819 replies to this topic

[sharpshooter]

All in all this is beginning to whiff more and more of EON

I agree, and I'm glad.

and that's pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen to any Bond game

Utter nonsense. EoN is *clearly* the best Bond game since GoldenEye. And I'm sure most of this forum would agree with me.

[MattofSteel]

I'd say Bloodstone looks to contain fairly polished, intuitive versions of things we've seen before. Every Bond game tends to be that way. But then again, I felt the same way about EON pre-release, and came away thinking it was the most original Bond platform we've seen yet, both in terms of story and containing elements.

[Matt_13]

I think it's going to be great, exciting fun. The good news is that those who have gone hands on with it say the driving sequences are a challenge. That's a big difference from what we got in Nightfire. EoN had some tricky driving levels too, but that was for the enemey encounters, not the terrain. There are only so many places that Bond can go in both games and film. I don't know why any of you would be so picky about that. On the CQC front, it looks rediculously sweet because of the animations. Splinter Cell Conviction had a similar system but it wasn't exactly easy to get the opportunity to do it without getting shot by a million other guys. Blood Stone is looking to be the same which is great. This is a really exciting project because, keep in mind, this is Bizarre Creations' first effort. If it does well imagine what they'll be able to come up with next? In any case, all of this is speculation until we get our own hands on it. Can't wait.

[Chief of SIS]

... Uncharted, Splinter Cell and Bourne all pulled the same the trick, and while Blood Stone looks nice, it doesn't measure up to Bourne on the CQC front...

...My clairvoyant review stands. Pretty and entertaining in the short term, by seen it all before and yet another wasted opportunity for the franchise...

First off saying it's like Uncharted is a compliment to the game and yes Bourne did have a better CQC however the driving and shooting was atrocious. From what I see Bloodstone is one up from that. In comparison to EON, I understand how some could hate the game but in my opinion the main problem was that it wasn't Bond. I never got that exotic feel or those Bondian moments from it. For me, an optimist, Bloodstone seems to be working hard to finally bring Bond to the user. But we've heard that before.

[DamnCoffee]

Why is everyone impressed by a bunch of canned animation sequences that you, the player, will just press a single button to initiate and then sit and watch until Bond finishes and you get to play again?

Probably the same reason that you're excited by a pointless cash in.

[zencat]

Why is everyone impressed by a bunch of canned animation sequences that you, the player, will just press a single button to initiate and then sit and watch until Bond finishes and you get to play again?

For me, it's because in those moments I get to watch a new James Bond movie. And one written by Bruce Fierstein at that.

[Iroquois]

Why is everyone impressed by a bunch of canned animation sequences that you, the player, will just press a single button to initiate and then sit and watch until Bond finishes and you get to play again? Uncharted, Splinter Cell and Bourne all pulled the same the trick, and while Blood Stone looks nice, it doesn't measure up to Bourne on the CQC front

All in all this is beginning to whiff more and more of EON, and that's pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen to any Bond game, Just hope it's not a game for idiots this time round.

My clairvoyant review stands. Pretty and entertaining in the short term, by seen it all before and yet another wasted opportunity for the franchise.

I think the cinematic approach is exactly what is needed right now. We're not gonna be getting a film for a while and this also holds the honour of being Craig's Bond's first classic style 007 adventure. People are wanting to SEE Bond just as much as they want to BE Bond. This game is substituting for new film and the only way it can fulfill it's purpose is to combine these two elements. Having Bond do different moves at the touch of a button makes the game feel much more like a film, and much more like Bond, even if you don't get to do it all yourself. It prevents it from going stale.

You see, James Bond has always been about variety, and as good as Goldeneye was it was primarily about completing objectives in between shooting people. It was pretty much about one thing, and that's not very Bond at all. I do agree with you on some points that Goldeneye's independence from scripted events is great for (specifically) a Bond GAME, but EON was a much better Bond EXPERIENCE, and it's great that Blood Stone is continuing what EON achieved.

[Mr.Zukovsky]

The hand to hand combat looks pretty good to me, unlike QoS where the combo's became boring because there wasn't a lot, kind of the same. Bloodstone looks pretty gritty, i love how bond just punches that guy right in the throat and then knocks him out with one final blow. I laughed when bond was climbing the bridge and slammed that guys head on the side of the bridge then threw him off haha. Game looks pretty decent, new locations that haven't been used in the movies which is good.

Edited by Mr.Zukovsky, 18 September 2010 - 08:12 PM.

[YouKnowTheName]

Reply to Iriquois (quoting won't work for some reason)

One more time- GAMES SHOULDN'T BE CINEMATIC. EVER.

Games aren't cinema! A game trying to be like a film is like a man sticking his head in a pond to be like a fish. You play games. You play Bond games to be Bond. If you want to see Bond you watch a movie. If you have to press buttons continously to keep the movie going it's a very annoying experience, and thusly it's equally annoying when a game doesn't let you play it in order to call itself cinematic. The obvious response to the developers is OFF AND DO SOME WORK.

GoldenEye is a game. You play it, you're in control, and you have fun. EON you barelt interact with. To say it's trying to be like a movie is completely destroying the point of making games based on movies. It's supposed to be like a movie in that you feel like you are the main character living in the world and story of the film, not in that you spend the whole experience sitting on your doing sod all.

But fine, if EON wants to be considered a movie then here's the review: Why is this movie six hours long? Why do I have to press buttons to watch it? Why are all the actors replaced by waxworks? Why does the plot sound like something that would earn a D-grade at GCSE level and why does Bond keep aiming his gun at blank patches of wall.

If you actually like EON, you have no right to complain about the low quality of Bond games, since you actualy champion this kind of patronising tripe, and are telling the developers that it's okay to turn out crappy, half-finished, gamplay totallt devoid of any attempt to represent or honour the source material as ong as you stick a few Z list celebrities in it and sell it to the casual gamer crowd. And THAT mentality is the reason we only have one good Bond game.

(Note- I don't think Bloodstone will be this bad, I'm sure it'll be fun, but it's just slightly polishing a bad idea rather than actualy acressing the issues)

I'm going to try and avoid hating on EON again, because I've done enough of that already, but seriously, people have to wake up and realises it's been a cancer on the series.

[Iroquois]

Reply to Iriquois (quoting won't work for some reason)

One more time- GAMES SHOULDN'T BE CINEMATIC. EVER.

Games aren't cinema! A game trying to be like a film is like a man sticking his head in a pond to be like a fish. You play games. You play Bond games to be Bond. If you want to see Bond you watch a movie. If you have to press buttons continously to keep the movie going it's a very annoying experience, and thusly it's equally annoying when a game doesn't let you play it in order to call itself cinematic. The obvious response to the developers is OFF AND DO SOME WORK.

GoldenEye is a game. You play it, you're in control, and you have fun. EON you barelt interact with. To say it's trying to be like a movie is completely destroying the point of making games based on movies. It's supposed to be like a movie in that you feel like you are the main character living in the world and story of the film, not in that you spend the whole experience sitting on your doing sod all.

But fine, if EON wants to be considered a movie then here's the review: Why is this movie six hours long? Why do I have to press buttons to watch it? Why are all the actors replaced by waxworks? Why does the plot sound like something that would earn a D-grade at GCSE level and why does Bond keep aiming his gun at blank patches of wall.

If you actually like EON, you have no right to complain about the low quality of Bond games, since you actualy champion this kind of patronising tripe, and are telling the developers that it's okay to turn out crappy, half-finished, gamplay totallt devoid of any attempt to represent or honour the source material as ong as you stick a few Z list celebrities in it and sell it to the casual gamer crowd. And THAT mentality is the reason we only have one good Bond game.

(Note- I don't think Bloodstone will be this bad, I'm sure it'll be fun, but it's just slightly polishing a bad idea rather than actualy acressing the issues)

I'm going to try and avoid hating on EON again, because I've done enough of that already, but seriously, people have to wake up and realises it's been a cancer on the series.

EON wasn't half finished, the end result just didn't appeal to you.

It did honour it's source material of the Brosnan Bond era very much so. It had all the elements of such a film, complete with a ridiculous plot, action set pieces and gadgets. There was nothing in the game that seemed out of place in one of his films.

Also, when did I complain about the quality of Bond games? I love all but Rogue Agent. I disagree that Goldeneye is the only 'good' Bond game, the only bad one imo is Rogue Agent. The thing is that Goldeneye is the only INNOVATIVE Bond game, and it's great.

My point is that Blood Stone and EON are not simply meant to be Bond GAMES, they are meant to be new Bond ADVENTURES. Even Craig says that it's a substitute for a new movie this year. But this doesn't mean it wants to be a film, it's just that games are the next best thing.

Again, I disagree about your point that games should never be cinematic. I get where you're coming from and that's fine, but have you ever played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty? That used both cut-scenes and gameplay to it's advantage to create the only post modern masterpiece of a game I have yet encountered, and the fact that it was a game only helped it's case.

You see, most of the fun of Bond is the character himself, and how this character lives his life and whatnot. He is the main reason why all of the films are so unique in spite of occasionally borrowing elements from other films or what was popular at the time. Part of the fun of Bond is that you are not him and you want to be him, and it works well in a game to step out of being the character for a moment in order to maintain this relationship and remind you that this guy is cooler than anyone can ever realistically be, and yet you are being him. I've probably made that sound rather sad, but that's what games are about; escapism, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just fun.

In general, the cinematic aspect of games are added so you actually care about what's happening in the game and you don't want your hero to die, which adds tension and therefore, more fun.

Of course, I do enjoy games that aren't cinematic, and I have no preference. But for Bond, I think EON's the better direction, rather than Goldeneye. I generally think most of EON's problems were to do with the silliness of Brosnan's films tbh.

[Harmsway]

Again, I disagree about your point that games should never be cinematic. I get where you're coming from and that's fine, but have you ever played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty? That used both cut-scenes and gameplay to it's advantage to create the only post modern masterpiece of a game I have yet encountered, and the fact that it was a game only helped it's case.

METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY was neat (though I'd hardly say it was the best of the METAL GEAR SOLID games; it's the weakest of the main entries). It would be very, very interesting to play a Bond game along similar lines, but it would require a level of creativity that very few game developers offer.

[YouKnowTheName]

Brosnan's film aren't that silly, at least the good ones. The only one that's overtly silly is DAD. And I think we can all agree that it's awful.

EON is half finished. You can't control where Bond aims, or even if he'll aim at a person at all. Aiming is the heart of a shooter. It doesn't work, therefor- game not finished. And it's not just the game not appealing to me. FRWL used the same system but refined it to give more control. That was a finished game. Of course, even finished it's a stupid systemn, so the game was still awful.

Nothing out of place for a Brosnan film? Jaws. Part of the most ridiculous era of Bond history, totally mismatched. The stupid plot. Even Roger Moore was never THIS silly. And remeber how fans loved the invisible car because it was so perfect for Bond? No. Because they all hated it. It was stupid. But EA gave Bond two invisible cars and a frickin' cloak of invisibility. It even tried to tie the plot in to AVTAK, the worst Bond film ever. It's like they scoured up all the very worst of the whole series and celebrated it, like a toddler smearing itself with it's own poo.

My verdict on MGS 1&2- "Ugh, when do I actually get to do something oh great actual gameplay wait how do you control oh my god you can't expect people to play this okay back to the film maybe I can press a button in about half an hour by Christ this need a script editor"

You know what a really cinematic game is? Bioshock. Like a good sci-fi film it works on creating a deep believable world, puts you in it and lets it's story unravel around you in a way that's scripted, but always lets you feel like you're uncovering it yourself. Uncharted is as near to a movie as games have yet got, yet a lot of the story happens while you play with cut scenes only used for bits that require it.

And I totally disagree that the fun of Bond is you can never quite be him. In the movies, yes, definitely. But the whole point of the games is you finally CAN be him. Any game where you feel you can't BE the character you ARE is utter rubbish. You should NEVER step out of character. Could you in Bioshock? No, it would have ruined the illusion. Games are different from films. The should thrill in a whole different way. If you want to watch Bond, there are plenty of movies for you. I want to BE Bond. I was Bond, in GoldenEye, so I know it can be done.

You're right that the cinematic effect makes you care about the story, but it only works if the story is good. Bits of Uncharted 2 were genuinely tense, and the seamless transition between cutscene and gameplay made it so it wasn't down to just one element, it was all of them together. It also only works if the story is good. EON felt less like a Bond movie than any other game simply because no Bond film would ever be that stupid, unrealistic or infantile. It wasn't writing, it was making a mess with a pen like a bunch of kid writers getting their hands on the keys to the Bond universe.

In GoldenEye I felt a genuine link to Trevelyan. Why? Because I met him for the mission in the facilty. I saw him die. He came before me and revealed himself as a traitor (oh yeah, spoilers). I was chasing him around the cradle exchanging gun fire with a former friend.

I couldn't care less about Diavolo. I never even encountered him. He wasn't in the game, just the cinematics. Only the creepy CGI parody Bond had any dealings with him. There was no connection to him, and I felt nothing when he died his utterly stupid death.

Trevelyan was a much more present and relevant villain, with only his 400-odd polygons and twenty-odd text captions. Just by letting the player play the game.

GoldenEye is the only good Bond game BECAUSE it's the only innovative Bond game. It took James Bond and designed a game from scratch around being him, exactly what a Bond game needs to do. Every other Bond game has just ripped off a design from something else and painted Bond on. GoldenEye is the only game that can claim to be the true Bond experience.

Look at the few great licensed games: Batman: Arkham Asylum. Built from the ground up based around Batman as a character, with all his style and abilities incorporated naturally in, rather than tacked on; Spider-Man 2. A whole swinging system built from the ground up just to make the player feel like Spider-Man. No other game is comparable, because the game is so intrinsically Spidey that no other game could model itself on it.

This is the treatment Bond needs, and only GoldenEye has done it. The painful thing is that technology has moved on so far that if it was done now, you actually COULD pull it off again. Incorporate the non-action elements, try to finally work out how to do vehicle sections, drop the mission structure ect...

But nobody does. We get ten years of licensed crap. That's why I get so annoyed about it.

[DamnCoffee]

I don't mean to be rude, but for the love of God, can you not just shut up and be greatful? If you don't like the look of Blood Stone, then go and play on GoldenEye. Simple. It's obvious that you won't like the game much anyway, so there's no point in preaching about how much you hate it. We have two Bond games this year, just be damn greatfull we're getting them.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

It's a discussion forum Mharkin. What is so bad about someone having a strong opinion that happens to differ from yours?

I don't agree with all of what YouKnowTheName has posted, but he is well articulated and presents a thought out argument. There is not much point being on discussion forums if you can't handle differing opinions.

[terminus]

To throw a spanner into the works, I far prefer EON to GoldenEye. Partially because of the fact like I was immersing myself into a Bond movie that never was - it was an original plot, with an original song and some pretty awesome sequences and locations (the less said about the PTS fight the better). I didn't have any of the problems that have been alluded to above, with the exception of the driving levels and that's cos I'm just generally crap at driving levels.

[Chief of SIS]

...so...ummm...not to change gears from this awesome debate...but when are we getting to hear about some preorder goodies?

Edited by Chief of SIS, 19 September 2010 - 07:00 AM.

[YouKnowTheName]

I'm not going to apologise for posting an opion in a forum, but I wil apologise if I sounded rude or disrespectful to anyone, especially Irioquois, who made an intellegent arguement. Like Bond I appreciate a good opponent, and I know I can get worked up where Bond games are involved but that's only because I'm passionate about Bond and gaming, and the one glorious time they truly came togther was the best game I ever played. to quote Yahtzee "I once courted a game with Golden hair and lips that could suck the moon through a drinking straw but unfortunately or romance had to end and I've been working my way through her ugly sisters ever since". mharkin, we shouldn't "just be greatful" we're getting any games, we should demand the best for our time and money.

While I may have deviated into a discussion on games in general, I will say that I do feel postive for Blood Stone. The plot looks it'll be a bit silly rather than pants-on-head special like EON and it's already far better for having a real aiming system and being a real game. It also looks like we should get some decent driving sections for once, rather than controlling a bar of soap just so the publishers can put an Aston on the box.

Also- never mind pre-order deals, here in the UK I don't think we even have a solid release date!

[Iroquois]

It's okay mate I don't find you to be rude, in fact I'm finding this debate to be rather stimulating, you are raising interesting points.

But back to the discussion, I think it's quite difficult comparing the impact of the story to Goldeneye N64 due to the fact that it came out 2 years after the movie and everybody was aware of what happens in the story. In this sense, Goldeneye worked so well BECAUSE we knew the story to the film and it was exciting to re-live it entirely as Bond. We had had the cinematic element in the film, so there was no need to include it into the game.

With Blood Stone it's different, it's an original story, and it needs that cinematic element so the player understands and cares about what is going on in the game, why there is a car chase, why we are infiltrating this place and so on. As I mentioned before, it is not simply a Bond game, but a Bond adventure. The producers are hell-bent on making sure that the world gets a new 007 adventure, and again, the next best way to achieve the scale of a film easily is to make a game. If it used Goldeneye's style of written briefings before each level, the story wouldn't be engaging enough, it has to be a flowing narrative.

My point is that in Goldeneye, I may have been playing Bond, but I never FELT I was Bond, because I was looking at the world through his eyes. The only thing that reminded me who I was playing was the Walther, when I used it. What was also great about Spiderman 2 and Batman was that it still had that third person element. The imagery of Spidey swinging through New York matched that of the film, and thus you felt more like you were playing as Spiderman. Likewise with Batman as you glided down from the rafters of a dimly lit room. I'm sure that when I play this game, and use the hand to hand takedowns, I'll feel much more like I'm playing Daniel Craig's Bond than if I'm in the first person using the singular 'Judo Chop' of Goldeneye.

Goldeneye may have been built from the ground up around Bond, but it only reflected his abilities as a marksman. To have an original story with Bond simply shooting a lot of people is quite boring.

In short, I'll be happy to see a Goldeneye-like approach to the next Bond film game tie-in, as I would want to re-live the events of the film through Bond's eyes, but for original stories, it has to be in the 3rd person, and cinematic in order to create an engaging new Bond adventure.

Edited by Iroquois, 19 September 2010 - 02:56 PM.

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

Well I agree with both Irquois and YKTN, because both aré right in a way. Games now should be cinematic because we're nit in the NES era where Bond was just a tin soldier you move to one side to another, therefore there should be animations and things like that. BUT, even tough I enjoyed EoN, I think games should be more interactive and entertaining. I don't like to finish game and then have to throw them on a bin. In GE64 after you won the game you were able to have fun with the cheats, and that's what EoN, FRWL and particulary the PS2 version of QoS doesn't deliver.
And what I loved in EoN is that the punching and shooting buttons where different. In QoS and FRWL you had to get close to an enemy to kick his with the shooting button (R1). I hope BloodStone will be like EoN in that sense.

Well I agree with both Irquois and YKTN, because both aré right in a way. Games now should be cinematic because we're nit in the NES era where Bond was just a tin soldier you move to one side to another, therefore there should be animations and things like that. BUT, even tough I enjoyed EoN, I think games should be more interactive and entertaining. I don't like to finish game and then have to throw them on a bin. In GE64 after you won the game you were able to have fun with the cheats, and that's what EoN, FRWL and particulary the PS2 version of QoS doesn't deliver.
And what I loved in EoN is that the punching and shooting buttons where different. In QoS and FRWL you had to get close to an enemy to kick his with the shooting button (R1). I hope BloodStone will be like EoN in that sense.

[YouKnowTheName]

I fully agree that GoldenEye is almost plotless in itself, relying entirely on your knowledge of the movie to colour the game with meaning. This is one of a few areas where the game is dated. It might seem skimpy to today, but it was INSANELY deep when it came out. The other big shooters of the time were the original Turok and Quake, neither of which had any kind of story. You press start and bang- level 1, go!

It's interesting to note that QOS used the exact same approach and highlighted how much it doesn't work anymore. As a standalone, QOS is an incoherent mess, a losely connected string of spoilers with no meaning. Gameplay wise it's equal to GoldenEye in it's shooting mechanics and control (the fact that all levels are linear shoeboxes aside), but the reason it's so unsatisfying is because you aren't Bond making the story happen, you just join him for disconnected spells here and there.

When I say GoldenEye is the template, I mean how we can take what it gave us and advance it immeasurably. It gave a great sense of BEING 007 in action elements, you could use the same engine to put Bond in a crowded black tie party. You could have him locate and interact with a suspect, maybe use the aiming system to have him catch them on a secret camera (to borrow an example from the most authentic 007 game of all after GoldenEye, Hitman). It's so flexible you wouldn't need to change the core gameplay any because the essence is, like Bond, timeless.

An original story could easily be tacked used with modern day techniques. The mission briefings could be conversations you have in-game, for example. Characters can talk directly to you, MW-style. The Hitman games told great stories without compromising gameplay. And if you absolutely MUST, you can fall back on cutscenes. There are many ways to keep everything good about GoldenEye and still tell an engaging story. All the original Bond stories in games have been dreadful, save Nightfire, which was merely mediocre. None of them were coherent or went to any effort to make you care about anything, instead falling back on the cliche of Bond as an invincible, womanising superman, and using the stories as little more than flimsy excuses for firefights.

1st and 3rd person are more than mere perspectives, they both have vastly different gameplay attributes than save or kill a game depending on how they are applied. 1st person really makes you feel like the character and puts you in the world, upping the intesity and excitement factor, the expense being a slight loss in manouverability to compensate for any disorientation. The games that really make this work would never work without it, like Bond, COD, Condenmed, Bioshock ect. 3rd person gives a much more accurate sense of the player within the space, which is invaluable for games based on dexterity and manouvering, like Tomb Raider, GTA, Prince of Persia, the expense being that the players view of the world is different for the characters, thus a divorce is created between the two and the player must see the world through an external camera, which can be manipulate to give the player a more cinematic view that the character would not be privvy to. This divorce is what has (thus far) killed such Bond games.

To use the other example, building games based around Spidey you would obviously need to use 3rd person to give a sense of being them, because Spidey is a fast moving acrobat you have to constanly keep track of, both vertically and horizontally, and uses exaggerated superhuman moves that we're not adapted to unnderstanding from a 1st person perspective. Bond is a human being, and so can't do anything our brains can't handle from 1st person.

EON's use of 3rd person annoys me because there's nothign to qualify it. The game is a straight linear shooter. There are no platforming sections like Uncharted and no crawling up walls. You just shoot the incoming goons and walk the straight line. It's destroyed because the broken targeting renders you unable to aim accurately and the bad camera makes veiwing a pain, both problems that would be solved by the game being 1st person with no loss to any 3rd person specific gameplay elements, because there are none. You also get shot by enemies Bond can see but you can't, which really highlights the divorce between player and avatar and reminds you that you aren't Bond.

I have to disagree that 3rd person is cinematic. Bioshock and COD are two of the most cinematic games we have, and they do it by building their words on intimate terms usuing the close perspective. Bond works the same way in games, simply sitting back and observing is boring and uninvolving. Cinema works on beleivebility and depth, which goes far deeper than mere camera positioning.

Blood Stone looks a lot better than EON because it looks like it will be a game that is designed FOR 3rd person. The climbing and brawling (though uninvolving) and the far more physical nature of Daniel Craig mean it's probably 3rd person for a reason (at least you can't blame Activision from running in fear from GoldenEye comparisons), so hopefully it'll work and won't be another EON or FRWL.

One last thought for any game devs who might be reading...

I frequently drop the Hitman series into conversation, a series of games that completely nail almost all the essential elements of 007 the official 007 games have yet to do any justice. And it runs on an engine which works perfectly in both 1st and 3rd person at the push of a button. JUST SAYING....

[Matt_13]

I disagree on all front I'm afraid. The point of a Bond game for me is to be a cinematic experience in the same vein as the current crop of films that allows you to control how the action plays out. EoN and Nightfire did this flawlessly. They tell coherent stories but still allow a level of exploration and a ton of fun. You cannot seriously compare GE to any modern day game period. Apples and oranges. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but I think it's about time we moved past GE and tried something new. EoN is regarded as the best Bond game outside of GE, and the only reason GE is so well regarded isn't because most players felt like Bond, it was because the shooting was fun and revolutionary for a console. There are the occasional touches of the Bond brand (namely just gadgets that all basically accomplish the same thing) but to say the EoN didn't have the gadgets, cheats, and shooting mechanics pretty much just tells me that you didn't spend any real time in those games. The shooting in EoN works fine, and was fine tuned in FRWL (unfortunately, headshots in that game were oddly discouraged, but I digress). A TON of work has been put into Blood Stone and it clearly shows. They are trying real hard to hit this one out of the park. Lay off.

And the Hitman games are clunky as hell, and feature bad physics and poor shooting mechanics. The closest thing Blood Stone looks like is SC Conviction, which is absolutely fantastic. If you want to see third person stealth action done right, take a look at those games. Chaos Theory is the best spy video game of all time. That's my dream for a Bond game, and it looks like Blood Stone might deliver.

Also, something that someone made up that does a good job in pointing out it's a Daniel Craig Bond adventure we have on our hands. Pretty solid work overall:

[terminus]

Well - would've been nice if we could've had it to the Bloodstone themetune, but cool

[YouKnowTheName]

I've played both EON and FRWL to completion with all unlocks. Why? Because I really wanted to love them. There is simply no describing EON's story as coherent. It's like it was written by people who'd never seen a Bond film (or read a Bond novel, lets not forget) but were told about it by an excitable mate down the pub. It's an outright insult to the 007 franchise and it's fans that they didn't do better, and Bruce Fierstien's involvement with Blood Stone is a servere cautionary point.

Trying not to sound condescending, if you think EON/FRWL's shooting is passable you don't spend much time with games. It simply isn't acceptable, and in the shadow of GoldenEye it fails even harder.

Hitman has excellent physics, it's the game that brought ragdoll technology to consoles. The shooting isn't the strongest part of it, agreed, but it's not a shooting game and it actively encourages avoiding firefights, so it's all part of the game. And I'm not suggesting Bond should be like Hitman totally (just as I'm not suggesting Bond should be bald) but it's an espionage game that's not reliant on action or scripted events, but rather player cunning and choice, giving you a lot of options and seeing the game unfolds according to your choices. All Bond games bar GoldenEye are linear shooting galleries.

And while EON has a following, it's worth noting that the gaming world at large forgot about it instantly. Read any magazine or such, and you'll read about GoldenEye, a bunch of dreary knock-off's ,and fingers crossed for the next one. The review scores were 'meh' and 'meh, its diverting, I guess", the sales were unimpressive (It sold considerably less than Nightfire) and it made no impact. The few Bond fans(?) who wanted more EON got it with FRWL, and I think everyone can agree that THAT was awful. I couldn't believe Activison seriously seemed to be revisting it, but Blood Stone has talented devs behind and an actual engine, so I'm staying cautiously optimistic. But to the world at large there is only some crappy Atari Bond games, GoldenEye, and some crappy EA Bond games, which returned the 007 series to the quagmire of licensed drivel GoldenEye had pulled them out from.

If you're a fan of the films but a casual gamer, or someone who has little experience or gaming ability (not meant offensively, it's genuinely not for everyone) I can see why games like EON would appeal. They're like Fisher Price videogames, with all the demanding things and difficulty taken out and replaced with shiny graphics and celebrities, with short levels in case your attention wanders, where you don't play as Bond but just wander through the fairground ride relying on things to happen by themselves. But for people who've finished GoldenEye on 00 Agent it's like a giving a Navy Seal a water pistol and telling him not to hurt himself.

[Chief of SIS]

I watched the video. Like the editing. Fun little spot. Then the 35 second marker came along and I paused it and cringed. Can someone tell me how old and what video that clip is from at 35 seconds because Craig looks a little plastic-y. Please tell me it's an old clip. Please. All around fantastic video though. Pumped.

[Garth007]

Does anyone know if there will be a special edition version of BloodStone. Quantum of Solace had one and was wondering if this one will as well

[Chief of SIS]

Does anyone know if there will be a special edition version of BloodStone. Quantum of Solace had one and was wondering if this one will as well

No news at this point. I don't really see a need for one. Don't know what they would put in it. Dev diaries probably

Edited by Chief of SIS, 20 September 2010 - 04:19 AM.

[Garth007]

Does anyone know if there will be a special edition version of BloodStone. Quantum of Solace had one and was wondering if this one will as well

No news at this point. I don't really see a need for one. Don't know what they would put in it. Dev dairies probably

dont know i mean maybe if it came with a full soundtrack included with behind the scence of how they made the game. I personally would like to see how daniel craig felt about the game and his involvment.

[Garth007]

Hey I just found this box art for Bloodstone doubt that its real but I hope this can be the cover
http://www.vgboxart....tone/?replies=7

[sharpshooter]

Hey I just found this box art for Bloodstone doubt that its real but I hope this can be the cover
http://www.vgboxart....tone/?replies=7

That's fan art. The official cover design is on the official site. And it appears after all the trailers.

[Matt_13]

It's like getting blood from a stone....