[360/PS3/Others] - Quantum of Solace Review

[AgtFox]

Quantum of Solace Review

Title: Quantum of Solace
Platform: 360/PS3/Others
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
ESRB: Teen
MSRP: $59.99 (360/PS3)
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek

What's Hot: Daniel Craig and the other main characters look like their real life counterpart; multiplayer will keep you interested; graphics and level design are nice

What's Not: Too short; Casino Royale sections in middle seem longer than QoS sections; cover/shoot system tries to be Gears of War or Uncharted-like and fails; some slowdown when too many graphic assets are going at once

Let’s get this out of the way first: Quantum of Solace is not Goldeneye for the new generation of systems. It attempts to be similar to that game, but ultimately it is very much a brain dead shooter with little to no strategy. In fact, if you wanted to connect it to a game, this would be a lot like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune minus the platforming parts. Basically Bond runs into an area with cover and it is obvious a firefight will ensue. You find cover and start taking out the bad guys much like you do in Uncharted except that this game is far easier and shorter. It certainly has the production quality going for it with characters that look like their real life counterparts and the actual voiceovers to match it, but the end payoff just isn’t that great.

The game starts out at the ending of Casino Royale were Bond shoots Mr. White. He presses him for information about his organization, but his men show up trying to take Bond out. A firefight ensues on Mr. White’s homestead grounds and once Bond dispatches everyone he takes Mr. White along with him to Siena, Italy where the Quantum of Solace movie actually begins. Problem is you don’t get to play through the cool car chase that was in the movie, instead we go directly to the interrogation section in order to set up the next action piece. Here you figure out that Treyarch must have been given the overall story of the movie and put their own touch in each chapter. The Siena section in the game does not end exactly the same as it did in the movie and there is also a vast difference in the Opera section as well, although I won’t spoil any details from the movie if you haven’t seen it. This makes the game one based upon the movie, but not exactly the same and you will find the game is a different experience than the movie. Whether that is good or not is up to you.

You will find that you can take out enemies one of two ways. You can either shoot/blow them up or you can go into a quicktime event by rushing up to them and pressing the left analog stick in. This will bring up a button for you to press in order to kill them with your hands. It is somewhat like the Bourne Conspiracy game, but this game doesn’t go quite as far as that one since you have only one button to press in order to subdue them. You will also find places where you need to unlock a door that takes you into a minigame where you press the corresponding direction on the d-pad when a green arrow lights one of the directions. If you press it when a red arrow lights up or press the wrong direction, you will get a failed chance. In most cases it takes three failed attempts to be knocked out and start over.

About an hour into the game and what would roughly be the middle of the actual movie, Bond has a flashback to certain sections from Casino Royale. You relive some key areas from the movie (Madagascar beginning, Miami section and the casino and when Bond gets poisoned sections, etc.) and the story is fleshed out a bit with MI-6 voiceovers using the cool video screen that is used in the Quantum of Solace movie. The problem here is that once you get through this rather large section of missions you find yourself dropped back into the Quantum of Solace narrative and continue on. Usually flashbacks don’t carry on this long and once you are actually done with the game you will probably figure out that the Casino Royale sections were put in there because the game would have been awfully short without them. The game is still short, clocking in at about 4-5 hours, but without those parts it could have been 2 hours. This is a major problem with the game since it only lasts as long as ICO for instance. Luckily the multiplayer section of the game stands out on its own and might push you to purchase the game because there is a lot of playtime to be had in that section.

The game looks pretty good and the levels are well put together trying to once again give the illusion that this game is a lot like Goldeneye, but the problem is that your objectives are not as varied and the game is extremely linear. You’ll see lots of explosions and you’ll find it easy to dispense of enemies no matter who takes you on. The weapons have a good variety, including ones with laser sights, scopes and other things. Always remember to use cover because your aiming is much better in cover than in the open. If you find valid cover you can make it through pretty much any section that comes up. You will also notice some framerate slowdown (this was played on a PS3) when a lot of graphical assets are being used such as running through explosions or through fire. It only takes a momentary dip and luckily in most instances there was no enemy to face or aim at when this happens.

Quantum of Solace is at best an okay single player experience that is raised by the various multiplayer modes you can play in. I have no idea if the multiplayer aspect of the game will keep people playing this game with many other game options out there with good multiplayer on them as well. Blow through the story, but stay for the multiplayer. It’s just too bad this game couldn’t have been longer because it has a good foundation for what could have been a good game.

Score: 3 out of 5 CoGs


Loren says, "Rent it if you only plan on playing through the story, possibly buy it if you like the multiplayer options and have friends that want to play that with you"

- Review this title yourself over at Play It Review It, part of the CoG Network

*Note - Review based upon PS3 version of the game

[Dark Acre Jack]

Brings up some interesting questions about what movie tie-in games should and shouldn't be.

Should the movie be "in the can", fully complete and ready for release and reviewable by the developers, before any attempt at a title can be made?

And should the game even follow the movie? Either we get a weak shadow of the movie experience or we get something that runs concurrent to the movie and fills us in on lore/canon we might be interested in (a la the Matrix game).