Quantum Of Solace (The Game) - A Review

Quantum Of Solace (The Game) - A Review

Quantum of Solace (360) Review:

Being dared to beat this game as a challenge, it wasn't always necessarily going to be the most level-headed of playthroughs. Average to poor reviews from respectable(?) gaming sites, (I only looked at scores, I didn't read them fully because they'd have clouded my judgement of the game even further) meant that I wasn't expecting the best game, and my firm opinion that Treyarch hadn't made a good game since Spiderman 2 (Prove me wrong, I dare you) meant that I wasn't in for the best ride, either.

I started the game up, selected the hardest difficulty (I'm not a toughie, I heard it was easy even on 007 Difficulty), and waited to play. It started just like the end of Casino Royale, when Bond shoots someone and declares his name to be "Bond. James Bond". Then, just like the movie, he was suddenly shot at by a load of goons, and had to fight his way through White's Estate, eventually escaping a burning/exploding house, and shooting down a helicopter, allowing him to finally capture White. I don't remember seeing that in either film, but if Treyarch said it happened, then it almost certainly did. Speaking of which, does anyone remember when Bond has to chase the traitor over rooftops, stopping every 2 minutes in order to engage in gunfights against a large amount of hired goons? Maybe it got left out in the final edits. How about when Bond and Camille get trapped in the Sink Hole after being shot down by a fighter plane? Remember when they were then set upon by helicopters and a ton of hired goons who somehow knew they were there? What do you mean that didn't happen? So you're telling me when Bond went to that Opera house, it wasn't closed down, and he didn't engage in a sniper battle?
What do you mean, it never happened? (This goes on forever)

And herein lies one of the game's biggest flaws. It honestly seems that Treyarch didn't know what to do with the film license. It doesn't even seem like they watched the movies, or had any real idea of what was going on in them. Pretty much anything you remember from Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale are best forgotten, because it might bug the hell out of you when Treyarch retcon it for the purposes of making a game. Of course, it'll bug you even more when you realise that they leave out fight sequences and gunfights that actually happened in the films and ignore the shit out of them.

This is how I like to think the planning stage went:
"Okay, so we have the opening chase scene from Casino Royale. What do we do with it?"
"Okay, get this: While Bond is chasing the inventor of Parkour, he has to stop and engage in gunfights every two or three minutes, culimating in a tense shootout where Bond has to defend himself in a derelict house!"
"Sounds good so far..."
"Then, we keep that construction site scene as best we can"
"Still sounds good..."
"Then we cut to Bond on the train with Vesper."
"What about the gunfight at the embassy, you know, the end of the chase sequence?"
"That happened?"
"I guess I just dreamed it. Continue making the game."

What would have happened while I was in charge would have gone in a similar manner, except the last line would have been me firing that guy by throwing him out a window into a vat of hot sauce, quipping "He really should have checked up on his sauce material..."

My point (there was a point?) is this: When you're given a movie license, it's not that you have to follow the source material to the bitter end, but when your game is supposed to feature a shitload of gunfights, why not use gunfights that actually occur in the movies instead of making up your own sequences? It makes no real sense to do it. And sure, sometimes, it works in a "We're putting this here to say what we imagined happened between these two parts of the film", but it mostly just doesn't work. It makes it seem like you know nothing about your source material, and just wanted to shove something out for cash moneys (which lets face it, you totally did). That being said, the two best sequences were the chase on the construction building and the poisoned Bond scene, and that was because you managed to prevent yourselves from stopping us every 20 seconds to have a gunfight.

That's not the only bone to pick with you, however. How comes, despite having a year longer with the CoD4 engine than Infinity Ward did, you made a game that doesn't use anything from that engine effectively? From what I gather, the Stealth system in CoD4 is fairly rudimentary, what with being designed for one level of the game. Plus, First-Person perspective games never really use stealth effectively, and its normally an option that never really works well.
We get that Bond is a sneaky fellow, what with being a spy and all, but why spend half the game sneaking? It doesn't work very well, at all. Cameras see only what they see with their blue lights and nothing more! Guard's vision varies from nighthawk to blind erratically, and the stealth sections, while a nice effort, come off as feeling awkward and pointless.
So that's broken, what else?

Ah yes, your game seems to have Quicktime-event syndrome. That's automatic grounds for a failure, see me after class.
You see, quicktime events are a nice idea in theory. Players press a button when the game tells them to, and they don't die. However, this idea translates horribly to a real game scenario, and they're not fun to play. It's basically you just pushing buttons while your character does something totally awesome that they can't expect you to do yourself. It's like watching a movie and at seemingly random points, you have to press a button to stop it deploying invisible ninjas on you. It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but half the time, it comes as unexpected, and you get your ass kicked because of it. This is exacerbated when your game doesn't recognise that you've pressed the correct button sometimes, and you have to repeat the entire sequence again, and they randomise the buttons. This isn't a bad thing, as it eliminates memorisation, which would make the sequence too easy, but those people can only take invisible ninja beatings so long, especially when failure means they have to repeat the same part of the movie again.
Set pieces aren't fun either. Set pieces are cool things that happen in the game we have no control over, and while they look cool in a sense, in your game, Treyarch, its too obvious that just reaching a certain point activates them, and if you die several times in that sequence, the fun is gone out of them.
Take the burning building scene I mentioned earlier. You don't have to kill anyone at all, because if you walk forward enough, the baddies attacking you die in the explosions. It works in theory, but it sucks in practice. After the second or third time through, you know exactly when what is going to hit and how. It doesn't fit in smoothly. It sticks out like a sore thumb at a Pinkie parade.

Your checkpoints don't work as well as they should. Granted, Goldeneye didn't have checkpoints, but you claimed Quantum of Solace was better. There's too many when you're doing easy sequences, and then without explanation, you'll make us go through 3 or 4 gunfights without a checkpoint. While complaining about it seems a bit picky, there's one point where you have to escape an elevator in time, climb up, and engage in about 3 or 4 gunfights. However, if you die during any of this, you have to start from the elevator, watch the exact same "Slowwwww moooooooo" sequence of you escaping the elevator shaft just in time to escape the giant fireball, then running to cover in time to see two people about to kill you being exploded by a rocket launch. Every. Time.

Your mission markers and compass don't work. Granted, Goldeneye didn't have these, but you claimed Quantum of Solace was better. Using the map gives you a mission marker. Mission markers, as a rule, are supposed to tell you where to go. Your compass is supposed to help you too. They're supposed to work together happily and properly. Now, I'm guessing the mission marker and compass went through a nasty breakup recently, because it seems that they did, and they're punishing the player by telling them conflicting things. On the Barge level, right at the end, the map and the compass tell you to go to a certain part of the ship to finish the mission. However, this is impossible to reach. Where does the level end? The opposite side of the ship. All the while, map and compass are still squabbling over who's paying child support.

Your graphics are servicable at best. Nearly every goon looks exactly the same, the only real differences being that they're all wearing different shades of the same colour shirt.

Your music is pointless and forgettable until the ending credits. However, voice acting isn't completely atrocious, so you have that.

The difficulty ranges from "Way too fucking easy" to "Lets cheapshot the player every chance we get", but mostly, didn't present a challenge. On the toughest difficulty level.

The game is basically "4/5ths Quantum of Solace, All of Casino Royale, 1/5th Quantum of Solace". More of this game is Casino Royale than it is Quantum of Solace. How does that happen? Quantum of Solace had way much more happening in the way of action (Though Casino Royale was a better movie), and you still had more levels of Casino Royale?

Your boss battles last way too long, and retcon the film again. Considering you had a quicktime sequence with the traitor in the cathedral, why not go the full hog and give us an "Awesome" quicktime event battle with Dominic Greene at the end, while the building blows up bit by bit, like in the movie? It would have been much better than the nonsensical "Battle" we get given at the end, when we just have to wait for him to walk by some exploding barrels and then shoot him so he dies in "Slowwwww moooooooo"?

Explosive barrels are everywhere in this game. Everywhere. They even flash blue so they can tell you "SHOOT ME SHOOT ME SHOOT MEEEE!". The game even tries to justify their presence through little information pickups scattered in the levels. Here's a note, Treyarch: If you're trying to justify the presence of exploding barrels in a videogame, it was probably easier to take the barrels out than argue their use beyond "Shooting them makes a sloooooo mooooooo explosion that we spent more time making than gunfights that actually happened in the movies".

In summation, Treyarch:
Your game is awful. There's very little to redeem it, and the only thing that went through my head at the end was "Thank fuck this is over, now I can finally play a better game".
While shortness of a game is normally a bad quality, I was almost kind of grateful it ended when it did. I didn't bother playing through the multiplayer; my challenge only extended as far as the main game, and by the time I reached there, I was rushing to grab a better game because I wanted the torture to be over.
You haven't made a good game since Spiderman 2.
How comes you managed to stay in business, while Free Radical, a much better, far more talented gaming company went out of business?
The mind boggles.

Positives:
+ Voice Acting is (mostly) used effectively.
+ Casino Poison level - I didn't think it would ever be put it in, and it ended up being the best part of the game.

Negatives:
- Manages to pointlessly retcon scenes from the films, adds in stuff that didn't happen, and then ignores actual gunfights and fight sequences that actually happened.
- Doesn't use source material effectively.
- Overabundance of broken/crappy Quicktime events and Set Pieces.
- Music is forgettable.
- Exploding barrels are everywhere.
- Too many missed opportunities.

TL;DR:
Avoid. This game is horrible waste of time and source material.



Edward wishes Treyarch went under instead of Free Radical.
Michael wishes for cake. Also, he says "Vaginas! That is all".