Tech Olive

When I first heard that another game developer was attempting a James Bond game, I was skeptical, given Agent 007′s track history with games. Some say 007 Nightfire was a good game, but in my opinion, there really hasn’t been a good Bond game since the Nintendo 64 days of GoldenEye. Once I had read that Activision would be publishing this installment and that it would be using the Call of Duty 4 engine, I thought it could actually be good. When I first played the demo at the beginning of October, I was excited for what it could be. Sure, the demo had some rough points, but it had lots of potential. It wasn’t fantastic, but I expected improvements, since it was only a demo. Did they deliver? There’s only one way to find out.

Unfortunately, I found the game stays pretty true to the feel/look of the demo. This game follows the story lines of both Quantum of Solace and the previous Bond movie, Casino Royale. Both are great films, but I’ve never really been a fan of games that follow a movie’s storyline. Mainly because when making a game that follows the storyline of a cinematic production, the game is going to be incredibly linear without even a shred of choice or freedom. I’m fine with this, as long as the game itself is good or fun to play. Perfect examples of linear, but great games would be Call of Duty 4 and Portal.

Moving onto actual game play, it’s pretty smooth despite a ridiculous 30 frames-per-second cap. The graphics are well polished for the most part. The animations are smooth and usually integrate well into whatever situation they are used in. The amount of cut scenes do start to get annoying, but it’s expected since the game is following the movie so closely. It’s obvious that the developers would have to use some to get the story across. The game integrates many game play elements, but some of them are not done very well. For starters, the game is a mixed, 1st and 3rd person view. It is primarily 1st person, but there are context-specific times when it will change to 3rd person. Some may find this annoying, but I didn’t mind it. The only thing that I would prefer, is that you have more choice of the view-angle. Being able to switch whenever you choose, not just when performing certain tasks.

A few more interesting things worth noting: Treyarch tried to integrate a stealth element to some missions because, what is a covert operative without stealth? However, the stealth is not very intuitive because the game is so scripted, it doesn’t feel like you’re sneaking around by choice. The guards conveniently have their back to every door you’re about to come through.
You have a map that is accessed through your phone, which should aid in the stealth, but it’s mostly useless as it is hard to effectively use it. Again, it doesn’t feel very natural to use. There are quick-time events which are usually met with bad results. Many people just get annoyed at them, but I think they managed to integrate them properly in this game. You are given plenty of time to complete them, but if you miss it, you’ll only either take some damage, or have an alarm go off.

A cool feature is that this game disguises the loading screens by using cut scenes, making the game feel much smoother with level changes. However, it seems that all of the pre-rendered video for cut scenes seem to have inferior graphics to the actual game. It throws you off a bit, but it certainly doesn’t ruin the game.

So, in finishing, it’s not a bad game to say the least, but if you don’t like quick-time events or linear game play, then you should probably avoid this title. For everyone else, look forward to a good James Bond game. It’s not quite good enough to surpass GoldenEye, but I actually enjoyed it. There where a few things that did bother me, but no game is perfect. I think it’s a well made game and it keeps you entertained.

Score: 7 Olives