Dr. K's Waiting Room

Quick Facts:
When Activision secured the rights to the James Bond franchise, they immediately developed a videogame tie-in to the largely divisive Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008), handing the project to Treyarch. Their Call of Duty (Various, 2003 to present) game engine provided a basis for enemy behaviours and gameplay mechanics. Though reluctant, star Daniel Craig also appeared in and offered feedback on the game, though Quantum of Solace released to mixed reviews that criticised the rushed narrative and repetitive gameplay.

Gameplay and Power-Ups:
Quantum of Solace is a first-person shooter (FPS) that retells key events of the movie of the same name, while also featuring a massive interlude that recaps Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006). For anyone hoping for a classic FPS 007 experience, you may be disappointed to learn that Quantum of Solace has more in common with the Call of Duty games, setting a precedent for Activision’s subsequent 007 titles in the process. Accordingly, players fire with the Right Trigger, reload with X, toss grenades and flashbangs and such with the Right Bumper, and press the left stick to briefly sprint. You use the Left Trigger to “aim down the sights”, using this alongside a mild auto aim to quickly target enemies even when they’re behind cover, while the Left Bumper switches weapons (of which you can carry only three). Bond vaults over obstacles and gaps with Y, crouches with B to either sneak up on enemies or use cover, and “snaps to” cover with A. While under cover, players can either pop up to return fire, shoot around whatever they’re hiding behind, or use A to quickly dash to alternative cover, with the game adopting a third-person perspective for these moments. The directional pad (D-pad) alters your weapon’s fire rate and equips a silencer (if possible) and cycles through your different grenades. Bond can bring up his hand-dandy smart phone with the “View” button, receiving an overview of his objectives, cycling through any security cameras he’s hacked, reading data files, and consulting a pretty substandard map as a compass guides you towards your objectives. By default, Bond automatically regains health when taking cover or staying out of harm’s way, though Quantum of Solace is pretty generous with its checkpoints so it’s hardly an inconvenience when you die.

When sneaking up on enemies, players can press in the right stick to perform a silent “takedown”. This initiates a quick-time event (QTE) where you must hit the right button to subdue your target, though enemies will be alerted if they spot the body, if you make too much noise, or if you’re spotted by cameras. Thus, it’s better to disable these by holding X when prompted rather than shooting them. Bond also shimmies along balconies to bypass guards, with the game often employing a picture-in-picture perspective to make it easier to time when to hop past windows and such. Occasionally, players must maintain their balance on beams using a pendulum mechanic, jump larger gaps with Y when prompted, and use a mounted turret to mow down enemies with no danger of it overheating. X interacts with the environment, retrieves phones for data files, activates switches, opens gates, and hacks PCs. When used on certain locks, a hacking mini game is initiated where you must press a direction on the D-pad when the number appears in green. Naturally, Bond has a small arsenal of weapons to choose from, either by grabbing guns dropped by enemies or opening special crates. You’ve got his standard-issue Walther PP9, of course, and similar variants alongside the high-impact Super Magnum, two heavy-duty shotguns, and a super fun grenade launcher. There are a couple of sniper rifles, with Bond able to hold his breath for a short time to steady his shot, and a whole bunch of machine and submachine guns. Some come with silencers and special scopes, some burn through ammo faster than others, and some are pretty weak and inaccurate or take longer to reload. I quite enjoyed the Uzi-like Mantis, the hefty TLD22, and the heavy-duty 8-CAT, but the M14 can go die in a ditch. You won’t have to worry about buying upgrades or add-ons or anything so just grab your favourite weapon and go for it.

While some sections promote stealth, being spotted usually just raises an alarm and sees more enemies swarm in, which can end your run pretty quickly so it’s better to pick enemies off with your silenced PP9 or sniper rifle. When stealth is necessary, you must crouch-walk around deactivating cameras and subduing enemies, though this can be tricky if you’re impatient like me. Other times, you’re forced to “survive” against waves of enemies who dive and crouch behind cover or toss grenades if they see you camping. You can shoot electrical boxes and explosive targets to thin out their numbers or occasionally shoot specific targets to drop boats onto them or collapse their rickety platforms. When Dominic Greene’s elaborate estate catches fire in the finale, you must shoot fire extinguishers to dose the flames, crawl though vents in the science centre, and quickly take out enemies before they separate your speeding train from Vesper Lynd’s. You get thirty seconds to do this and there are other similarly timed challenges to contend with, like when you’re given twenty seconds to run, crouch, and escape the tunnels before turncoat Craig Mitchell sets off his explosives or forty-five seconds to kill Greene. There are a couple of chase sequences, with the game (mostly) recreating the famous parkour chase from Casino Royale, forcing players to take alternative paths when the way is blocked or the ground gives beneath them, or when you chase Mitchell across the rooftops and through the houses of Siena. To infiltrate the opera house, players must sneak around disabling cameras and putting down enemies, heading under the docks and manipulating the gantries with switches, and finally sidling along on precarious ledges to avoid being spotted by snipers. The train missions see you taking ladders to the roof to take out and get the drop on enemies, you must snipe the guards outside the science centre, and stumble across a busy road to cure Bond of his poisoning in Casino Royale.

Presentation:
Quantum of Solace does a fairly decent job of bringing the movie’s locations and major action sequences to life, with environments showing a lot of life and detail if not really rewarding or promoting exploration. It tells an extremely truncated version of one of the weaker Bond stories, jumping from place to place and moment to moment and assuming the player is familiar with the film before derailing things to flashback to Casino Royale. When Bond and his MI6 cohorts do appear, they all reflect the likenesses of their actors but are little more than emotionless marionettes, quickly running through key moments of the plot to get back to the action. To make matters worse, most cutscenes are simply voiceovers placed over animated menus as MI6 and Mister White review or listen in on Bond’s actions. As ever, this remains a disappointingly cheap way to advance the plot, so I generally just skipped these when allowed. On the plus side, the movie’s awful theme song is replaced by a far less grating alternative from Kerli, the classic Bond themes punctuate the action, and Bond’s death animation is delivered through the classic gun barrel sequence. Enemies are quite lively, wandering around without a care in the world and leaping into action when they spot you, diving to and shooting around cover and even climbing ladders after you. They occasionally ragdoll about, comically toppling over balconies and such, which is always fun to see. Two of my favourite moments were when the drugged Bond stumbles through Casino Royale, his vision blurred and his body woozy, and your desperate climb up a sinking building in Venice. You also Vesper through the streets, automatically alternating between armed and unarmed if civilians are about, and I was very impressed with the opera house sequence. The environment is large and ominous, with opera music echoing in the background, and Bond must carefully sneak about behind the scenes to progress.

After recreating the ending of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace opens with an all-out firefight at Mr. White’s luxurious estate. You start in the gardens, blasting baddies between flowerbeds, through the greenhouse, and through Mr. White’s fully stocked wine cellar. A new version of the film’s title sequence follows this and then you’re chasing Mitchell through claustrophobic caverns and across rooftops in a pretty impressive sequence as the environment is full of market stalls, drying clothes, and the sounds of football from televisions. The sinkhole mission is unremarkable by comparison though there is a section where you briefly protect Camille Montes from Greene’s goons and it leads to a Casino Royale flashback that starts with an exciting and fairly accurate recreation of the parkour sequence, with you crashing, jumping, and balancing about a construction site, and leads you into the visually unique science centre. The airport sequence is a stealth mission in the first half and a firefight in the second, with you frantically clambering up stairs to take out the would-be suicide pilot. The train mission was once of the most visually impressive as you start in the passenger carriages with Vesper and venture onto the roof during a torrential downpour, hopping to a cargo train and picking off goons as you go. While we never see the poker game, players do sneak Bond into Casino Royale, pushing laundry carts, shimmying across ledges, and using the vents to reach the spa for a firefight. The visuals take a bit of a hit on the barge, though it does add to the tension as you race to find Vesper and the Venice mission makes up for it by being in broad daylight. Like the movie, the game culminates with Bond and Camille infiltrating Greene’s impressive, ring-shaped Eco Hotel lair, which both catches fire and is rocked by explosions that force you to find alternative paths to avoid being roasted.

Enemies and Bosses:
As one of the duller James Bond movies to adapt to a videogame, Quantum of Solace features a forgettable slew of goons to mow down. While they will take cover, hunt you down, and toss grenades and their gunfire can ignite explosive barrels, their behaviour is generally predictable, and most can be put down with a few well-placed shots. If you’re spotted, they will shout for backup, generally bringing in better armed goons or perhaps guys in body armour, so it’s usually advised that you use stealth. At first, you’re just gunning down Mr. White’s bodyguards, but you do attack his helicopter to keep him from escaping, at least, and Bond can be easily put down if he runs head-first into an ambush. As you pursue Mitchell, he plants explosives and calls in goons to hold you off, with the game occasionally enforcing a “bullet time” sequence or rattling your senses when they use flash grenades. As ever, snipers can be the bane of your existence, especially at the opera house and science centre, so you’ll want to master the shimmying mini games and the sniper rifle to even the odds there. The science centre, especially, can swarm with machine gun-wielding guards if you’re not careful and the level layouts don’t always make it easy to spot who’s shooting you or from where. Even regular enemies can be troublesome on the train mission as you’re facing a strict timer to reach Vesper and they’re firing from all sides, making it easy to get caught in a crossfire. When infiltrating Greene’s Eco Hotel, you’ll encounter more of his “elite” guards (heavily-armed, armoured military types) who take a few more shots to put down. When pursuing Vesper through Venice, you’ll often get caught in a kill box as enemies bustle around courtyards and stick to the upper levels.

Sadly, boss battles are few in Quantum of Solace, with the game generally tossing in a timed challenge, a QTE, or forcing you to fend off waves of enemies either with your equipped weapons or, one time, a mounted turret. Helicopters crop up a couple of times, with you easily downing Mr. White’s chopper by blindly blasting at the cockpit and later using a convenient grenade launcher to take out another chopper at the science centre. This is a tougher objective, however, as the available cover doesn’t help much against the chopper’s guns and enemies drop in to cause you more grief. Another one pops up in the sinkhole mission, though there’s more cover and you can use a sniper rifle to target the pilot. Other bosses are reduced to simple QTE sequences that somewhat mirror the fight scenes from both movies. You battle Mitchell in a crumbling tower, for example, and machete-wielding Steven Obanno in a staircase at the Casino Royale. Naturally, you’ll want to pay attention to what’s happening as you’ll fail if you press the wrong button and you’re sometimes asked to mash a button. While Vesper’s busying drowning, Bond is jumped by Adolph Gettler, who stands there and unloads with his pistol. Since Bond is so desperate and grief-stricken, you’re only option is to take aim and fire with a nearby nail gun before you’re killed. As in the movie, Camille finishes off the depraved General Luiz Medrano, but you must shoot an explosive target to give her the chance. These same targets appear when you finally have your showdown with Greene, who wisely takes the high ground and calls in his elite guards to bombard you with gunfire. Since there’s plenty of cover and your objective is to kill Greene, and you only have forty-five seconds before the Eco Hotel explodes, you can just shoot the explosive targets to put him down and then make a break for it with Camille for a different, but equally unsatisfying ending.

Additional Features:
There are fifty Achievements in Quantum of Solace. While many are now unobtainable as the Xbox Live network is down, these are still the only reason to sit through his forgettable game as they’re pretty simple. You get Achievements for completing each chapter and four for beating each difficulty mode. You’ll get an Achievement for finding some and all cell phones, hacking every lock, scoring fifty headshots, and executing fifty takedowns. Best of all, every level features a unique Achievement tied to it to encourage a replay (easily done after clearing the game and unlocking the chapter select). These require you to use only the P99 on the train, reach the Casino Royale spa and airport server room without being spotted, destroy every overhead light in the science centre, shoot down seven satellite dishes on the rooftops of Siena, and rescue Vesper in less than two minutes on the barge. The multiplayer mode offered standard options like free-for-all-team-based combat, and capture the flag. You could pick different maps based on the game’s missions, customise weapon loadouts, choose to play as either Bond/MI6 or the mysterious “Organisation”, and fight for control of the legendary Golden Gun or to disarm bombs. You would also earn points by playing the multiplayer mode, which could be spent on weapons, gadgets, and attachments, all for additional Achievements and to add a bit more spice to your deathmatches.  

Final Thoughts:
I first played Quantum of Solace years ago as part of my research for my Master’s degree (I did an essay about James Bond videogames). The experience was so shallow and by-the-numbers that I shied away from modern James Bond videogames for many years, only playing them out of sheer morbid curiosity or content for the website. Going back to it now, it’s not as bad as some later games (mainly because Bond isn’t using his damn cell phone for everything), but it’s still a dull and ultimately forgettable experience. It’s telling that so much of the game is based around Casino Royale as Quantum of Solace just isn’t interesting enough to carry the action. The gunplay and basic mechanics are serviceable, but the weapon selection is largely uninspired and there’s not a lot of meat on its bones as it’s simply another hastily thrown together cash-in title that ends up being a poor man’s Call of Duty. I could forgive the lifeless character models if Quantum of Solace didn’t cheap out with its fancy PowerPoint cutscenes, which are just so cheap and insulting that there’s little point in paying attention to the story. There’s little incentive to explore unless you’re desperate to find all those cell phones, what few “bosses” there are are just bog standard QTEs, and you’re barely encouraged to do more than just barge through all guns blazing. It’s a shame as the environments are pretty good, especially for the time, and there’s the ghost of some decent mechanics here. Sadly, knowing these would be both convoluted and driven into the ground by subsequent Bond games only drags Quantum of Solace down further as it set a bad standard for the franchise. As ever, you’re better off sticking to the classics rather than wasting time on this one, unless you fancy boosting your Gamer Score for an affordable price.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Were you also disappointed by Quantum of Solace? Did you enjoy the Call of Duty-inspired gameplay or do you agree that it set a bad precedent for the franchise? What did you think to the stealth mechanics and gimmicks like the hacking mini game and balance beams? Did you also find the Casino Royale missions the most enjoyable? Did you ever play the multiplayer mode and, if so, how was it? Which James Bond videogame is your favourite? How are you celebrating 007 this month? Share your thoughts down below, check out my other James Bond content, and go suggest anther Bond videogame for me to review by donating to my Ko-Fi.