Licensed to thrill?
During the making of Quantum of Solace, developer Treyarch played N64 GoldenEye 007 religiously. It ‘still plays pretty well', apparently. But does it really? Rare's 1997 masterpiece may still be the best Bond blaster ever, but pick up a pad and it starts to show its age. Given a choice between that and present day Call of Duty 4, we know what we'd prefer to play.
CoDlike
And that's where Quantum of Solace on PS3 and Xbox 360 comes in. Combining the Modern Warfare game engine with Daniel Craig's gritty new 007, it boasts the best of both worlds, making for a Bond game experience with true next-gen credentials.
Push a button to snap to cover, and the camera pans back, giving you a look at Daniel Craig's digital depiction in all his HD glory.
To call this CoD in spy's clothing would, however, be doing it a disservice. Quantum of Solace features something Activision's other famous shooter series doesn't; a cover system. It works a little like that in Rainbow Six – you push a button to snap to cover, and the camera pans back from a through-the-eyes viewpoint into a third-person perspective, giving you a look at Daniel Craig's digital depiction in all his HD glory.
From here you can blindfire, or duck out (still in third-person) and unload lead into the legions of bad guys – who, presumably, come from the same henchmen school as those in every other action flick. To their credit though, they do a decent job of making your life difficult. They'll flank, take cover themselves and close in for the kill if you're not careful. They're hardly Halo Elites in terms of intelligence, but they've definitely got their wits about them.
Duck and double-0
The drawback is that the CoD engine was never designed with cover in mind, and so Quantum of Solace can develop into really quite linear, stop-and-pop gunplay. While this works well in a game like Gears of War, full of fantastical enemy types and gothic architecture, the real-world locales and human enemies of Quantum of Solace aren't perhaps the best fit for this approach.
Still, Quantum of Solace makes an admirable effort at offering a varied gameplay challenge. Stealth sections and a segment where you're inching along the outside a building avoiding glaring spotlights are both included. There's also QTEs, which again take you out of first-person, and occasional first-person disarmings as well. In all then, and despite the omission of vehicle sections, it's a pretty good recreation of the film.
Despite the omission of vehicle sections, it's a pretty good recreation of the film.
Except, somewhat oddly, when it's a pretty good depiction of the film before it. Quantum of Solace features a lengthy flashback sequence focusing on Daniel Craig's previous Bond outing in Casino Royale. It's a great way to bring both of the films together, and features possibly the coolest set piece in the game, guiding a drugged, blurry-visioned Bond to his car in order to shock himself back to life. The downside is that this flachback sequence comes around halfway through, and by the time you're back into the Quantum of Solace storyline, you'll have forgotten half of what was going on when you left it.
And somewhat surprisingly for a game that features not one but two films worth of content, is that Quantum of Solace is really quite short. You're talking sub-ten hours playtime first time through, and for accomplished FPS players considerably less than that. Which is a shame, because when Quantum of Solace gets going, you won't want it to stop.
More to come
Luckily, there's always the multiplayer to fall back on. Standard shooter modes are present, but it's the Bond ones that feel most at home in Quantum of Solace. Bond Vs has one player controlling the spy trying to disarm bombs placed by the other players; Golden Gun gives one player the titular one-hit-kill weapon, and Bond Evasion has players escorting a VIP to safety. The story campaign, meanwhile, has a pretty decent co-op option, too.
The successor to GoldenEye, then? Well, Quantum of Solace is certainly the best Bond game since 1997. So that's a 'yes'– although we can't help but feel that there's a lot more to come from 007 under Activision's guardianship.
GAME's Verdict
- Explosively gritty Bond action that captures the feel of the recent films.
- Reasonably intelligent enemies and a couple of really cool set pieces.
- Multiplayer works well, particularly the Bond-specific modes.
- Very short campaign mode.
- the CoD engine was never really designed for cover-based combat.
- The flashback sequence will leave you confused as to where you are in the actual plot.
Review by: Mark 'Stop n Pop' Scott
Version Tested: PlayStation 3
Review Published: 28.11.07