The name's Bond. James Bond.
007: Quantum of Solace is a tie in to the 22nd James Bond movie of the same name and came out in 2008. The game is a first person shooter released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Wii, DS, and PC.
You can call them what you want, licensed games are essentially big advertisments, but at least the James Bond series has made some pretty good ones. Previous Bond games have ranged from average to excellent, and have successfully proved that not all licensed games suck. But what about this one. Could it rival the legacy of Goldeneye? Of course not. Every Bond game will suffer two major problems that will stop most gamers from buying them. Number one. It's a licensed game and number two. It's not Goldeneye. But that doesn't mean it's bad, does it?
The gameplay is pretty straightforward, mostly consisting of standard fps action. It has a cover system that is relied upon throughout the game, however every now and then it decides not to give you anything to hide behind. There's also some points in the game where it dips into stealth territory. These levels can range from fun to annoying and I can't really decide if I'm glad the game gives me something different to do every now and then or if I'm annoyed at how boring some of these levels can be. The game is also mindnumbingly easy. The first time I played the game I tried it on the second difficulty setting (out of four) and while is tried replaying it on the hardest, I simply couldn't be bothered. Overall the gameplay is average. It doesn't do anything new, nor does it perfect what's old. It could best be described as fps's for beginners. It's easy, stars a well known character and is a great way to get in to the genre.
You know you could just shoot his head.
There's not much to say about the story. It follows the plot of the movie, so it should be fairly simple however the cutscenes are so short and uninformative that it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on. It helps to have seen the movie beforehand but since there's some parts from Casino Royale randomly chucked into the middle it's still hard to tell what's happening. Voice acting is great, but that's fairly obvious considering the got all the cast from the movie. And that's all there is to say about it. If you're going to buy this game for the story then don't be an idiot and watch the movie instead.
Te graphics are ok. They're no bad enough to ruin the experience, however they're also not very good compared to most current gen game. Very little detail seems to be put into everything. It all looks quite plain. At least it's not brown. Well, most of it isn't. The characters are by far the best looking thing in the game and manage to look like their actors.
Daniel Craig next to his video game counterpart.
Finally, multiplayer. The game modes are all good ranging from classic fps modes like deathmatch (called conflict) and territory control to more creative stuff like Bond versus and Bond evasion. I won't go into too much detail here but they're all very enjoyable especially golden gun mode. The maps however all feel very uninspired and could have easily been copied from any other fps. They're not fun, they're not creative and they're not even that good looking. The game glitches for far too often and you can find yourself shooting somebody in the face repeatedly, only for someone else to come along and shoot him for you. Or you could just be running around the map when you suddenly find yourself jumping around spastically. One final complaint, while technically not the games fault I feel the need to complain about the idiocy of the players. One person seemed to leave the room for five matches, forgetting he was still online, while another decided to get revenge on his sworn enemy, a door, by pumping bullets in to it for about three minutes. Why are all the morons on my team?
To summarise Quantum of Solace is an overall good game but barely manages to pull it's way out of the average pile. Big fps fans probably won't enjoy this much but if you're just getting in to the genre this is a fairly good game to start with. Far below Goldeneye, but far above most licensed games, it manages to be one of the best movie tie in games of the current console generation.
All criticism is more than welcome.
