They'll be sorted out eventually, of course, and James Bond will return to the big screen. But the question is will anyone feel his absence at all? Fans of the series left anxiously awaiting Daniel Craig's third outing can find solace in the knowledge that there's not one, but two Bond games due out before the end of year. Bizarre Creations' Blood Stone is a thirdperson action game hoping`to blend the gunplay, car chases and brutal hand-to-hand fight scenes which define Daniel Craig's Bond into a single, fluid experience. Fellow British dev Eurocom, meanwhile, is crafting a new take on GoldenEye, the greatest game made to date. But what's the enduring appeal of Ian Fleming's Cold War creation? The world which he was born is long gone, but before he was officially rebooted as blonder model, he was an oddly ageless hero. One man who can tell us is screenwriter Bruce Feirstein, who, penned Pierce Brosnan's first Bond movies (including GoldenEye), has written the script for both Bizarre's title Eurocom's updated take on his screenplay.
Scanning these spots and generating evidence is as simple as pressing a button, though each piece discovered fleshes out backstory detail which can be accessed through a menu screen. It isn't long before Bond's prying arouses the suspicion of the workers, who take the rather incriminating step of locking him in a portable cabin and attempting to drop him, via crane, into a pit. One daring escape later, however, and the mechanics that make up the bulk of Blood Stone's on-foot gameplay emerge.
"We've worked with [Daniel Craig's stunt double] Ben Cooke", says Nick Davies, Blood Stone's producer at Bizarre. "He shows us exactly what Bond would do — it's great." Once the enemy's disabled, Bond fluidly slips back behind the cover he just leapt from, avoiding the trail of bullets spat from the rifle of one of the unconscious guard's comrades. While standard stop-and-pop gunplay is an option, Bizarre shows us the different ways a scenario such as this can play out over the course of a couple of checkpoint restarts. Cautious players can, through a mixture of cover-based takedown manoeuvres and judicious use of the smartphone, stalk their way to the next objective — leaving nothing but a trail of snapped necks and crushed windpipes behind them. Bizarre's demonstration of this approach ends with Bond charging at the last man stading and sliding — feet first — over his cover and into his face with a move which es smoothly from running into takedown animation.
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James Bond 007 Blood Stone Walkthrough Game Guide
Later, Bizarre shows us a level a little farther into the game, in which Bond sneaks into a casino in Monaco. The opening cutscene gives us a glimpse of Blood Stone's Bond girl, Nicole Hunter, voiced by English singer-songwriter Joss Stone. Hunter doesn't stick around long (she heads into the casino to divert attention) but the brief glimpses we get suggest a character who'll fit perfectly into the recent films' trend for slightlyhaughty females. It's also in this section we're shown how Blood Stone's combat mechanics will work when applied to a setting more conducive to the stealthy approach.
Back in Istanbul, Bond's battle through the construction site—which includes a segment in which he flees an absurdly sized piece of underground digging machinery — leads, as these things do, into a car chase through the streets of the city. And an awfully pretty one at that, too, the scenery flashing by in a mixture of saturated browns and blues which capture the palette of 2008's Quantum Of Solace. And, having watched that film in preparation for our visit, one of the most immediately appreciable aspects of Bizarre's chase scenes is the fact it's possible to tell what's going on. And an awful lot is going on. As Bond and his quarry hurtle through the streets, to the docks and out again before reverting to an on-foot chase through some ruins, there's nary a single piece of scenery that isn't destroyed. Sparks — and bullets — fly, café chairs and tables are upturned. Petrol stations explode. Even "a John Woo-style flock of doves is scattered. Occasionally the game slows down to capture a single moment of action — a jeep packed full of bad guys flipping in mid-air, for instance — but most of the time demands that players remain constantly aware of their surroundings, and monitor the interplay between these scripted hazards and other risks on the road, such as traffic. It's a unique experience every time. There are scripted elements, but in terms of the movement and behaviour of the vehicles, you get different experiences.
To stretch a Bond plotline over a multiple hour game, was tremendously freeing according the the writer! You get to do things which wouldn't appear in the movies. In the GoldenEye game you meet a former United States general who now runs security in Dubai. He shows you around a little a bit, and he's a somewhat wry, humorous character. In a movie he would have had, like, four lines, but we spend a little time with him." Feirstein also dismisses the idea that writing a game requires a plotline to be stretched too thinly: "In terms of script, the game isn't really longer. The difference between a two-hour movie and a 12-hour game is the missions and impediments."
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