Joystiq hands-on: Revisiting the Quantum of Solace
Skep·ti·cism (skpt-szm) n.
A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety.
Philosophya. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty.
The rational and historically-proven assumption that any licensed game will suck. Lots. Seriously, have you played half of this stuff?
As they prep the World for War, Treyarch has been quietly plugging away at the upcoming licensed title James Bond: Quantum of Solace. Powered by the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare engine, QoS blends scenes from the first Daniel Craig Bond film -- Casino Royale -- and the anticipated upcoming sequel of the same name. We spent some time with Bond at the recent Sony Holiday event in Toronto, Canada. Since our last trial with the game, did Bond change our definition of skepticism?
%Gallery-26648%
We can't be sure but the level of Quantum of Solace we played at the Sony event in Toronto appeared to be a cutting room floor concept from the first film. The level takes place on the train where James Bond meets accountant Vesper Lynd as they make their way toward the Casino Royale in Montenegro.
Soon Bond discovers enemies have made their way onto one of the cars ahead of his own and decides to put his License to Kill in action. Climbing atop the moving train, Bond makes his way to a cart with a handful of enemies which is easily spotted through conveniently placed sunroofs. The game allows for various points of attack: fire through the glass and into the cart below and take on the enemies head-on or pick them off one-by-one from above.
When we first assaulted the train car, we fired a half dozen rounds through the glass taking out the two immediate henchmen below. Walking toward an island-placed bar and pressing the cover system initiated a dash maneuver toward to cover and threw the game into third person. As we've said in previous impressions of the game, the Craig model is flawless but appears bored -- his docile expression almost looks like he's thinking about a grocery list rather than the task at hand.
Taking out the remaining enemies from beyond cover we tried the area again, this time with a different approach. Firing from above we plugged bullets into the four enemies in the train car and we noticed some interesting differences. When we restarted the area, the character models of the enemies had changes and adjusted their positions slightly. The difference wasn't jarring however, mostly due to the fact that throughout the entire time we spent with the game we only saw four different enemy models. In fact, the train car sequence ordinarily included multiple enemies with the same model something we hope will become less apparent in the final version.
The third person cover and aiming systems work extremely well. The gameplay is often helped with conveniently placed objects to help create your own Bond-esque moments; shooting a fire hydrant filled a train car with smoke and allowed us to clear out enemies as they gasped for air.
While it may be due to the noisy environment of the show in Toronto, it's worth mentioning that it was difficult to know what to do next during the demo. We continuously died jumping from one train to another until we were told where exactly to execute the move. We're not in the "shine a giant glowing light on objectives" camp, but we hope that the game has audio cues to let the player know what to do next because visually we were stuck.
What we found was that enemies didn't respond to gunfire as much as they should. In the Bond universe, a bullet to the head of a henchmen meant he was given his walking papers immediately and they didn't sit there and read them. When we fired from the top of the train, down into the skulls of baddies, we were surprised how many bullets it took to put them down.
We're unclear how far along the version on display was at the Sony event, but it does show promise. Thoughts of Goldeneye immediately jump into mind as you pick up the controller, so we're excited for the possibilities of this new Bond shooter. If all the pieces come together when Quantum of Solace ships on November 4, then Treyarch may have a fantastic license of their own up its sleeve.
