710 replies to this topic

[Matt_13]

I will always say the GE 007 for the N64 is a good shooter, but not a good representation of James Bond. It's just an arm with different guns...And FRWL is far worse than EoN. The dialogue is a mess, the shooting doesn't even encourage headshots, the sound is terrible, and the environments are bland and cardboard like, with the only plus being some pretty darn impressive flame effects and interesting take downs (though I could do without the QTE's). QoS had some pretty terrible sound effects as well. All the guns sounded like bubble wrap being popped, and the music is just so silly (composed by the guy who did FRWL, another lame score that used the Bond theme for EVERYTHING). EoN has its issues no doubt, with a flawed aiming system, but it is no doubt a failure of control. The driving is also a highlight of that game, something that FRWL royally failed with (you cannot seriously praise those driving controls). Most importantly, EoN had gameplay the complimented the narrative. Infiltrating a Peruvian villa covertly to replace a driver so Bond could have dinner with the villain is a fine bit of fun that worked well and was a blast to experience. Not to mention the different vehicles handling differently, from the racecar, to the Aston, to the Porsche Cayenne, and finally the two different motorbikes, EoN had some seriously thought and effort put into it. It wasn't a run of the mill shooter like QoS. Blood Stone is really looking to be the complete package, with tight controls, player choice (stealth has long been absent from Bond, not since Nightfire have we been able to eliminate enemies with a silencer and not have a swarm of bad guys rush in because of a quirk in the programming), and high production driving sections. GE looks like it's bringing that stealth back too, because I saw animations similar to NF where we can hold a gun to a badguys back and get him to drop his weapon and lift his arms in surrender. There is no doubt that both games will be impressive in their own right, and I'm anticipating both greatly. Just keep in mind that both Dev teams put a lot of work into these games, and it's apparent that they aren't just trying to make a quick buck. Treyarch really just phoned in their effort, and it shows, riding on the back of some good marketing. We are lucky to have the developers we do behind these new games.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Looks alright. I won't be in a rush to get it though.

Understandable. Generally you need the system before you get the games.

[YouKnowTheName]

GoldenEye 64 is an absolutely PERFECT example of Bond in videogames. Sure, it's all first person shooting, but that can be chalked up to the constraints of the technology, and they still TRIED to put the tank section in.

Since both EON and FRWL run on the same engine, it follows that the driving mechanics are the same. And they really are. There is no difference in handling between the two games, and EON botched it just as badly it it botches the on-foot sections. This is doubly bad in EON because it worked so well in Nightfire. The whole game is just them setting fire to all the progress they'd made. It is good that the story affects the gameplay in ways beyond "and this is why we're having a shootout", but the story is such a cliched, juvenile mess it completely destroys the games pretentions at being a Bond film and feels more like a really bad cartoon.

EON is a game in which absoluely no aspect works. FRWL polishes that without fixing anything, and interestingly both games are the two lowest selling Bond games of all time (G:RA not counted, but I don't consider that a Bond game)

QOS wasn't good, but it was a huge step in the right direction. Going first person, having a genuine assortment of weapons and focusing on the fundamentals of shooting rather than trying to cover the cracks with tacked-on driving sections and casting. It also has an elements of genuine player choice, really giving you good stealth options and good action options and not penalising you for either, although you get the feeling that these snuck in when Treyarch were looking the other way rather then being a serious design choice. The flaws with the game are all the things carried over from EON. Boring, linear levels, being told where to go, general lack of scope. But the core mechanincs in QOS are so well put together that at least what little we have here works. I'm still not sure quite why the game had such a massive leap up in sales though, it can hardly be called a success...

Blood Stone simply looks to be making all the mistakes EON made. Big name casting being touted over the generic, crapped out gameplay. Driving sections. An awful, stupid plot (well, they hired Bruce Fierstien again) and, like EON, linear, restrictive levels, and an automated approach to aiming so as not to scare off the mainstream who find games hard. Of course Blood Stone is just looking to make a quick buck. It's just another lazy stamping out of the same, warts and all. Why do anything else?

Why do anything else? Activisiom have openly admitted that releasing QOS alongside COD: WAW negatively affected it's sales. Yet here they are releasing the next Bond with a COD again. Sure, they're trying to distance it gameplay-wise, but they know it's just not going to float. They're releasing a generic title to screw some cash from the fans for a month before the big hitter arrives. Simple as that.

GoldenEye, on the other hand, is leaning on it's gaming merits. It's pretty ballsy to try and follow the master, so they KNOW it has to be great to avoid stick. It's not just there for the money, as it won't go gold on the Wii. And they've put a lot of genuine effort into intellegently making it their own production rather than copying the original. It's gamplay features have been touted before it's star affiliation, and it looks far better for it. It has nothing to gain chart-wise, and everything to lose credibility-wise. It's brave, creative and daring where Blood Stone is just another one for the pile.

Still doesn't mean it'll be GOOD, though.

[Matt_13]

Actually I think the shooting gameplay in both EoN and FRWL ran on the same engine, while the driving for EoN ran on the Need for Speed engine and FRWL had something completely different. The handling is way too loose in FRWL, and there is a definite lack of speed and quality that's present in EoN's driving missions. The Pontchartrain Bridge mission is the best driving section in any Bond game.

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

Zukovsky with a gril? reminds me to The World is not Enough, hehe.

[YouKnowTheName]

I'm pretty sure the driving in both games runs on the same engine, they handle exactly the same. The Pontchartrain Bridge is easily the best part of the entire game, if only because it's the only part of the entire game you actually have to be awake to play.

Really, Bond games have got to stop with the driving thing for the same reason all action games have -they're always awful. Of course all the development time is spent working on the action elements, with the driving sections rushed out in games it's not needed. Bond, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Halo, Mass Effect... all decent games marred by rubbish vehicle sections, the smartest of which exorcised them completely from sequels.

There have been six Bond games to date to try and incorporate driving (one featuring nothing else) and only one has made them acceptable- AUF. AUF is an almost endearingly insane title, but it's biggest perculiarity was making the experience of being 007 a dull, straight-line slog and the experience of driving a car down a road a free-form, explosive blast. The handling was GoldenEye-perfect, the levels unrestrictive with cool things to discover everywhere, and best of all, THERE WERE ONLY TWO OF THEM. Bond doesn't drive that much, no game should be more than 20% driving, and this means the game doesn't get swamped by the brief distraction they offer. Oh well, 007th times the charm...

You know what I really want from a Bond game? A really good climax. Even GoldenEye suffers in this regard (the cradle is hardly it's high point) and every other game has ended on a damp squib of a finale. The best is Nightfire. The space station was pulled off surprisingly credibly, the floaty controls, which could have gone horribly wrong, were buckets of fun and shooting the missle locks was tricky and genuinely tense. Exactly what a Bond finale should be. EON's ending was one step up from a screen saying "Our budget ran out" and the less said about Connery Vs Giant Robot Spider the better...

[Matt_13]

I agree completely on the endings. Nightfire was definitely the best, and most satisfying, with a really challenging, but never frustrating final mission with interesting controls and a fun set up. EoN's was definitely weak, as it was a control room like several other of the final missions in that game (still doesn't stop the first 3/4's from being pretty darn Bondian). Nightfire is my favorite Bond game, my only major frustration with it is that it isn't long enough and the PC version has missions that definitely should have been included in the console versions (with another zero gravity mission that allows the killing of Rook to be far more cinematic and gratifying, rather than simply shooting him with grenades several times in Countdown, not to mention an amusingly bad throw away line). I also agree on your comments regarding the driving in AUF, as those are definitely some fun driving missions (Streets of Bucharest is great). However, the shooting in that game is pretty lame, and that's what really does it in. I think Nightfire did a lot for the franchise in general, and is the closest the games have ever gotten to matching GE (at least stylistically). Plus the multiplayer was loads of fun and addicting, and since then I have never understood why Bots haven't been used in games any more. EoN was the first real cinematice approach with a top notch cast, and I think it was a big step in the right direction. The devs couldn't keep trying to copy GE. It was time for something new.

None of this stops FRWL from being relentlessly silly.

[YouKnowTheName]

It's true that photocopying GoldenEye wasn't getting them anywhere, but deviating so widely from it was even worse. The problem always lay in that they DID simply try to copy it, rather than taking it apart and examining why it was such a classic, and using that with their new technology. You know what game did? The massive love letter to James Bond that is: Modern Warfare. The game that became an equivalent modern classic. It's odd that when the games finally get back to GoldenEye the do it simply by blindly following another game that just happened to be on the right track. Still, if it works...

As for finales, GoldenEye has some great looking footage of 00's 7 and 6 getting into some high altitude fisticuffs, I just hope it's not all a cut scene. And the few bits of Blood Stone's bridge action that apparently forms the endgame look appealingly down to earth and brutal. So, here's hoping but secretly expecting the worst because it's been almost a straight decade of disappointment!

Seriously, all the old games, bar GoldenEye, are distant memories now, forgotten by all but the hardcore fanbase. Blood Stone clearly has SOME gameplay at it's core, even if the standard is questionable, so it should be free being dragged down to EON territory. And GoldenEye, while having no real chance of equalling GoldenEye, could at least be the game that embraces why GoldenEye was great and be second to GoldenEye. Yes, GoldenEye looks promising. I just hope it's not to linear. That just wouldn't be GoldenEye.

[Captain Tightpants]

Havinng seen the trailer explaining how they went about revising the story, I think Alec's motivations could be better this time around. A big problem with the GOLDENEYE film is that Trevalyan was oriignally written as a much older character, a former M, and critical details of his past remained intact for the film. Alec could somehow remember that his parents survived the Second World War despite it being 1995 and his being about thirty to thirty-five. I like where they're heading with the new Alec being under the impression that their cause no longer means anything except that they are being used to manipulate world events by bankers looking to make massive profits

[YouKnowTheName]

It depends how it's handled. As long as his motivations go beyond "me want more cash waaa ect" it should work, although I liked that his parents were killed originally, it gave him a greater thematic connection to Bond (even if the age confusion had me scratching my head even then.) even though it was barely acknowedged barring that one line. Another glorious new possibility that I full expect to go entirely ignored is how the betrayal of a close friend and colleague would affect a post-Vesper Bond as opposed to the original. Still, I guess this is where the gaping difference between film and game presents itself, no matter how hard Blood Stone tries to pretend there isn't one.

Edited by YouKnowTheName, 20 October 2010 - 09:25 PM.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Behind the scenes of the stunt work on GoldenEye. If you want to avoid spoilers, it does show some significant moments from late in the game.

I can see the motion capture work has resulted in some really nice animations. This is going to be a quality product even if the direction is confused.

Edited by Mr Teddy Bear, 21 October 2010 - 08:17 AM.

[YouKnowTheName]

Wow. With every vid it looks more and more like the film. Perhaps a little too much...

They kept the plane jump off the runway? With this and the sequence where Bond (and Natalya, presumably) are tied up in the helicopter they really don't seem to be leaving anything out from the film. I hope they come to more than just cutscenes from Bond's POV.

I like the tweaking of Xenia's death. Faithful to the movie yet more game specific. And I'm honestly curious to see how Bond survives the Dam jump without a parachute! Some excellent voice work coming through form Craig as well.

And isn't that blue shirt from (I think) the end portion of the game an outfit from Blood Stone? AND Casino Royale? I beginning to get the inpression that Bond never does his laundry. I'm surprise the bad guys can't smell him coming.

[Captain Tightpants]

It depends how it's handled. As long as his motivations go beyond "me want more cash waaa ect" it should work,

I think the robbery of bank accounts will have more to do with Trevalyan exacting revenge on the bankers and traders that he believes were manipulating him; the EMP blast is to send them back to the Stone Age, preventing them from arising again.

although I liked that his parents were killed originally, it gave him a greater thematic connection to Bond (even if the age confusion had me scratching my head even then.) even though it was barely acknowedged barring that one line.

Alec's parents could well have been killed or been victims of a murder-suicide in an incident he attributes to the bankers (even if evidence of their involvement is circumstantial at best).

Another glorious new possibility that I full expect to go entirely ignored is how the betrayal of a close friend and colleague would affect a post-Vesper Bond as opposed to the original. Still, I guess this is where the gaping difference between film and game presents itself, no matter how hard Blood Stone tries to pretend there isn't one.

I don't think themes of Vesper matter much. QUNATUM OF SOLACE makes it pretty clear that Bond has moved on.

[Mr.Zukovsky]

New Video:




I see that we get to do the plane dive off the runway :)now i am excited!!! i can't believe they showed part of the ending where alec falls off and dies.

Edited by Mr.Zukovsky, 22 October 2010 - 12:32 AM.

[Matt_13]

Nice find, some cool stuff there and it's always nice to hear Daniel's voice. Lots of GE moments, from the plane catch (was that a passenger plane?) to Onatopp's death ("This time it's on me."), the mocap looks astonishingly well done for a Wii title. No doubt this game is going to push the system to it's absolute technical limits.

[YouKnowTheName]

New look at the mo-cap process:

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

New Video:

OBJECTIVES: Minimize scientist causalities

"Are you going to kill me?"

"No"

***hits the scientist in the head with the butt***

[Matt_13]

Just saw the first TV commercial a few times on FOX. It's got nothing that we haven't seen, just an old guy in an art gallery talking about the multiplayer before cutting to 5 seconds of gameplay footage. Still, nice to hear the Bond theme again.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Just saw the first TV commercial a few times on FOX. It's got nothing that we haven't seen, just an old guy in an art gallery talking about the multiplayer before cutting to 5 seconds of gameplay footage. Still, nice to hear the Bond theme again.

The commercial is up on youtube... along with the opening credits!

[sharpshooter]

Pretty underwhelming sequence if you ask me. Blood Stone's sequence sustains interest better. It has more variety in terms of the colour palette and action. And Joss Stone’s new song, “I’ll Take it All”, blasts this comatose Tina Turner cover out of the water, literally, with sheer gusto. Blood Stone wins this category, IMO.

[coco1997]

That was a fair effort. I was wondering who they were going to get to sing the new theme. It's hard to top Tina Turner, though, and this only reinforces that fact. My biggest complaint is that the brass still sounds thin and tinny as it did on the original recording. It's a real shame they didn't rectify that this time around with some fat, growling brass a la "Goldfinger" or "Thunderball".

This would've been a PERFECT opportunity to bring back Shirley Bassey to do a 'new' theme. However I don't think they wanted to run the risk of Dame Shirley outdoing Tina's rendition.

[OHMSS Spion]

Well at least we now know who's singing the theme: Nicole Scherzinger. I'm actually surprised that they didn't have her do a voiceover role too like they have with Mya, Natasha Bedingfield, and Joss Stone. Then again, really can't see her as Natasha or Xenia so it could be that they wrote some new role for her like they did for Natasha Bedingfield in FRWL. Not that the FRWL game is really the model we want to follow.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

Pretty underwhelming sequence if you ask me. Blood Stone's sequence sustains interest better. It has more variety in terms of the colour palette and action. And Joss Stone’s new song, “I’ll Take it All”, blasts this comatose Tina Turner cover out of the water, literally, with sheer gusto. Blood Stone wins this category, IMO.

I prefer these titles to Blood Stone's, however both scream well produced, but 'been there done that'. In GoldenEye's there are a lot of touches I like such as the like fades and zooms between Bond's eye, bullet trails and the gunbarrel image. The swimming girls morphing into the P99 was nice, and I like how it barrows from Die Another Day and has glimpses at the main narrative of Bond struggling underwater in the Dam.

The song is surprisingly close to Tina Turner's original and I thought the girl doing the vocal pulled it off.

Blood Stone has some neat imagery, but that song is pretty bad.

Edited by Mr Teddy Bear, 25 October 2010 - 06:15 AM.

[British Chap]

I can't believe they have Bond jump off the dam with no parachute, or bungee chord for that matter, smack into the side of the concrete, and proceed to slide down it.

Doesn't sound like the Craig era to me...

I also feel like the title sequence is to sterile. Why use blue instead of....Gold. Why not more Gold imagery? Hmmm.

They've also either improved the shot of Craig's jump since the time of that video, or it has gotten much much worse, because it looked a helluva lot better in the stunt trailer:

Edited by British Chap, 25 October 2010 - 01:03 PM.

[YouKnowTheName]

First thoughts- Nicole Schlerzelinger or whatever. That's the hot chick from Pussycat Dolls, right? So, by 'all new version of the title song', David Arnold meant 'cover'?

Love Bond pulling the parachute in the guards faces. And I think it's great the way we actually get to see him falling down the Dam and landing, rather then seeing him jump into space and hooking up with him later.But seriously, in the original he jumps without a bungee due to graphical limitations, now he's doing it out of choice? With no injury? It's a bit much to swallow, isn't it? There is also a notable gap between him jumping and falling about 15 storeys and actually hitting the water.

Seriously, it's okay. It's a bit less generic an intro than Blood Stone but I prefer Blood Stone's song.

Good thing the title sequence doesn't matter in the slightest anyway because it's a game!

[sharpshooter]

I can't believe they have Bond jump off the dam with no parachute, or bungee chord for that matter, smack into the side of the concrete, and proceed to slide down it.

I know. No matter how you look at it, this new dam jump is absurd.

The "it's just a game" argument doesn't cut it here, I'm afraid.

The parachute trick is a nice move, but it goes against the spirit of both the film and the game. In both mediums, Bond completes the dam jump via stealth. The films’ deleted scene expanded upon that, with Bond breaking into a guardhouse, cutting a communication wire and opening a security gate. Sure, you can shoot up the entire area in the game, and in reality guards would have radioed ahead. But it’s the end cinematic that tells the story. In both instances, nobody is around to witness the jump. And therefore nobody is around to radio ahead to the facility. If this new facility level begins with Bond under complete stealth, I’ll find that hard to swallow.

I also feel like the title sequence is to sterile. Why use blue instead of....Gold. Why not more Gold imagery? Hmmm.

Yes, sterile is the word. It looks like a medical instructional video or something.

[Matt_13]

Wow, Bond swimming in the water look nothing short of identical to the end of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM. Same angle and everything. And he really didn't get hurt slamming into that concrete after a multiple story drop? Fine, fine, it's a game. Still, a very cool title sequence that may even trump Bizarre's, if only for the technical achievement it marks for the Wii. The cover of the song didn't sound all the different from the original. Good to see Bond again.


Blood Stone still looks superior.

[DamnCoffee]

Nothing special at all.

[tdalton]

Words can't even describe how bad all of that was. The song is terrible (should have either recorded a whole new song or just used Tina Turner's original), the jump looks completely ridiculous, both from the standpoint that he has no parachute or bungee cord (which is, to put it in the kindest possible way, just stupid) as well as the standpoint that it's taken so far out of the context of the original film/game that there's really no point of even including it.

And the titles themselves are just horrendous.

Edited by tdalton, 25 October 2010 - 04:21 PM.

[Matt_13]

In my humble opinion, both songs trump AWTD. I'm pretty happy we've got these two games coming out, a lot of effort was clearly put into them (no matter how outlandish either may end up being).