Hey everyone, jobocan here with another review.

After playing the demo for Quantum of Solace, I set my expectations at a pretty high level. I mean, it was fun to play, the controls and such seemed to work well.

But did it actually live up to my expectations? Not really. 

Read on, dood.
 
Story

Not gonna spoil anything… Actually I didn’t even spoil myself anything. I played through a fair part of the game and for now it seems pretty interesting. Of course, the reason that I decided not to complete the game was because I plan on watching the movie and don’t want to already know every little plot twist.
Just wanted to make a passing mention here that this is not ONLY a Quantum of Solace game. The plot starts a while after Casino Royale, and after just a few missions… surprise surprise, you get a flashback scene… that lasts a really long time, with pretty much the complete story of Casino Royale. *CASINO ROYALE SPOILERS HERE* You get to go through everything in CR, from the “parkour” part with James chasing the bomb maker to killing Dimitrios to taking Jonathan Bliss’ place in the poker game (though you don’t play that) to saving Vesper from Le Chiffre and finally seeing Vesper die. It’s a pretty long segment, going through all the important scenes from CR.
After that it’s back to Quantum of Solace, trying to find Mr Greene and such. Overall I think it works well, but with the game being called Quantum of Solace, you’d think that it wouldn’t cover the story from Casino Royale as well (leaving it as just a flashback or something). From what I’ve seen the story looks really good, but I can’t really say much since I’m trying to keep some surprise for the actual movie.

The one disappointing thing here is the story segments. See the following screenshot:

That's what they look like... yikes.

Yeah. Kinda lame, just various graphics and character faces and maps appearing, with people talking in the background. There are some actual FMVs, but these kind of scenes outnumber them, with one at the beginning and end of each “chapter”.

Graphics
Just look at the screenshot. 

Fire!Â

As you can see, this looks fantastic. That’s not at the highest setting, I lowered some of the settings because I was getting a bit of lag at some parts, especially where there’s water pouring or, in this screenshot, fire everywhere.

The character models are really well done (Daniel Craig looks almost spot on), the animations are fluid and almost lifelike, and most of the time the environments are gorgeous and there’s a good attention to detail. There are a few iffy spots. In the crumbling building where you go to save Vesper, the water flooding the building looks and moves kinda unnaturally, but that’s one of the few problems i’ve seen. That And Bond shooting through certain obstacles.

Overall the game looks awesome, though you might need a pretty good computer to run it at high settings.

Gameplay
Go to a room, shoot enemies, go to another room, shoot more enemies, go to… oh wait, more enemies are popping up, shoot them… ok now go to the next room, shoot a couple more waves of enemies… a few more…. okay now you reached the end of the level. Do the same thing again in different environments.
I don’t normally fault games for being repetitive, but damn this is repetitive. Okay let’s break this down a bit.

Gunfights (because that’s more than 80% of the game)
Basically the whole game revolves around gunfights. These all involve using the cover system. Because you’re suicidal if you try going with the normal FPS view. Sure, you can get a few kills, but in the end if you’re not hiding, you’ll die.
The cover system is pretty much like in Gears of War. Find some barricade or walls to hide behind. You can either aim in a general direction to hope hitting enemies, or slightly get out of cover to get a good aim. When you’re in cover, enemies will never hit you unless they’re next to you or in a really good angle. Which is strange, since for you it’s really easy to hit enemies that are taking cover.
You can also lob grenades at enemies. They don’t actually hurt them much unless they’re right on them, but what they do help with is making enemies come out of cover, so they become easier targets for you, being stunned for a few seconds.
The basic strategy is finding explosives and other destructible items to blow up or stun enemies, shoot those, and watch the fireworks/kill stunned enemies. When all of those are gone you’re on your own to kill the rest. This is pretty fun but again it gets repetitive.

Problems with gunfights
Now, the gunfights aren’t BAD, but they could use some improvement. For one there are way too many enemies. Some parts are pretty tame, but as it goes on the number of enemies goes up and at times you spend like 15 minutes on a single gunfight. That’s way too long.
Second, I always seem to have trouble with the cover system. Either it doesn’t get in cover or it doesn’t get out of cover when I want to, there are really some times when not being able to get in or out of cover got me killed. And that’s really not something you want happening in a long gunfight.
Third, you die too fast, or at inconsistent rates… Most of the time 3 to 4 bullets kill you, but sometimes it goes up to 10 (not counting the auto-regenerating health here), and sometimes just 1 is enough. I know this is trying to be realistic, but when someone you can possibly see kills you in 2 shots, it really sucks. Basically, you have the exact same health meter as normal enemies.
Which leads me to the fourth problem. With the battles being long and Bond dying too fast, it leads to a problem. You get tired of playing really fast. If you don’t know where the enemies are coming from and where to take cover, you’ll die multiple times in a gunfight. You need to know where the enemies are coming from, or you’ll get surprised by some enemy popping up at unexpected locations. Sure, there’s checkpoints everywhere between fights, but it’s still pretty annoying.

Stealth (which all lead to gunfights in the end)
Added to gunfights are parts where the game tells you to try and be stealthy to avoid gunfights. This mainly involves crouching, properly using the cover system and using a silencer on your weapon. But most of the time you’ll get to a part where enemies seemingly have bionic eyes and ears, being able to see/hear you no matter what you do. So in the end reinforcements will come in and you’ll have to fight waves of enemies once again. There are also parts with cameras, that if they see you, reinforcements are coming right away. Those parts were fun, trying to find a good path to get to the camera’s switch box to disable it. Really though, I would have preferred for the stealth to work a bit better.

Overall the gunfights and stuff aren’t BAD, but they could have been a bit better. The cover system needs serious tweaking, and some of the other issues I mentioned should’ve been addressed. I mean, did NO ONE in the development team think “Hey, aren’t these gunfights a bit long”? They’re fun, but after a while they get tedious.

“Boss fights” (which suck)

QTEs are shit

QTEs REALLY need to die. As of now I can’t think of one game that used them properly, and yet developers insist on using them.  Now, you have cinematic “boss fights” here that are completely controlled by QTE. Okay, that’s bad right there, but add to that the fact that (on PC, I don’t know about the console versions) they are really hard to do because the system is just badly done, and that the QTEs don’t even affect the animation that’s playing. You’re fighting that guy with a big knife, and he slashes at you. Naturally you get a QTE. So if you get it, you evade the knife attack, of course, and if you miss it… WTF, you still evade it? That’s right, it’s basically just a video playing while you have to click on certain spots at certain times, and if you miss too much you have to rewatch the scene from the start until you get it right.

Now I wouldn’t be whining as much if they actually worked properly. But they don’t. You don’t see your cursor until the QTE pops up, so even if you know where it’s coming from, you can’t prepare to get it there. It’s like if you had a QTE in a console game, your controller would disappear and you’d have to find it before pressing the button. Add to that the fact that the accuracy is stupidly weird, and you’ve got a recipe for frustration. My icon is in the middle of the thing when i’m clicking, why is it not working dammit?

Those QTEs also appear in normal gameplay, a few times are mandatory even, since you don’t have a normal melee attack(WTF?). Instead you have a takedown attack, and when you do it close to an enemy you have a QTE to essentially do a 1-hit kill. But it suffers from the same problems as the “boss fight” QTEs, so they suck. Not only that, but if you miss you won’t be facing the enemy anymore and most likely you’ll die.

Other Stuff
Other than gunfights and the worst QTEs ever, you have a few other things to do. Mainly hacking computers, patching into cameras, unlocking doors and finding cellphones.

The doors are hilarious. If all doors had a lame lock system like this in real life we’d all be screwed. Basically it’s a mini-game where you have to press the correspondent direction when a green arrow appears on the screen. Really simplistic and not really fun, but as it goes on they get harder, so at least that’s not too bad.

The hacking and patching in cameras is simple, just stand in front of them and hold F long enough without getting shot, though that will never happen unless you’re stupid. Patching into the cameras will give you an idea of where enemies are and where to go next, but that’s not incredibly useful. Hacking will usually unlock doors or just make you complete your objective. Yay.

The final element is cellphones. They’re lying around the level, giving you hints on what to do, or where traps are set and stuff. It could be useful, but the levels are so damn linear, it’s really not needed. And who the hell goes around putting cellphones everywhere?

Overall
So is the game good? Well… Yes. Really good. But it’s majorly flawed in various areas. QTEs are ass, the gunfights need some tweaking, the cover system is buggy at times, but overall it’s pretty fun to play if you can get over the fact that it’s frustrating and stupidly repetitive.

Best Bond game since Goldeneye? Easily.
Better than Goldeneye? FUCK no. Never in a million years.

jobocan Games, Review