I'm lying. It's not good.... It's not good at all.

I should say up front that I'm going to try and keep this review as objective as possible, because subjectively I'd have given the game an even lower score. In fact, I spruced up the introduction so that there were at least a few good things said in this review (even if they were nothing more than a diversion to keep you reading). So let's get on with it.

Unfortunately, like a lot of games ported to the PSP, From Russia With Love suffers from a number of issues due to lack of second along stick and poor code optimization. The frame-rate is all over the place and occasionally slows down for no apparent reason. The camera movement (only left and right) is controlled by the square and circle buttons and is dreadfully slow (but not because of the frame-rate) making it a nightmare to look around. This wouldn't be so bad, but you need to be facing enemies in order to use the auto-aim, so it's very infuriating. On top of that you have gameplay that is basically just going from point A to point B and shooting things in between... think of it as a 3D version of connect the dots.

Making matters worse is that a lot of these issues could have been resolved quite easily. For instance, a more responsive camera or even a camera movement sensitivity setting would have been a Godsend. Similarly, if EA spent a touch more time optimizing the game to make it run at a more consistent frame-rate (and I don't mean 60FPS or even 30FPS, just something that didn't bounce all over the place) it would have made for a much more enjoyable experience. Furthermore, because it's a port, we have the original version of the game to compare it to. Not that the console version was amazing, but knowing what the developers were trying to do, and then seeing how it turned out, only makes the differences glaringly obvious (and I'm saying that as someone who hasn't played the console version in quite a while).

Multiplayer is... well, just forget about multiplayer. It suffers from the same issues as the single player, but they're compounded by the fact that the action/enemies around you are faster paced and smarter than the game's A.I. (unless you're going against people who've never played before). It's an exercise in frustration – either you can conquer your rage towards the game, or the game conquers you (most of the time it will conquer you). It's limited to four players and is only Ad-Hoc, so you're not really missing much by forgoing the multiplayer altogether.

Even with those issues, the game has some decent aspects... kind of. A lot of what was in the console version has remained in the PSP iteration. The only sections that have been removed (that I can remember) are the driving levels, but that doesn't take too much away from the game (although they did break up the action nicely). It's cool that the jet pack has remained, but I don't recall the console version being as sluggish as it is here. Q's gadgets are also pretty cool, but you hardly ever use them. Graphically it isn't too bad. The textures are washed out, and the levels have a little less detail, but overall the same feel of the console version is there. The games character models (Bond, Q, M, etc.) are easily distinguishable even on the small screen. Music and sound are also adequate; Sean Connery returns as Bond, and most of the voice acting is all right, but the classic Bond music is what really stands out.

Probably the clearest way I can describe this game is by saying that I had a really tough time finding the motivation to play through it even though its core story is incredibly short (there are sub-missions and stuff, and the multiplayer, but the single player main story is only about 5 hours). It had a lot of potential, but its lackluster. If this is the kind of game Russia sends us ‘with love', I fear the game they send us ‘with hate'.