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Quantum of Solace

• By George Jones
• September 04, 2008 12:15 PM PST
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Casino Royale

The final mission we played was the same mission Activision showed at its E3 press conference in July. This level takes place in between poker rounds from Casino Royale and is a flashback sequence in the game that allowed us to play in either stealth mode or in a more aggressive style.

We initially attempted to play through Casino Royale in stealth mode, so our discovery that you can pull up a live mini-map that displays all enemy locations was quite helpful. We successfully bypassed two guards by crouch-sneaking behind their backs, and we took out another guard who was standing on the balcony by sneaking up behind him, snapping his neck, and tossing him over the ledge.

We then moved out onto the balcony and jumped across onto another balcony. A unique split-screen view was displayed onscreen, which allowed us to see the guard's locations in this new hotel suite. This allowed us to nimbly jump between windows and avoid discovery.

Soon after this, however, our stealth plan fell apart. While crouching in the shadows next to a door, we accidentally backed into the door a little too hard and opened it slightly, alerting the guard in the adjacent room. A firefight ensued. During this gun battle we noticed that the enemy A.I. behaved in a much more intelligent manner, attempting to use the corridors of the hotel suite to flank us.

After taking out this group of henchmen, we climbed up into the vents and made our way to the central lobby that appeared in the Casino Royale movie. Here we engaged in an absolutely massive battle against two rival factions of bad guys. We probably killed about 30 bad guys total. Again, the use of cover was essential.

The End... Kind Of

This ended our hands-on time with the game, but the game's producer allowed us a sneak peek at a new level we'd never seen before. This mission was set in the Miami airport - it's another flashback that occurs before the action sequence involving the massive jumbo jet in the movie.

This mission demonstrated yet another set of skills you can use in Quantum Solace: hacking. During this sequence, Bond can disable security cameras and hack into them by successfully completing a numbers-style mini-game.

Because this mission occurs later in the game, the enemy behaviors are even more sophisticated and combat is more difficult. The guards are wearing body armor and are already on alert (alert mode is depicted on the map with yellow triangle indicators, meaning that any suspicion activity elicits gunfire. One cool new feature we discovered here is the first-person sprint-attack, which you can trigger by holding down the A button until you sprint into the target.

Finally, we also learned that the game has super-powerful weapons hidden throughout many of the levels, such as a magnum revolver hidden in one of the rooms here.

Overall, we came away from this play session fairly impressed. The controls are tight, and the pacing is excellent mirroring the more physical fast-paced action in the latest Bond movie.

If we have any complaints about Quantum Solace, it's that we're less enthused about playing the Casino Royale missions than we are about playing in the environments in the upcoming movie. However, since the new film is a direct continuation of Casino Royale - it starts an hour after the first movie - this is not a big concern.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what exactly a Quantum of Solace is, click here. (It's essentially a "short respite", but is based upon a short story by Ian Fleming that features Bond in a less traditional role.)

Quantum of Solace is scheduled for release on November 4, 2008.

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