“The name’s Bond, James Bond”, is probably the most famous one-liner in entertainment history. More than 5 generations know that line. It defines the character; it sets the theme while being able to tell the audience what is to come. James Bond is at a level where a solitary line can generate feelings, where one line is more than enough to know what you are watching. James Bond is a legend; he might have had his ups and downs, but today he is probably the best-known action hero of all time.

I’ve mentioned how video game adaptations are hit or miss. James didn’t have that problem. Under most developers the games were good, the development studios took the time, effort and sweat to ensure greatness. Even EA of all people strived to make a great game with Nightfire. Now it was the turn of the other heavy hitter: Activision. Activision put Treyarch, their elite, on the job. Treyarch’s skill was going to move an unstoppable franchise forward.

Story:

I don’t know the story because of poor delivery. The game takes place during Quantum of Solace and Casino Royal but Activision has cut so many corners that the story makes no sense. The game expects you to have seen both movies. There is next to nothing in-game to explain the story. I haven’t seen these movies in years so I have no clue why anything causes anything.

There are cutscenes at the start of every mission but they are complete and utter horseshit. The cutscenes just show an overview of what is going on via a world map and 2D animations. This is stupid because they could have used scenes from the movie to deliver the story but nope.

If you haven’t watched the movies, don’t play this game.

Sound:

The voice acting is solid. The actors from the movies have either reprised their roles or the lines have been sampled from the movies. Either way, there is no doubt about who is who from the voice alone. You can easily identify Dench, Craig and the rest of the cast. There are a few occasions where the voice actors wish they were somewhere else but not enough to ruin the overall tone. The enemy voice acting on the other hand is a bit confusing. It’s usually good but sometimes overacted which breaks the immersion.

The weapons sound great. The weapons have a heavy tone in general which varies between the silenced weapons and the actual heavies. They sound nice and powerful, the most obvious of which is the sniper rifle that sounds like it could take out a ship. I guess the quality was to be expected from the guys who make COD.

Graphics:

The textures and colour choices in the world are a hit or miss. Some levels like Venice look fabulous with bright colours, tons of different 3D models(for both the world and characters), extremely well-done textures with some great attention to detail but then there is the final level Eco Hotel which is just brown filled with an army of clones. It feels like the graphic team were either burning out by the last level or didn’t have enough time to take some effort which is sad.

There are two types of cutscenes: a 2D map/hud with data that shows up at the start of each level and the normal 3D ones that we are all used to. The 2D ones are good and really clean but the 3D cutscenes have the same problem as the levels, some of them look really good and well detailed while using the in-game models but then some are just pure trash with little to no detail around them.

Special effects are bad, bullet traces are just quick straight lines, muzzle flashes while decent looking are quick and in a fixed shape. Explosions should be really great in a 007 game but they aren’t, grenades just do a quick flash and vanish, the hydrogen machines in the Eco hotel level let off a small flash and some electric nonsense in a couple of seconds fade to nothing, no marks on the ground or anything, leaving you really underwhelmed. Except for the level Casino Poison (which is an amazing trip) the special effects are underwhelming. 

Finally, yes Daniel Craig’s character model is well done. I’m sure he offered to beat the shit out of the 3D team if they fucked it up. To make up for the quality of Daniel Craig’s model all the guns were downgraded to very simple texture maps.

Gameplay:

If this game wanted to prove that it was a James Bond game, all it had to do was show off the range in environments. The levels go from the middle of nowhere in Africa, barges, museums to private hotels and estates. The variations of the world around Bond are astounding in their number. Just seeing them makes your imagination run wild with thoughts, ideas and hopes of ways to eliminate the target. To complete things is the Treyarch touch: The Treyarch touch takes large worlds full of hopes and dreams and compresses them into corridor shooters so that even the lowest forms of humans can understand them. Every level in Quantum of Solace looks massive when you start only to crumble into tiny little walkways and corridors whose sole purpose is to drive you from section to section. There are occasional large combat areas but they are few and far apart, nothing in the level design feels unique or worthwhile.

There are some more James Bond-like elements in the levels like walking over tight walkways, jumping from platform to platform or getting into a brawl but they are all badly done. The walkways have you press left and right to balance, jumping from walkways is just pressing the jump button and the fights are aiming a crosshair at a target over and over again. These sections are supposed to be fun while making you feel like a badass but instead all they do is make you wish to get back to the shooting.

The game has a fresh gameplay style that is rarely seen (like in the modern Deus Ex games) where you play from a first-person perspective when walking around and a third-person perspective when in cover. I would like to say that this is thought out but the accuracy in the first-person mode is complete and utter cow urine (I’m Indian, can you tell?), On the other hand, a cover shot can take out enemies’ miles away. The first-person mode takes a backseat to the cover mechanic’s third-person view most of the time because lack of creativity is what Activision specialises in.

When playing you find yourself moving from cover to cover while you take out a room full of enemies. Did I say, enemies? I mean explosive barrels that are littered throughout the levels. The number of explosives in this game is really strange, I found tons of explosive barrels in Venice which makes no sense at all. It’s like the bad guys have stocks in an explosive barrel company. Each level is nothing more than a bunch of shooting sections where you move from cover to cover, wipe out the enemy forces by shooting something explosive before carrying on. This seems like a cover shooter that Treyarch and Beenox had lying around which they recoloured into a James Bond game.

Adding to my thesis about this not being a 007 game is the lack of everything James Bond. There are no gadgets, there is no human interaction, there are no scenes of Bond girls in lingerie and most importantly there are no scenes of James being a bloody spy. James’ character development in this game is solely shooting people which is about right for the Daniel Craig era of 007. Now before all 10 of the Quantum of Solace fanboys come running at me: I will point out that there is a hacking mini-game where you press the correct button to hack doors/cameras which is so dull that I would prefer to skip it completely. Speaking of stuff that could be skipped completely is the melee takedowns. You can step up to an enemy and press Q to take them down, sadly once you hit Q you need to aim your crosshair at a target to take them down. This might have been fine if there was no choice but instead of suffering this system you can just use a silenced weapon and shoot the enemies in the head.

This was probably in Activision’s design document: Just because this is a James Bond game doesn’t mean it has to have any class, character or innovation.

Conclusion:

A half-built cover shooter was repurposed to be a James Bond game. It’s fun at an initial glance but as a whole is quite boring. The repetitive gameplay with an extremely poorly delivered story is enough to crash this game into the ground.

IO should be able to beat this easily.

Pros	Cons
Story based on the movies	Poorly delivered story
The Venice level is beautiful	Eco Hotel level is ugly
Great Bond model	Repetitive enemy models
Original Voice actors	Overacted enemy lines
First person and third person shooting	First person might as well not exist
Great level environments	Poor level paths
Explosives	Too many explosives

Recommended Purchase Price: $2 or ₹100

Final Score: 5/10