The story presented here is that of Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale. Both stories are told with the major portions of Casino Royale being shown as a flashback while bond explains his history to his latest bond girl. The game takes the action set pieces of the movies and turns them in game levels. Story is limited to voice over and slick graphics which are meant to represent MI6 computers. As it stands the story seems disjointed, with flow and motivation unclear. I have seen Casino Royale, but to date haven’t seen Quantum of Solace. The story of Casino Royale I could follow, the other movie I am lost with. In short if you have seen the movies you will probably know the story here anyway, so it feels like they haven’t really tried that hard to convey the story well, just the bare bones. Which is fair enough, this is a movie game, it expects you to be a fan of the movie and therefore already know where things are going and any major surprises and twists are known long before they occur.
I suppose this is the curse of the movie game, you have to include the story, but the story has no real effect or impact. You have to simply go through the motions with token gestures. Movie game cut scenes are probably the most skipped in any game genre.
How do I review a game like this from a story point of view then? I didn’t like the way it was presented, I felt lost at times and there was no real connection with any of the characters. I have to give it a bad mark for story, but I also have to give it some leeway due to the aforementioned problems. Why spend hundreds of man hours making perfectly rendered recreations of the movie when you could simply use portions of the movie. There is the solution right there, if an officially licensed movie game can’t include the dull info dump portions of the movie, then what can?
The game is primarily a first person shooter, however it borrows from Rainbow six Vegas in it’s first to third person cover mechanic. This is implemented well with the ability to dash to cover. Getting in and out of cover is fairly easy once you have a little practice. When running around you have the usual sighting down your gun for increased accuracy by holding the left trigger.
The game is a corridor shooter with a penchant for large rectangular areas with plenty of cover. A finite amount of enemies populate the environments which allows for a paced battle. No need here for a Call of Duty like urge to press on recklessly for fear of repeatedly shooting the same enemies forever.
Variety is found in the form of small mini games, there is balancing along narrow pipes and beams, with the controller being used to balance, I can imagine the wii and PS3 version using motion control, and without motion control these mechanics are more irksome than fun on the Xbox 360. I would question their inclusion even on a system with motion control, since it just seems to be a tacked on mechanic to include motion control for the sake of it.
There are quicktime events included here as well, my least favourite game mechanic, why they think that I would want to press random buttons rather than just enjoy the cut scenes I don’t know. Quicktime is used as a lazy excuse for boss battles in this game. Several times you are expected to watch the button presses rather than the interesting cut scene that plays alongside them.
Security locks are also opened by the use of quick button pressing, this time using the d-pad.
There are mobile phones scattered around the levels, these provide the collectibles and also some tips as to locations of hidden weapons etc.
In some levels stealth is rewarded with less enemies to deal with. The old staple of having security cameras with a set movement pattern shown by a beam of light is employed. You also have to shoot patrolling enemies with a silencer or sneak up behind them and melee them. Some security cameras can be hacked to give a view of upcoming areas as reconnaissance.
There are a few other small mechanics included to break from the norm and add variety, including some scenes where you use emplaced guns or when you edge along ledges avoiding people or searchlight beams.
Highlights for me were the parkour chase through the building site which was reminiscent of mirrors edge. The Venice scene where the building is sinking was done well and the poisoning scene where you rush to your car to defibrillate yourself.
The levels are all based on locations from the movie and as such are fairly good recreations of real world areas. Mansion houses, sewer tunnels, rooftops, opera house, caves, Venice, building sites, shanty towns, science centres, airports, trains, casinos, boats and hotels.
The game is said to use the Infinity Ward engine from Call of Duty 4. The frame rate is fairly solid even in the larger open areas. The graphics are not quite up to Call of Duty 4 standards but that is more a lack of imagination and effort than a fault of the engine. Put simply the effort put into the detail of the levels isn’t as great as the engine allows. Possibly that is the fault of the time given to the team to turn the game around.
The graphics are excellent, it’s just a shame that the game is coming out in the same time period as Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, as both make it look inferior. Given a January release this game would have probably been much better received. That said examples of the state of the Xbox 360 art can’t be held above every game as a yardstick and there is little to complain about with Quantum of Solace’s efforts.
There are a few boss battles. Mostly of the quick time variety. The remaining one are straight fights with enemies. The last few include the shooting of certain environment triggers to cause explosions which end the fights.
Music is excellent, as should be expected in a movie franchise like 007 the movie soundtrack is utilised well.
Checkpoints are well placed and each level is fairly short with a few exceptions. I am finding it hard to remember any times where the checkpoints were unfair which is a plus point for the game.
Achievements are fairly well handled with points for completing every second level or so and each level having a set task in it to gain points from. Simple things like killing certain people with one shot or shooting satellite dishes on the rooftops. There are the usual collectible and multiplayer achievements.
I completed the game on Agent level which is one below the 007 ultra hard setting. I got 360 points. Not the most generous but the remaining achievements should be within reach of another play through which I would not be adverse too. I will probably come back to this game and play some areas on easy for achievements and play it again on hardest setting for the achievements.
Scoring
Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 6
Level Design 8
A.i. 7
Total 7.4
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