Quantum of Solace Review (PC)

By Joe Haygood | January 1, 2009

When Activision picked up the Bond franchise last year, a collective groan could be heard around the world, as everyone felt that Bond would be used as a commodity.  Treyarch however, decided to take the Call of Duty engine which garnered high praise from the community for its great looks, and kick it up a notch for the famed martini drinking MI-6 agent in Quantum of Solace.

With Quantum of Solace, we pick up the story shortly after the end of the previous Bond movie, Casino Royale.  You are tasked with finding out why your previous partner went rogue, and who were her accomplices.  You trail starts with a mysterious gentleman by the name of Mr. White, and from there, you are drawn into a story of a private agency that rivals some of the largest governments on the planet that is bent on throwing the world into chaos for profit.  As with most Bond stories, you need to find a way to stop the plot, using your guns, hand to hand combat and wits.

Gameplay in Quantum of Solace, happens in two forms, first and third person combat.  Primarily, you are roaming the world in a first person, down the barrel of a gun view, akin to the old N64 classic, Goldeneye.  But when you get surrounded by bad guys, you can duck for cover, using a very slick cover mechanic interface.  At this point, the game will automatically switch to a third person view where we can see a bit more of the action from behind Bond.  Moving from cover to cover, or dashing to cover, is very easy to do, and makes it feel like you are snaking your way to through the levels.  I never had issues with bad cover, or a bad camera, as the switch is very fluid and without hiccups.

Along the way with the standard shooting, you have several Quick Time Events (QTE) or cover sequences that you have to work through.  In the once sequence that is in the video , you are in hand to hand combat with a bad guy, and you have to move the small circle into the larger circle with the mouse.  It works very well, as there is enough resistance from the game to make the QTE segments challenging, but not overly difficult.  It is nice that you can miss a step during these events and not lose the whole event automatically.  Instead you get a mistake or two, and the combat will continue, with different actions.  It is nice to not have to redo an entire segment, due to missing the last event in a chain of Quick Time Events.  Also there are ledge walks and spotlight detections areas where you have to move in a pattern to make sure you are not detected by sentries or the spotlights.

Quantum of Solace was designed, using the Call of Duty 4 engine, and while it looks good, it does not look as solid as that game.  It is good, and the likenesses of the major characters are done quite nicely, but they don’t have as much detail as the Call of Duty 4 characters.  Outdoor environments are full of a lot of color and details, making the world seem very alive, but when you move to some of the interior segments, the game seems a bit generic, or muddy.  I don’t know if it was due to being unfamiliar with the game engine, or more focus was put into the Call of Duty: World at War title, but the graphics just seem to be lacking that sharp punch that you would expect from a game of this caliber.  Running at 1920×1200, and with all details on, Quantum of Solace is just not that crisp a looker.

Being a Games for Windows Live supported title, Quantum of Solace uses the Live system for multiplayer, and it works very nicely.  Once you select the multiplayer option from the menu, you are presented with several game types, and even the option of forming a party, a la Xbox Live Party.  The lacking factor right now is finding people to play online.  When you do get into a game, you will find the performance to be silky smooth, and very satisfying.  I never encountered any slowdowns or hiccups, and framerate seems to be quite steady during full matches.  It is also of note that the manual is lacking in really explaining anything about the multiplayer modes and the GFW Live service in any detail, which could be problematic due to the number of game modes available.

All the major players put down audio tracks for Quantum of Solace, but most seem a bit pre-occupied with color of the walls in the recording room, as there is a definite lack of emotion in most of the lines.  Again, nothing that kills the game, but it would be nice for a big title to get better sense of emotion out of its voice actors, especially when those actors are the same ones that portray the roles on screen.  The familiar Bond music is also here complete with an opening credits song (possibly from the movie), and other staple Bond tunes.  It was nice to see the music dynamically change as the action changes.

Quantum of Solace also manages to give players a bit more bang for their buck by doing an extended flashback to some of the events in Casino Royale.  At one point you look back and cover the major action sequences like the chase through the construction site, entering the museum, fighting off the terrorists in the hotel and even having to run to your car to save yourself from poison.  The last one really built up a sense of excitement, as you have a finite amount of time to race to your car, while slowly falling under the influence of the poison.  It is a suspense filled segment of gameplay that really stands out as a memorable moment.

It is not all a bed of roses with Quantum of Solace as two things really ruin some of the fun.  First is that most of the enemies seemed to be scripted.  If I died at any point, it was far too easy to remember their pattern and location as the enemy would always go to the same place.  This really helped with an out of the way enemy killed me, because now I would know where that person was going to end up and could prepare myself to find and kill them.  The other was that while we do get coverage of the two movies, it seems as if more focus was put on the Casino Royale segments than the Quantum of Solace segments.  I have not seen the new Bond film, so I am not sure if they hit all the action sequences, but it just felt like the Casino Royale parts were far more developed and longer than the Quantum of Solace points.

At the end of the day, fun and enjoyment factor are what you look for in a game, and Quantum of Solace delivers on both aspects of the equation.  The gunplay is done quite well, and the story keeps you moving at a brisk pace.  Sharper graphics, and a little more focus on the newer movie would have been nice, but overall Quantum of Solace is a title that is easy to recommend to those that want a good shooter with a lot of multiplayer fun thrown in for good measure.  Quantum of Solace gets 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.