Playstation 3 Reviews

Blood Stone 007 Review

Published

November 14, 2010

In Blood Stone 007, players will take on the role of ‘007‘, agent James Bond. As James Bond, MI6 has tasked you to stop a plot involving the use of biological weaponry. Is Blood Stone 007 a shiny Aston Martin or is it a dusty tractor trailer?

James Bond: Blood Stone
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Price: $60.00
Platform: Xbox 360 & Playstation 3 (reviewed)

The game starts with a bang, thursting the player into two fast paced chase scenes and over the top shoot outs with colorful and beautiful environments serving as backdrops, but unfourtunately the pace slows down like a car stuck in mud about thirty minutes after the opening scenes. However when Blood Stone 007 picks up, it really picks up, and players will feel a death defying rush of adrenaline during it’s most action packed intervals. Still, the deep contrast between high end action and the claustrophobic enviroments players have to traverse nearly half of the game with hardly an incentive to keep pushing forward really makes the game’s pace feel uneven. While the plot is pretty much lackluster and predictable, it’s the things James must do that push the plot forward and keep players interested to see what will happen next.

What’s nice about Blood Stone 007 is how multifaceted it is in terms of variety when it comes to gameplay. Gameplay is seperated into four parts; action, stealth, chases, and data collecting. The best moments of Blood 007 is when all four of these parts of the gameplay are integrated in a seamless fashion. Most of the bulk of the game will pit you, or James, in a room against waves of foes. Generally these engagements can be entertaining but sometimes get very montonous, as there really isn’t much variety of enemies and there isn’t much variety for the weapons you can use.

Player can also engage in close quarters combat if they desire, which mixes up the action a bit. Although it feels satisfying to see Bond take out guards in many different and slick ways, it’s not very engaging on the players end because all they need to do is press one button just to see the sequence unfold as the guard is taken down. You wont have many opportunities to engage in hand to hand combat–they’re usually necessitated during the stealthy missions–but they are very beneficial to the player as players are rewarded with a focus kill, a skill that allows Bond to chain headshots on enemies. It doesn’t matter how far away they are or what difficulty you’re playing on–a focus kill is always a one shot kill. Players can only obtain three at one time and should generally be used when the going gets tough or if you want to be stealthy and take out an opponent you’ll have a hard time reaching without alerting someone else.

The data collecting parts of Blood Stone 007, where Bond uses his smartphone are brief and infrequent. They are easily the weakest parts of the game, but they fortunately do not bring the game down in any way. Not once did I feel impatient when I had to collect data or thought the task was mundane to do. During the first few hours, players will just collect data which is a simple and swift task to achieve. But towards the middle of the game players will have to hack data in order to obtain it. The task of hacking the data is accompanied by a short little mini game in which players must quickly and sufficiently press the face buttons in a time manner. I would’ve liked if we were given at least two more mini games when it came to hacking data to add a bit more variety, but collecting data is already an infrequent presence in Blood Stone 007 that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

The chasing scenes, where Bond would climb into his dark Ashton Martin and chase after a crime lord or someone who may have information on conspirators, are some of the best moments in the game. It’s these parts where players will see just how much time and effort was taken in order to provide all types of varied environments. There can also be many things going on in the chase scenes and the frame rate never even hiccups, which is getting to be seldom in this day and age of gaming. Every time a setting starts to feel a little old or boring, you’re giving a brand new setting a moment later. Too bad there weren’t enough chase scenes. It’s also expected for the driving scenes to be very well made because Blood Stone 007’s developer, Bizzare Creations, primarily makes racing sims. The only flaw I can think of for the chase scenes is that they are very unforgiving–if you miss one turn or get stuck for a second or two, unless you were right behind the person you were chasing, you’d have to restart from the last checkpoint. Luckily the checkpoints are frequent enough but it’s still a minor annoyance.

Blood Stone 007 is a beautiful game in terms of enviroments–as previously stated they are very varied and keep things fresh. I found myself moving through scenaries slowly just to observe them. Unfourtunately the same time and effort put into the breathtaking enviroments wasn’t put into character models and animation–some of the models look like they were easily from late last gen, and the lip syncing is horrendous.

Daniel Craig suitably voices James Bond, and Judi Dench voices M, which adds a sense of familiarity and authencity to the game. The music feels very james Bond- esque–bold trumpets and drums will rang through your ears during the best moments of the game. As far as production values go, Bizzare Creations has gone all out to deliver an experience that feels just like a James Bond film.

Blood Stone 007 will last players about five to six hours, which is pretty standard for a video game of this genre. There isn’t much replay value, besides harder difficulties for those that want it. Also, players may want to play through the game again to collect all the intel they can possibly find, as most of the data in the game is purely optional but it’s there for anyone who wants to complete their trophy collection and so on.

The other main compenent of Blood Stone 007 is the multiplayer, which feels like a cut and dry paste of certain popular first person shooters in terms of a technical standpoint, though it isn’t nearly done as fluently or with the same level of polish. It feels very unfinished. There are only three game modes, there are about ten weapons to unlock and few maps (most of which were taken straight from the campaign), which really hurts what’ve potentially been a better multiplayer experience. Not to mention the players are pretty skilled from the get go so if you’re new to third person shooters you’ll have a hard time adjusting unless you team up and play with friends. All in all, the multiplayer really doesn’t enrich players experience. If you’re looking for a decent multiplayer that you will be playing for at least a month, Blood Stone 007 is definitely not it.

It feels as if there was much more potential here for Blood Stone 007. While it did deliver and provide a good but brief level of entertainment, the experience was hampered with small minor flaws. It feels as if Bizzare Creations could’ve gone all the way with this game but instead took a few baby steps to produce what we are now playing. Blood Stone 007 does well in most parts of game play but it doesn’t really excel in anything besides the chase scenes, which are seldom occurrences. If they had beefed up multiplayer in terms of content and possibly have given us a less predictable plot and polished up a few shortcomings, Blood Stone would’ve been a much better game.