Review: Quantum of Solace

Yet another game that was on my long list of games to purchase was Quantum of Solace, the next installment of the Bond series. I’m one of those who got hooked to the Bond games with 007:Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. It was my first experience with first-person shooters and loved the fact that the higher the difficulty, the more you had to do.

After that, I had always hoped that the next installments that would follow would be like Goldeneye – a game that increased the difficulty by giving you more to do instead of just making it harder to kill and easier to die. For the most part, I was always disappointed but that won’t stop me from picking up the next Bond game in secret hopes that it would be a true sequel to Goldeneye. And to be fair, I haven’t played all Bond games after Goldeneye.

Quantum of Solace, while good, isn’t a true sequel to Goldeneye.

Because this game was based on the movie, I can’t comment on whether it follows the movie or not - but the storyline seems to involve the chronicling of Bond’s actions from the past between two agents from MI:8 – one of them being M. I have a hard time following the storyline for these kind of games because I actually need to see the movies a few times to understand the storylines. It’s also kind of easy to get confused because you hop from place to place. First I was in Russia, then I was in Mexico then I was somewhere else entirely. It’s kind of hard to keep up with the storyline sometimes.

The AI was relatively stupid. So stupid I could actually sneak to the left of this guy.

After playing through medium and expert mode I found that, unlike Goldeneye, harder difficulties does not mean more objectives, it just means you’ll die faster. It’s a bit of a disappointment because you can clear the game on medium or hard and you won’t really have the urge to play on a harder difficulty unless you want to get the trophies for it.

What Quantum of Solace does do, though, is offer extra challenges by trophies, which I think is a real smart way for trophies to be offered. You have your standard, “Kill 50 enemies,” but then you also have trophies that require you to kill snipers with your sniper rifle in one shot. Makes it a bit more challenging as you have to wait until they stop, hold your breath (an option in the game) and hope that it kills them. A downfall to this is that if you don’t do it … you can just restart from the last checkpoint. So you’re not terribly penalized if you fail – but it does add an extra bit of challenge.

One thing that I noticed right off the bat were that the controls were a little weird. They follow the overall mechanisms of Drake’s Fortune in combat where you duck for cover and then take out your enemies there. A major frustration though is that in the heat of battle you sometimes don’t duck for cover when you expect to. And you really don’t realize it until you’re almost dead and before you can duck for cover, you are already dead. This makes it very frustrating on its hardest difficulty level, where two to three shots will kill you.

Quantum of Solace, like almost all the other games I’ve reviewed, use the button-response sequences but this one is too easy. There were times where the action would actually pause as I went to press the button. While you need to have a good window of time, you don’t need that window to stay open too long. Otherwise, the controls weren’t terrible. However, staying covered so you don’t get killed seems to be a problem. You either don’t duck for cover when you tried to, are knocked out of cover by attacks or simple movement removes you from your safe spot. Very, very frustrating and cost me a lot of lives.

The two main buttons for combat are L1 to aim, R1 to shoot. The only thing that I found a bit awkward with the controls was your dash button. It was the L3 button, the analog stick that you move with. Using the analog stick while having to push it in just feels weird and doesn’t work in my opinion. I think it would have handled better as a weapon change or grenade toss instead … that way you wouldn’t have to move to use it.

Graphics weren't anything spectacular, but they got the look of the characters down.

In terms of graphics – it’s basically your run-of-the-mill first person shooter. Nothing really stands out except for the good job they did in getting Bond to look like Daniel Craig … and a neat thing I noticed was that when M was talking, her temples bulged while she was talking. It was a nice piece of detail that I haven’t seen very often. One thing I noticed early off with only the first two levels is that the game got choppy when the cut-scenes played. Otherwise the game ran pretty smoothly.

The games load-times were done in a pretty neat manner. During the pre-mission prologue between two Mi:8 agents the game is actually loading the levels. So instead of waiting for the game to load, you’re actually watching something relevant to the game while it loads the level in the background. And once it loads you can skip the sequence. Of course, you have the initial load times, but that’s it.

I also experienced my first PS3 online multiplayer with this game. I attempted a few games and got a bit comfortable with the multiplayer. I’m not sure about anyone else, but joining on a multiplayer game the first few times is a little nerve-wrecking. Because you go in with the mentality that you’re going to get killed mercilessly because you’re new to the game and everyone else knows what they’re doing. Another neat feature that kind of backfires is the fact that you earn credits from killing your enemies and winning multiplayer battles that you can use to upgrade your weapons and gadgets but you can also buy new weapons as well. The problem with that is if you’re starting off new, you’re most likely fighting people who have much better equipment but I did see when connecting once that it was finding players suitable to my status – so maybe it finds players with the same amount of equipment and upgrades as you do so you’re not pitted against players who have all the upgrades.

Despite the fact that the game got mediocre reviews and at points had maddening control issues, I actually really enjoyed this game – I enjoyed clearing through the levels, the stealth-aspect of the game and the extra challenges offered through trophies. It would be a game I’d think about buying but just like Drake’s Fortune it doesn’t have a very long life and I don’t see the multiplayer lasting terribly long. I’d think that six months after this game is out everyone will have moved on.

And on that note, let’s wrap up the review.

Graphics. The graphics were good, but nothing spectacular in my opinion. The likeliness of Daniel Craig as Bond was pretty good and I noticed that when M was talking, you could actually see her temples moving which was a nice touch of detail I don’t see much. Unfortunately the first few cut-scenes were met with a bit of jitteriness so that kind of took you out of the moment. 6/10

Music & Sound Effects. Spy music is just cool. All the themes seemed to have some variation of the James Bond theme. The game also included the Bond theme from the movie. Near the end of the game you were given a fast-paced James Bond theme to pump you up for the final battle. Nice work. Sound effects weren’t anything to brag about. Plus half of the game involves gunfire so you won’t hear that many other sound effects. Oh, and the cell phones all have the same ring. 6/10

Gameplay & Controls. Unfortunately, the controls are way too frustrating to not mention. When ducking for cover you either think you’re ducking for cover but you don’t, you get attacked and knocked out of cover, or you move and you jump out of cover. There have been many times I’ve died because the controls didn’t work with me. And it’s just way too frustrating. Near the end of the game you’re hit with scenarios where you’re pitted against 10 enemies constantly so that can get pretty irritating especially when you can’t seem to stay covered. Other parts of the game seemed too easy – the button sequences’ window of opportunity was too long and the AI wasn’t too intelligent when sneaking up on them. I was able to sneak up on a guy and go directly to his left and he didn’t even notice me. 10/25

Story and Presentation. The story doesn’t make too much sense and the flashbacks didn’t help with that either. Loading times near the beginning weren’t that bad and the idea of the stage loading while you’re given part of the story is a good concept – this way you’re not suck waiting for the game to load. 12/20

Fun Factor. Despite the story not making much sense and the controls being incredibly frustrating, I still really enjoyed the game. Had the game not been so short that I could clear it in about eight hours, I may have bought it. But, I cleared the game and I really have no reason to play the harder difficulties or play the multiplayer considering other games have a much stronger multiplayer following. 18/25

Replayability (10 pts.)
In all reality, this game has a decent replayability to it. Although I don’t see a reason to do it, you can clear the game on harder difficulty levels. That, and the concept of playing multiplayer to earn points so that you can get better equipment may keep people going back for awhile. Trophy support helps too. But like I said earlier, I don’t see the multiplayer lasting more than six months. After that, you just have single player to play. 7/10

Total Score: 59 pts., giving the game 3/5 invaders.