Quantum of Solace

Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Genre: First Person Shooter
Release Date: November 4, 2008
Platforms: Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PC

Reviewer: Eric

Activision hit it big with Call of Duty 4 last year. That first person shooter, along with the Guitar Hero franchise, put Activision back on the map. As of late Activision has been slacking with their products and Quantum of Solace is taking a bigger hit than it should of.

Nothing about Quantum of Solace feels new. Developer Treyarch took the Call of Duty 4 engine and a whole lot of other aspects from other first and third person shooters. Quantum of Solace is not the James Bond experience you would expect, but hopefully when the movie is released in the United States we can forget all about the game Activision threw down our throats.

Quantum of Solace steals the cover system from Gears of War, a third person shooter that made this feature popular again. When you are covering from the bad guys you can experience what looks like Daniel Craig, the current James Bond. I can’t say this looks like Craig 100% but at least they tried. My main problem with the cover system though has to be the rush.

By holding in the A button you can rush to the next spot to hide. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Most of the time, I found myself walking over to the next area, while the enemies were shooting at me. Causing me to either get aggravated or loose my life. Treyarch made this feature way too picking, if you don’t line yourself up just right then you are going to get hurt, you are better off actually running and then covering, the dash feature is just a complete waste in this game.

Gameplay revolves too much around the covering system too. The game will constantly remind you how to cover yourself and that your accuracy is much better when covered. I don’t see it and I hate walking a few steps and then covering to fight more bad guys. If you were to play the whole game like this, the way it was obviously attended for, then the game will lost much longer. I found it better to run and shoot, which lead me beating the game in one sitting.

If all that isn’t enough then how about something more, maybe some mini games? At times you will have to move Bond in a Tony Hawk like mini game, balancing so he doesn’t fall to his death. There are also some hacking mini games that get real old fast. Hitting the different directions with the thumbstick is only satisfying for a few seconds, 10 seconds max.

The game tends to over do it with the explosive items in rooms. Literally every room has multiple items to blow up, which leaves to enemies dying without any problem. Destroying all these points only leaves the game to be that much easier, but at the hardest difficult it seems like these explosive items do nothing. This part of the game was not balanced that good at all.

Button sequences also plague this game. Any bad guy can be killed by running up to them and pushing down on the right thumbstick. Once that comes up you have to hit the right buttons and they are instantly dead. Just like everything else in the game it is way too easy doing this part of the game, it really ruins the whole experience. Some boss battles also have these sequences and they are just as easy, it almost feels like the game is slowing down just to make sure you hit the right button.

Probably the biggest disappointment with Quantum of Solace is the plot. For the amount of time it takes to beat this game you seem to play more of the Casino Royal movie than Quantum of Solace. How do I know this? Oh I don’t know maybe by the fact that all of the stages seem to build up to Casino Royal. You even have to waste your time and walk to your car while you are poisoned from Casino Royal. If they added so much of Casino Royal to the game then why didn’t they release this a few years ago? You can play this game and not be worried about ruining Quantum of Solace.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is full of different match types that seem special to the James Bond Universe. Everything from team battles to everyone for themselves to the Man With the Golden Gun is at your disposal. There is a very noticeable lag with online play, most of the time you will find yourself shooting every where but at your opponent. You really need to know how the lag works in this game, that way you can get a lot of kills without being right next to your opponent.

Just like Call of Duty 4 started there are some online perks. You build up your points to buy new equipment, something that is not new to the first person shooter genre. Buying new weapons and changing your equipment is a waste of time, most of the guns are pointless, all you need is your pistol and a sniper weapon.

Final Verdict
This is not Quantum of Solace. Everything in this game seems to be wrong, from the plot to all of the different aspects the developers added that are blatant rip offs of other games. The James Bond game series hasn’t been the same for quite some time, maybe next time we will get a good James Bond game.

Rating
6.50 out of 10

Quantum of Solace Trailer