Quantum of Solace(Playstation 3) Review

This is kind of a hard game for me to review in some ways because while the game isn't "bad" and is mostly very polished and functional especially considering this is a movie tie in game and it is well made one, the game just feels very derivative a lot of the time, some aspects can be innovating but those parts suffer from lackluster execution.

On a surface level, the best way of describing Quantum of Solace is that it has Call of Duty's shooting mechanics with Rainbow 6 Vegas' cover mechanic with some QTE melee takedowns here and there. The thing with many of Activision's Bond games is that they tend to borrow from CoD pretty heavily, and while some might view this as lazy and derivative, I don't mind as much since this scripted rollar coaster ride approach very much fits the franchise it's based on. All though it can the borrowing of CoD can definately be felt at times. The good thing about QoS is that the guns feel very punchy and powerful and the shooting in general has a good amount of polish to it but the thing is much like the shooting in CoD games, it's very much just aim gun, whether it'd be through ADS or cover, shoot, get hit, regen health, rinse repeat, as a result the shooting can feel pretty one note and don't require much thought to dispatch enemies. To the game's credit, enemies will throw grenades and sometimes rush to your position while behind cover but it all feels like the bare minimum.

The level design is very much forcefully linear, not much exploring you can do, and in order to progress you need to wait for the next scripted trigger to happen. The most you can do is get collectibles that don't really change gameplay that much.

However much like a typical CoD campaign, the game does break up the pace with it's moment to moment shooting, there will on foot chases, QTEs, stealth sections, sniping sections, and for me, the much dreaded beam balancing mini games. The game also checkpoints really well and surprisingly better than a lot of Treyarch CoD games since this game was made by them.

This now leads to the negative, the stealth sections could've been potentially good pace breakers from the shooting but it's let down by inconsistent AI, lack of a visiblity indicator, and hiveminded AI. What I liked about the stealth that it felt like a proto Deus Ex Human Revolution. Bond has a cover mechanic, dashing from cover to cover system and third person takedowns(all though needing a QTE in QoS) much like Adam Jensen does in Deus Ex HR but Deus Ex HR has more consistent AI and an actual visiblity indicator by comparison. For example, in QoS, I was in an enemy's sightline for a few seconds and I didn't get alerted but I took down an enemy while there was cover nearby and then got alerted. Add to all this that everyone will be alerted after you kill one enemy seconds after being spotted, destroying a camera with a silenced pistol, or just trying to sneak around without all the guards' backs being turned and stealth just feels like an excuse for more shooting. Which really is a shame since it could've done what Deus Ex HR did before HR.

Another negative is that the story is very poorly told, it's told like a CoD game where characters will speak to each other or monologue during load screens but it's hard to tell what exactly is happening. Feels like it has the Goldeneye on the N64 problem where you need to watch the movies to get which is a shame since I think EA and Activision Bond games generally do a good job at avoiding this.

Overall, not a bad game, and I would sort of call it good, it's not going to set your world on fire, it didn't even do it at the time of release but if you can find this for cheap and want to beat something in a quick weekend, this is not a bad time, it's not a great game but it is at the very least a mostly competent one.