Faint Praise, but Praise Nonetheless
Remember that game Everything or Nothing a few years back? Man, that was and still is the best Bond game of all time. In that game, you weren't just some no-name soldier shooting up fools. You were Bond, you were romancing the ladies, hijacking vehicles, blowing up stuff. That was the best Bond movie no one ever made.
With Quantum of Solace, we're back to making games based of movies again. And hey, look we have the entire cast brought back in digital form (now-a-days, we expect no less from movie-tie-in games). Isn't that cool? I'll get back to this in a min, but honestly you aren't going to want to play this game for its ties to the movie.
Activision bases this game off the Call of Duty 4 engine; needless to say this game is nowhere near as excellent as that game, but it's solid shooting nonetheless. You play as Bond, naturally through a campaign that lasted me about 7 hours on the hardest difficulty (and that included multiple restarts which I'll get to). It's in a first person view so if you've played any first-person shooter recently (and if you have a 360, I'm guessing you have), you've played this game. There's a large emphasis on cover however; press a button and you'll run to the nearest piece of cover from which to shoot from. Here you play in a third-person perspective as you try to cap off dudes nearby. As the difficulty ramps up, the enemies (all two-types of them) get a bit smarter- they'll through grenades and try to flank you as to make sure that you leave cover. It can be frustrating at times trying to take out a boatload of soldiers, but it's not impossible to do so. You have a one-hit kill move that turns into a quick-time event which looks cool but it varies between about 5 or so kills, so when you've seen them all, you'll not want to use them again.
The graphics are ok but for the most part underwhelming. The Daniel Craig model is a bit iffy looking and stiff, and the soldiers are all faceless no bodies with little to no variations in their animations. The environments are cool, but somehow the developer made Olga Kurylenko look like a transvestite.
That leads me to my biggest problem with the game- the inconsistancy. The animation is good at spots but crappy at others, the gameplay can be extremely exciting at times but boring during other tedious stealth missions. And the story...ugh, this has to be the worst adaptation (if you can call it that) of any game-to-film to date. We start off with a few missions taking place during Quantum of Solace and that's all fine and dandy for a while. But the cutscenes between missions are horrible. They mostly consist of Judi Dench mouthing off dialogue that sounds similar to what is heard in the movie, as we see a bunch of disembodied (and poorly rendered) heads in a hi-tech background similar to a futuristic GPS or map. Then off we are to the next mission, with little to no explanation as to why we are going there. Then we somehow (I wasn't paying attention, but I'm guessing I didn't miss much) transferred to a flashback of Bond's, in which he retells Casino Royale in playable form. Again we are treated to horrible, misleading cutscenes. Then...we finish off with a final battle taking place during Solace and that's it. Credits roll. What the hell? I thought this was based on Quantum of Solace? Naming the game after the recent film is another example of how inconsistant it is- we expect something and get something else in return.
Regardless, the shooting is more often than not really fun. The only thing is that the game itself is outclassed by so many other 1st and 3rd person shooters out there. Games with better graphics, stories, creative multiplayer modes (the multiplayer here is decent but bland) and more rewarding gameplay mechanics. Unless you're itching for to play as Daniel Craig, or unless you want some (read: a few) quick achievement points, I suggest you look elsewhere.
