Review #4: James Bond 007: Blood Stone

 

Platform: PC
Type of controller: 360 Controller
Install time: Approx 15mins  
Dependancies (Included in installation): DirectX 9c 

Notes about installation: Installation was quite unique for this game, well as unique as an installation can get. A Flash video plays in the background while installing, complete with sound. It is quite artistic (its an "infinite fractal zoom" technique going from one concept art to the next by zooming into the center of the frame). Other than that, setup went quite smoothly.   


Game website: http://bloodstonegame.com
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Stone_(video_game) ----------------------------------------------------------------


My thoughts about the game;
I didn't have high hopes for this game... considering the Bond Game track record, i was expecting a mediocre game at best, a complete flop at worst.
I was pleasantly surprised after playing this game for a little while... my initial impressions weren't too good, which they probably should of focused on a little more, but the game gets better as you continue playing and learning more about the core gameplay.
First off i recommend this game to anyone who enjoys the Splinter Cell series of games, there are countless moments throughout the game that reminded me of Splinter Cell, and a little bit of Syphon Filter aswell.

This is also an original story created by the developers in conjunction with Ian Flemming and MGM Entertainment, therefore the developers have had alot more time to work on the story and gameplay instead of rushing to get something done for a tied in movie release. This really shows in the game because eventually about 45mins into the game i actually felt like i was playing a Bond movie... there have only been 2 Bond games that i've played that truly felt like that, the obvious being GoldenEye 64 and the other being Everything Or Nothing on Gamecube (which coincidently was also an original storyline created by the developers of that game).

It took me approximately 7 hours to complete on easy, however i was interrupted several times on Steam while playing, and that time is including watching all the cutscenes aswell, so my guess is around 5.5-6 hours worth of gameplay, which isn't too bad for this kind of game and considering the movies only go for about 2 hours each.

Developer standpoint;

Difficulty
Although i haven't tried the other difficulties yet, easy was quite exciting enough for me to not be bored with enemies, i died a few times here and there, some parts i had to restart (a mission or two failed because i didn't know what to do) but on the whole it was challenging enough to play through on easy the first time around.
This is one of the only games were i was impressed by the enemy AI, it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's also not as broken as many other games especially stealth games in the action genre. The only thing that is missing is the enemies ability to hear you, but that would make the game much more bias towards the enemies and honestly that might have ruined the experience. Enemies for once have a proper "cone" of vision that they can see, and although the player cant see that cone, i could tell alot of effort was put into getting that part right, and it really does work well.

Animations and visual effects
The animations in this game were also very impressive, aside from the lip/mouth movement animations which were a bit dated, but overall most of the animations were very well done.


Visual FX in this game were kind of all over the place, you have the intense action sequences, that are quite impressive, however you have things like fire, dirt and dust that look like they were made back in 2003...
That was the only real issue with the VFX, the particles.


Level design
Some of the levels in this were Modern Warfare level of impressive. Some areas i deliberately took longer to finish just so i could soak up the atmosphere. I haven't been this impressed with level design (in a Bond game) since GoldenEye 64, these were truly great atmospheric environments, with some places feeling like a movie (Construction site in Istanbul, the rainy rooftops of Bangkok back-streets and the Siberian biochemical refinery -- all top notch design).

Sound design
The sound design is something that doesn't really need to be mentioned, it's a Bond game, the voices are acted by their real life counterparts (Daniel Craig as Bond, Judi Dench as M, Joss Stone [who sings the theme song] as the Bond girl & a sort of sidekick Nicole Hunter).
The sound FX and music were also great quality as i expected with a Bond game, like i said, this sort of thing comes with the territory, i would of been very surprised if the sound design wasn't top notch because of the franchise popularity.

Story and character development
Well as previously mentioned, because this game is an original storyline (possibly based off one of the many books, but not based off a movie) the developers actually had ample time to get the story & character development right, and they did.
Just a brief synopsis of the story;
The player teams up with Nicole Hunter (hired by MI6) to stop a plot involving biochemical WMDs. Set across six locations: Athens, Istanbul, Monaco, Siberia, Bangkok, and Burma, you fight a group of terrorists led by a man named Pomerov. Later as the story progresses, you find that there is a deeper scheme going on here, and while Pomerov is your first target (and where i thought the game would end) it turns out that he is only a stepping stone to a bigger target (which i won't spoil). There are decent car & boat chase scenes, awesome rooftop chases that if done right, has some of the best melee combat in a game since Colosseum: Road to Freedom (PS2 gladiator game).

Closing statement
This game is definitely worth playing, however i don't think it's worth the 90 dollar price tag. Personally i think it's worth about 1/3 of that price (it has Multiplayer aswell, 3 different game modes like TDM, CTF and objective based [not exactly co-op but more like Gold rush from Bad Company -- 1 team tries to obtain an objective, the other tries to stop them]).
If you enjoy a good stealth game, you should enjoy this. You may need to give the game a chance though, because the earlier levels aren't as impressive as the later ones, especially when the stealth kills become increasingly difficult to achieve, but are very possible.
That's another thing i wanted to mention, the animations for Takedowns (one button melee kills) change all the time, depending on your stance and the enemies position at the time, i counted at least 40 different takedown animations throughout the game, which was impressive because they didn't get old watching the same one over and over.
To put this simply, i enjoyed this game alot more than i enjoyed the previous title i reviewed, Singularity.

Story: 6.5/10  
AI: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Voice: 8/10    
Controls: 5/10    
Models: 5.5/10  
Level Design: 6.5/10  
Textures: 6/10  
Technical Complexity: 6.5/10    
Replayability: 4/10    

Total: 62/100

Review #1: Kane & Lynch 1: Dead Men

Alright first and foremost, as this is my first review i'm still going to be refining the format in which i review games with.

Each review i will start by having the setup i've used to play the game. That excludes my actual computer specs which can be seen on the right.

Platform: PC
Type of controller: 360 Controller
Install time: Approx 7mins
Dependancies
(Included in installation): MSVC++RT 2008, GFWL
Notes about installation:
The version of GFWL that was included with the setup is very outdated and requires 3 seperate updates to become up-to-date which = 3 restarts of the game.
Also the first run of the game (without GFWL updates) i crashed when the FMV started playing in the background while i had GFWL open.
Also to note, i didn't have GFWL installed before installing this game which may have contributed to the initial run CTD

Game website: http://www.kaneandlynch.com
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_%26_Lynch:_Dead_Men

----------------------------------------------------------------

I'll start off by saying i won;t be posting any boring plot summary, you can get that info at the above links.

At first glace, Kane & Lynch seemed like it would be a thrilling and entertaining game. How wrong i was at that impression.
Kane & Lynch starts out with an escape mission, as your revived by Lynch and escape.
Basically it just goes downhill from there. Once you reach the Diner shit gets a bit frustrating. The hint system is bogus especially while using a 360 controller.
Now i will quickly explain why i am using a 360 controller, well the main reason is i love playing Third Person Shooters, Racing & Puzzle games with my 360 controller, i have been a console gamer for alot longer than a PC gamer, and i feel more comfortable using one in those particular genres.

Back to the mission, right outside that diner is the next objective, that is of coarse if you take the time to hold down the left stick, which also happens to be sprint so you have ot be standing still to bring up the hud with the minimap and objective icon in the world space.
After dying twice there because it was either stop and look at the map and die or run around and try and find what to do and die, outside more police were gathering around to my right.
I killed a swat team guy and ran up to grab his gun, only to be met with an invisible clip wall. Ah yes clipping, thou art a heartless bitch. All i can say gamers is get used to this, because it happens throughout the game.
By the time we had actually escaped i wasn't very entertained at that point and honestly the game struggled to entertain me at all.

Another problem i discovered early in the game is that using the aim button (Right click or left trigger) has no effect on accuracy at all.
So because there is a constant white dot for a crosshair you can pretty much run and gun without needing to use button aiming much.

Which brings me to my next problem/annoyance. The cover system. I was warned of this but i don't think i was quite prepared for just how bad it is.
There are great examples of games that don't require a button to go into cover, that by simply pushing foward against a wall will put you into cover, but oh no Kane & Lynch have to go and make an even worse system.
That's right the covering system appears to be dynamic in this, that is to say the game is apperntly coded to know when you want to go in cover.
It of course does not do this and when it does you will regret it's even there because of a crucial timing moment that your all of a suddenly popped into cover..

Now the next issue i have with the game is the order system. Yes not only do you have to put up with all these annoyances you also have to order Lynch around aswell.
In principle this works i mean Rainbow Six did a pretty good job of it. Buuut Kane & Lynch fails again where other games like Socom and R6 have succeeded.
It has a very similar system to R6 with pressing a button over an enemies head for your ally to engage them or looking at a world space point and pressing a different button to order them to move there, quite simple in theory.
But of course this game almost forces you to do all the work because your ally AI is so incapable of doing the simple task you assign them you end up giving up and telling them to stay put while you go ahead.

Now onto the technical side of things, while this may be interesting for some, other may find it boring.
I am going to write this next paragraph from a developer standpoint. Basically giving credit where credit is due.

Well the first thing i noticed about this game was a heavy use of normal maps. Now that can work to some games advantages, games like Unreal Touranment 3 or Crysis make heavy use of normal mapping.
However Kane & Lynch seem to forget about the rest of the world and just use heavy normal maps on the characters.
As mentioned earlier, the clipping was very bad almost from the first level. Developers should realise that if your going to put player clips in a level, you should at least mask them up with a fence or a row of cars or at least something to visually aid the player in showing there is a barrier there.
One instance i talked about earlier with killing the swat member really showed me the lack of attention clipping got during development.

Moving onto the difficulty. The difficulty in this game seems like it has menapause. One part of a mission is so easy you could do it blindfolded, then the next part you die 2 or 3 times without even knowing what to do because of the stupid hint system.
Also some areas you can run and gun quite easily and take down a roomfull of police, the next time you try that the game is not so forgiving and you die almost instantly with no change in the amount of police or their weapons.
Speaking of menapausal symptoms, both the animations and visual effects in this game are all over the place with quality aswell. The explosions and fire look like they were done in 5 minutes on Particle Illusion where things like glash shattering is actually quite satisfying.
The animations in some points are quite good but in others are really sloppy and there were multiple times when characters were speaking and their lips were'nt moving.
During the mission when your in the back of the Van just after escaping the vault, everytime the van made a left turn, Lynch would clip through me and fill up my screen so i couldn't see.

Sound design is yet another menapausal subject. The voice acting is very good, however the repeating lines of what Kane & Lynch say can get repeatative. A thing to note with the sound design, "impact" sounds are way too soft.
The voice acting & other effects like bullet fire are fine in terms of volume but it takes away the "impact" of the actual "impact" when the sound is low and you just see it visually, impacts especially close to the camera should be loud to signify an actual impact not just a nudge.

Finally the story and character development isn't that interesting either. After 90 minutes of playing i still didn't care for Kane, wasn't really interested in what his story was.
The script writing was also sub-par, for example at one point Kane tells Lynch to calm down, then 5 minutes later Kane is going psycho saying that he has flipped out and Lynch is the one telling him to calm down.
If this game wasn't trying to be serious i would of thought that was funny but it was just hypocratic bullshit just to make the player seem like the good guy but also tough...

My closing statement will be this game seriously needs to pick an era. Not only did i not find it entertaining, it wasn't really fun either. Nearly every mission i played felt like a chore, and i gave up 90mins into the story.

Story: 2/10
AI: 3.5/10
Sound: 5/10
Voice: 8/10
Controls: 5/10
Models (Characters): 7.5/10
Models (Props): 4/10
Textures: 7/10
Technical Complexity: 6.5/10
Replayability: 1/10 -- Won't be playing this again, just doesn't interest me at all.

Total: 49.5/100