James Bond 007: Blood Stone
Review
The name's Bland, James Bland
by Chris Capel
reviewed on PC
And so the Gameplay…
The game itself follows in the footsteps of James Bond 007: Everything Or Nothing, mixing stealth, shooter, and driving/vehicle sections. I have commented on the utter failure of the stealth, so now to pass comment on the other two.
The shooting is competently done and fairly entertaining, but it is not anything we have not seen in a billion other cover-to-cover shooters. Bond’s Smartphone Vision, which pinpoints every enemy’s location (when they have been loaded that is, obviously being one step from the room they are in is too far away), makes things ridiculously easy. Making things even easier is the aforementioned Focus manoeuvre that gives you an instant kill headshot at the mere press of a button.
In an amazing feat for such an accomplished driving game developer like Bizarre, the vehicle sections are even worse. They start off with a boat chase in the opening credits sequences, and somehow get worse and more frustrating from here onwards. There is no chasing involved since there is no way to catch the villain until the end of the level, and the route you have to take is painfully narrow and cannot be improvised in any way. You have to stay on the thin path Bizarre have designated, even when an NPC-driven car blocks the entire road. And perhaps the most unusual aspect is that there are no gadgets or weapons to spice Bond’s vehicles up either.
The Details of My Life Are Quite Inconsequential
You are probably thinking things cannot get any worse at this point. If the developer of Project Gotham Racing cannot even get the driving parts of this game right, what else can go wrong? How about hiring an excellent screenwriter and the story still turns out boring.
The plot is taped together with the usual Bond-esque elements: bioweapons, scientists and several guys with Russian-sounding names like Stefan and Pomerov. As you can tell, I found it very hard to pay attention, and I loved every single Bond movie. Surprisingly, James Bond 007: Nightfire’s storyline managed to keep me intrigued much more successfully than anything produced in Blood Stone.
Worse still is that Blood Stone has a tendency to have some neat set-pieces in the cut scenes, but does not let the player act out anything that comes anywhere near to this excitement. Instead, the player is expected to feel satisfied with just pressing a single button to take out a boss. I am all for ease of use and keeping things simple, but this is just ridiculous. You might as well be watching a film. The menus on the Casino Royale Blu-Ray disc are probably more interactive than this.
Did They Really Have To Name It After The Crappy Singer?
So, anything else left to complain about? Well let me just skewer one of those few good points I mentioned – Joss Stone, who sings the admittedly quite catchy title track, is utterly awful as an actor. I would rather get intimate with an automatic stapler than listen to any more of her talking. And she is supposed to be the female lead! By the end of the game I decided that I would have preferred Dame Judi Dench to be Bond’s love interest rather than Joss Stone.
Just when you think Blood Stone is beginning to become a little more fun, or there is an interesting set-piece (like being chased by a giant drill for no apparent reason), there will always be something tedious or frustrating to pull you out of the moment. It is quite apparent that this was rushed out to go alongside GoldenEye 007, and while Bizarre are a good developer they obviously could not produce a quality game in the prescribed time. To make matters even worse, the game only lasts 5-7 hours and the multiplayer only consists of basic modes like Deathmatch and Capture The Flag. Yawn.
The often found gloss of the Bond movies is present, but if you dig any further than screenshots or videos the cracks will immediately become apparent: this is simply not a very good game. Avoid Blood Stone at all costs, unless you are really forgiving and desperately love Bond. And this is coming from someone who bought the last two Bond games twice on different systems…just saying.
5.5
fun score
Pros
Good sound and graphics, can be competent occasionally
Cons
Bland design, tightly linear levels, poor story, far too short, Joss Stone
