (Far Cry 6, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Days Gone, Saints Row 4, Crime Boss: Rockay City). The concept of filling your game to the core with celebrities in order to give it a full Hollywoodian feel, in a non-ridiculous way (sorry, Wing Commander), started a bit over twenty years ago, with two main titles: Enter the Matrix, and James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, one of the most hyped games from back in the day, which has just turned twenty.

James Bond titles weren’t exactly a new thing by that point. We had all played GoldenEye to exhaustion. The GameCube/PS2/Xbox had received Agent Under Fire and Nightfire (I find the latter to be a bit overrated, to be honest). But Everything or Nothing was something different. EA and its Redwood Shores subsidiary (the one which would eventually become Visceral Games, the makers of Dead Space) wanted to make a playable Bond movie, something which wouldn’t feel 100% out of the place next to the other Pierce Brosnan films of its time. Considering how bad most of them were, Everything or Nothing would even manage to stand out as one of the best Pierce Brosnan-era 007 products as a whole.

They went the extra mile with this one. Pierce Brosnan wasn’t the only 007 actor to be included, for instance. That was an issue which made the terrible GoldenEye remake by Activision feel even crappier. No, we’re going for a full ensemble of celebrities. First of all, Dame Judi Dench and John Cleese reprise their roles as M and Q, respectively. Richard Kiel is back as Jaws. The brand new Bond Girls are played by Shannon Elizabeth (Nadia from American Pie) and German top model Heidi Klum (no, really). The villain is played, masterfully dare I say, by none other than Willem Dafoe, who was a hot coup right after his iconic performance as the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie. There was even a theme song composed and performed by R&B singer Mýa, during the peak of her career.

Having a star-studded cast was indeed worth hyping up, but that wasn’t the only reason why Everything or Nothing was being touted as one of the hottest releases of 2004, prior to its release. It was going to be completely set in third-person, giving it a much more cinematic feel. A polygonal (and talking) Pierce Brosnan would be onscreen at all times. That wasn’t exactly a brand new thing, given how the PS1 had a Tomorrow Never Dies game, but we have to take into consideration the fact that, well, the Tomorrow Never Dies game sucked. Everything or Nothing didn’t.

Sure, Everything or Nothing was an early example of a third-person shooter with stealth and cover mechanics. This came before Gears of War, Kill.Switch, and other staple titles in the genre. The cover mechanics were fairly limited, being more akin to Metal Gear Solid 2 and WinBack, but there was some nuance to the shooting mechanics. You could adjust the direction of your aiming with the right analog stick, whilst in cover, in order to aim at an enemy’s head, for a one-hit kill. Not exactly realistic, but we don’t play 007 games for realism, we do so for the power fantasy.

The addition of gadgets gave Everything or Nothing an extra layer of source material legitimacy. Coin-shaped grenades, a rappel gun, a spider drone (decades before Watch Dogs: Legion!), and even a bulletproof Porsche Cayenne equipped with a machine gun and rocket launchers. The driving levels, where we were given the opportunity to drive the then-recent Porsche SUV in exotic locales such as Egypt and Peru, were bare bones in terms of simplicity, but looked spectacular for the time. In fact, that might be an issue and a strength at the same time about Everything or Nothing: it’s not exactly a groundbreaking title in terms of gameplay, but every god damn level was plastered with set pieces and spectacle.

Critics in 2004 pointed out that, in many aspects, Everything or Nothing was a step back in terms of gameplay and level design when compared to previous 007 outings. You know, the ones set in first person, where you weren’t exactly forced to actually see Pierce Brosnan in front of you at all times. I do agree with them in parts. Levels are much linear than the mazes in GoldenEye, for instance. They are also a bit shorter. The introductory level in Tajikistan, for instance, is entirely set in one minuscule section of a military base.

But I cannot agree with Everything or Nothing being less complex than its predecessors. There is a lot more variety in the objectives you need to complete, not to mention additional collectibles scattered throughout each level. Multiplayer options also added some extra replayability to this beast. Sure, it’s nowhere near as arcadey as previous offerings, and its story was a bit silly (let’s face it, most Brosnan-era stories were kinda crap), but camp and ridiculousness used to be a big part of 007. At least before Skyfall decided to turn the franchise into a Nolan-esque Bourne saga.

Whilst I need to agree that Everything or Nothing aged more noticeably than other gems from 2004, I was surprised with how exciting it is to play after all these years. It was EA pushing the medium to brand new territory, a game with the same kind of cast and set pieces you’d expect from a Hollywood blockbuster, but still fun enough as a video game, never forgetting that being entertaining to play was its main priority. We wouldn’t have had games like Alan Wake, Max Payne 3, and others, if it wasn’t for Everything or Nothing showing us how action movies and games could be meshed together into a beautiful, chaotic piece of dumb fun.