Latest News

  • Ready To Rock!
  • We're in the final days before Call of Duty: ...
  • November 06, 2008
  • Beta Faq
  • We know you have a ton of questions about the...
  • September 23, 2008
  • Gamepro Review
  • We played three different levels in the game ...
  • September 05, 2008

Developer Blog

Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar Avatar

Latest News

Stay up to date with all Treyarch News

  • October

    16

    News > Team Xbox: Quantum Of Solace Hands-on (xbox 360)
We would never deem a new James Bond game to be the best one since the classic GoldenEye on the N64 - the title that is still the “gold standard” (heh) for videogames based on the long-running franchise - after only playing it for a couple hours. But that limited time with the game did leave us with one significant impression: Quantum of Solace is a heck of a lot better than we thought it would be.

A while back we brought you a first look of the game. Coming from Activision and developer TreyArch, Quantum of Solace is not only the first Bond game for the Xbox 360, it’s also the beginning of the “reboot” series featuring Daniel Craig as Britain’s most awesome superspy. Because of that, the game not only covers the events of the upcoming movie, which is the first true sequel in the history of Bond movies, but also the first movie in the new series, Casino Royale. Our love for the new Daniel Craig – starring movies has been established, will the games follow suit?

We only played two single player levels and a couple of the multiplayer modes, but the game’s quality shone through almost immediately. That has a lot to do with the extremely solid Call of Duty 4 engine upon which the game is built. Like CoD4, the game looks beautiful, from the amazingly life-like model of Daniel Craig (look at his pores!) to the detailed destructible environments that mimic the environments of the films perfectly, but are of course designed with excellent gameplay flow in mind.

Quantum of Solace also benefits from the CoD4 engine’s history of fantastic multiplayer capabilities. The net code is as tried and true as can be. There are multiple traditional modes included like deathmatch and team deathmatch, but there are also some newer, more innovative modes that seem very well suited to the Bond mythology.

Those new modes include Bond Vs., Bond Evasion and Golden Gun. The last one should be pretty obvious to fans of the franchise; one shot equals one kill to the player wielding the pistola de oro, with points being acquired that way or by killing said golden shooter. Bond Vs. is a one versus everyone else, where a single player is Bond and everyone else is the enemy, trying to plant bombs which 007 must disarm. Bond Evasion is a slight twist on the classic El Presidente mode, where one team must escort a VIP to a safe location. They’re all fun to play, and bring a lot to the game’s overall value.

The single player levels took great advantage of Bond’s new-style first person shooter gameplay, which incorporates some third person perspectives at certain moments, not unlike the Rainbow Six: Vegas games. Most of the game is played in traditional first person mode, but when you pop Bond into cover you see a third-person view of him, with the added abilities to blind fire and shoot around corners, using the extra advantage of cover.

This makes Bond’s overall shooting gameplay feel much more deliberate and strategic. One wouldn’t expect a highly trained killing (and surviving) machine to run and gun his way through a casino full of enemies. In real life (or at least the one we see in the movies) he’s careful and tactical as you will be when you play the game.

If video games have taught us one thing, it’s that a shotgun in close quarters is your best friend.

The two single player levels we played were called “Science Center” and “Train”. The first is a large museum-like space, full of large atriums full of precariously hanging exhibits and tight office spaces and hallways where you’ll find plenty of things to hide behind, as well as plenty of destructible items in the environment to use as traps. The level not only looked really good, but it played really well too.

For a more intense experience, the Train level focuses the action into a more narrow type of environment, giving you less options for flanking and more dependence on the available cover. You’ll fight your way through, on top of and around narrow train cars full of dangerous enemies. Even though we’ve played similar levels in plenty of games before, here it just seems perfectly tuned for the “stop and pop” style of game that Quantum of Solace is trying to be.

Adding to our overall enjoyment is a ton of cool weapons and equipment, the kind that a MI6 supported super agent and his supervillain-funded adversaries would have laying around. One of the main design concepts of Quantum of Solace is to let players “be Bond”. From what we’ve seen, it seems like the developers are very much on track with that.

http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2130/Quantum-of-Solace/p1/