The Bond name in the gaming world has been thrown around the ring more times than Bond himself has been captured and subjected to some kind of interrogation. Bond games have generally come and gone, leaving relatively no impact on the gaming world whatsoever. Well, that’s not entirely true, but if it wasn’t for a little known N64 title called Goldeneye a little over 10 years ago, we’d have no hope for a franchise that has the potential to deliver an amazing story with high octane action. So here we are, another year, another Bond; this time, Treyarch are at the helm doing what they can to rejuvenate a dying brand.
Quantum of Solace throws you in to the hot pants of James Bond, almost seconds after the Casino Royale film ended; however, saying this is a true representation of the film would not be fair. You’ll spend the vast majority of the game reliving seen and previously unseen extracts from the Casino Royale film rather than getting too knee deep in the Quantum story; something that I, who hasn’t seen the latest film yet, actually appreciated more. The story in itself doesn’t flow like a Bond film’s does and will leave you feeling like you have no idea what’s actually going on; you’ll just be happy killing wave after wave of henchmen knowing you’re on your way to stop some bad guy.
Thanks to a deal with Danjaq and Activision, Quantum of Solace not only features genuine character likenesses but also their respective voice as well. I say likenesses, but other than Daniel Craig (and La Chiffre and M if you squint), the other likenesses are very poor. I mean, Vesper looks like she’s gone ten rounds with an ugly stick; something that Eva Green might not be too happy with.
While the likenesses might not be spot on, the voice acting and general score of the game is right on the button, but truthfully, I didn’t expect anything else. Running around the level, strutting my bad ass assassin skills to different styles of Monty Norman’s famous Bond theme was a joy in its own right (if not a little over used) and starting the game to the new Alicia Keys and Jack White Bond theme was also a nice touch.
The first thing that hits you with Quantum of Solace is the lacklustre visuals; sure Craig and his blue eyes are encapsulating and the environments are diverse, but the textures and general level detail leaves little to be desired. Bond doesn’t look as glam as we all expect him to which is a shame although the lighting can be fairly decent at time. Don’t get fooled by the destructive environments promise as well as this is too infrequent to notice.
The controls and general feel are simply delightful, but I’d expect nothing else from the Call of Duty 4 engine. Thanks to some tweaking by Treyarch as well, they have an intuitive cover system in place that truly can give lots of Bond style moments; remember, you’re a trained assassin, not a soldier. Rarely does the cover system play up, sometimes you’ll find yourself in awkward positions as you try to break free from the cover, but these are few and far between.
The cover system would be even better if it wasn’t for the unpredictable AI. Treyarch have done a great job tweaking the AI to work together to take you down as you’ll often find yourself being flanked, flushed out with grenades and under heavy cover fire. However, when your adversaries are hiding behind cover they’ll almost always leave you with a clear shot at their head, meaning that the game becomes ridiculously easy … Even on the hardest setting.
Even the stealth sections in the game are affected by dumb AI who must work on a proximity basis in the way that Metal Gear does, but this doesn’t really make it any less fun. Creeping through a level and systematically wiping out a crew without them knowing is very satisfying from a gaming standpoint. It’s these situations where you’ll most likely take advantage of Bond’s new takedown system. Walking up to them and clicking the right joystick will trigger a button press sequence, that if hit correctly will unleash a devastating, incapacitating blow.
The multiplayer aspect of Bond is actually quite appealing, offering 8 different modes in all and very little to no lag. It definitely feels more like Call of Duty though, than James Bond and if it wasn’t for the Golden Gun mode and a few other Bond style modes, you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference, even a few of the maps have similarities. It would have been nice to have seen more Bond models and classic Bond models fighting each other in the game rather than two generic teams. The Golden Gun mode is a fantastic mode that I encourage everyone to sample. The premise is easy, get the Golden Gun and rack up kills; there is one per map and only one person can have it at a time, but it’s not a Golden Gun in its traditional sense; this one is almost like a mini rocket launcher, so don’t let them get too close when you have it because you could be sampling the same death they experience.
It does however do everything else right; strong party system, quick loading games, fluent game play and a well implemented experience system where you can spend your hard earned experience on weapons, weapon upgrades, gadgets and even golden gun skins. If I did have any qualms; it would be that when a host quits, the game ends; some of the weapons are overpowered, seeing a shotgun headshot someone from 30 foot away is never right; and people haven’t quite grasped the concept of the Golden Gun mode yet. Although, blaming Treyarach for the idiots that use their product is not fair by any means. All in all, the multiplayer aspect of the Quantum of Solace stops the game from being a day affair and thankfully adds some longevity to the game. However, whether it’s ground breaking enough to tempt players from the likes of Call of Duty 4 remains to be seen, although I wouldn’t count on it.
Quantum of Solace’s achievements are a mixed bag to say the least. Treyarch are right on the money with the story related achievements; rewarding players for chapter completes and certain random goals in those chapters like shooting a helicopter pilot instead of taking down the gunners. Hell, they even stack the campaign achievements which developers still make the mistake of not doing. You can’t take the smooth without the rough though and there is plenty of them in the form of collectibles (in an FPS of all places) and there are way too many multiplayer achievements, some of which could take a massive amount of time (100,000 credits!). A simple playthrough of the story could net you around 300-500 points and if you want the full 1000, I would estimate that it’s 50 plus hours.
Bond is good for the non-stop action, the Bond like stealth scenes and its appeasing multiplayer, however, its downfall will in fact be its longevity. With about 6 hours of single player missions and little incentive to make players play through it again, Quantum of Solace is a short affair and one that will ultimately have an effect on how you spend your money this festive period. There’s no denying it’s fun and the multiplayer mode is actually pleasantly surprising but it’s no different to what’s already out there. The game is more of a weekend’s rent rather than a long term investment.
My rating:
Audio: 8/10 | Pretty Good,The Voices are not like the orginal. Sound just like the movie though.
Visual: 10/10 | Amazing use of the Xbox 360 Grahpics. Gold looks real.
Gameplay: 9/10 | Game feels good,Only thing is its very bouncy and drives me insane.
Online Play: 7/10 | A let down. I was hoping for it to be very good,The online play is very linear.
Overall: 8.5/10 | Very good game,With Gears of War 2 coming out friday. You might want to get it later.
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Links:
Achievements: http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game/quantum-of-solace/achievements/
Xbox Page: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/q/quantumofsolace/
Blog Link: http://akgame.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/review-quantum-of-solacereview-quantum-of-solace/
Content: Naruto The Broken Bond Demo
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) MILD SUGGESTIVE THEMES,VIOLENCE] Naruto™ The Broken Bond is the new action adventure that takes the story to a deeper level within the Naruto universe. Take your ninja skills online with the only Naruto™ game to feature an online multiplayer challenge.
Content: Mirror’s Edge Demo
Price: Free
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions
Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) BLOOD,LANGUAGE,VIOLENCE] Download the Mirror’s Edge demo to experience this award-winning First-Person Action-Adventure. The tutorial will guide you through the basics of movement and combat before you try out your skills in the prologue to the main game.
So in addition to the 20 free DLC pack coming out next week we also have a three pack from Presidents of the United States of America (just in time for election day), a new track from Hinder, and a new track from Fallout Boy.
POTUS Three Pack
Presidents of the United States of America- Dune Buggy
Presidents of the United States of America- Feather Pluckn
Presidents of the United States of America- Ladybug
Hinder – Use Me
Fallout Boy – I Don’t Care
Each of the POTUS tracks are $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) or $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points) for the whole pack. The tracks for Hinder and Fallout Boy are $.99 (80 Microsoft Points) each for a limited time (1 month). All tracks are masters.
DLC arrives on Tuesday, November 4th for Xbox 360 and Thursday, November 6th on PS3.
To discuss the week’s DLC please visit the official topic in Community’s Greatest Hits.
For all DLC song credits please go here.
And, as always, for awesome background information on our DLC and other articles please visit the shiny new Rock Band ‘Zine
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Fall Out Boy = Amazing
POTUS = Good Add On From Lump
Hinder = For Fans.
Let me start off by making everyone aware of Microsoft’s achievement policy, as posted by the Gamerscore Blog team themselves and I’d like to bring your attention to the first rule:
“All regular disc-based games MUST have 1,000 Gamerscore in the base game. This means that any consumer who buys a retail game will have the opportunity to unlock the full 1,000 Gamerscore without having to pay for any add-on content. Note that a publisher may decide to deliver a portion of this Gamerscore via add-on content, but the add-on content will always be free to the consumer.”
This is a pretty much accepted policy across the board … or so I thought.
The achievement under the limelight here is the aptly named “Completionist” achievement whereby it requires gamers to max out all their abilities and gain all their hero’s and dog’s expressions. Fair enough you think? Well, the fact that two of these expressions (one for the dog and one for your hero (Hat, Hairband, Moustache and the dog’s Backflip) can only be unlocked by playing the Xbox Live Arcade Pub Games title is enough to make Fable 2 a violation of Microsoft’s own rule.
However, before being hasty and posting this, I checked every inch of the Albion; unlocking all the Demon Doors and buying every piece of property … Still nothing. Even the Brady Games Guide says that you need to unlock them via the Xbox Live Arcade title. However, the optimist inside of me, still screamed, “don’t jump to conclusions” … So I didn’t.
The next logical step was to speak to Lionhead themselves and what better than on their forums where they recently commented that they “might be silent on these boards, but we are watching and listening to you, the community, and are looking into all serious issues that are bought to our attention.” After little attention or response by anyone to my thread, I PM’ed the link to Lionhead’s Community Manager, Sam Van Tilburgh and to my amazement, the thread was deleted a day or so later without any word of warning.
However, you must love the beauty of cache in this day and age because Google managed to keep my thread safe and sound which you can view in image format here. I’m sure many of you will agree that I raise a valid point in a polite and constructive manner which should not warrant a delete.
And before someone raises the “see another Hero do so” issue; someone must have had to buy it originally to spread the achievement. If that surely is the reason, then it seems a weak way of upholding the rules by allowing for different loopholes to play out. Oh, and before I get the “you’re bitter because you haven’t got it yourself”, I was lucky to get in as a friend achieved it very recently.
Our main concern however is that this doesn’t open the floodgates and encourage other developers and publishers to start making this a common occurrence. It needs to be stomped before it can escalate.
Pandemic, an Electronic Arts studio, today announced that their latest Lord of the Rings title; Conquest will ship internationally on January 9th 2009 with the US getting it a few days later on the 13th.
“We have been working hard to create a ‘The Lords of the Rings’ experience like no other,” says Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. “’And we are excited to finally confirm the launch of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Star Wars Battlefront fans alike.”
Lord of the Rings: Conquest allows gamers to play as both the forces of good and evil in Pandemic’s latest adventure giving gamers the chance to help Sauron take back the ring in a dramatic twist on the original story.
Lord of the Rings: Conquest is said to be a Star Wars Battlefront take on JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” universe. So if it sounds like your cup of tea, mark the date on your calendar.
Nintendo has announced that shipments of the DS handheld have now surpassed those of the Game Boy Advance.
The DS has shipped 84.33 million units by the end of September 2008, with 13.73 units sold worldwide in the last six months.
Lifetime-to-date shipments of the Game Boy Advance hardware are 81.36 million units.
Shipments of DS software have reached 454.63 million units worldwide, with shipments of the Nintendogs titles reaching 20 million units, according to Nintendo.
Global shipments of the Wii home console are now at 34.55 million hardware units, with 229.85 million software titles shipped worldwide. Shipments of Wii Fit have reached 8.7 million.
MTV, Apple Corps and Harmonix have announced that they are collaborating on “a brand new videogame featuring the music of the iconic Beatles” due out next Christmas.
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said the game was a “dream project”, and that it will be a “new, full-blown custom game title production built from the ground up”. It won’t be a Rock Band game, either – it’s a brand new Beatles game.
Jeff Jones, CEO of Apple Corps, added that the Beatles game would span the entire run of Beatles music, though not necessarily include every track, and Rigopulos said that “there will of course be interactive performance of the Beatles music”, and that there will be new gameplay elements too.
The parties involved wouldn’t say whether there will be new peripherals, but it sounds like it will work with Rock Band kit. Rigopulos said that peripherals that worked with other games – i.e. Guitar Hero – would work with the Beatles game to the same degree they do with Rock Band.
“We want to take players on an experiential journey through the band’s history,” he said. “A visual exploration of the Beatles’ imagery is a big part of this project,” Rigopulos said. “With apologies…there’s very little that we’re ready to say about the game itself.”
So it proved, as the parties on the teleconference call refused to answer any questions about platforms, gameplay mechanics. For example, “Interoperability with Rock Band is something we’re not ready to talk about yet,” Rigopulos said in response to a question about DLC possibilities.
MTV Networks president Van Toffler said, “We’re going to provide the ultimate platform for new generations of fans to start their own love affair with the Beatles”. He said the game has the blessing of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison. He added that Giles Martin is doing music production – the son of George Martin.
“The thing that we’re trying to keep to is for people to play the songs as though they’re playing the originals. So we will be adhering to the original mixes my father and the Beatles did, and trying to preserve the sound quality as much as possible,” said Martin.
It was later added that this is the exclusive Beatles tie-up for music games. Toffler said we should “stay tuned for details over the coming months”.
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