James Bond 007: Blood Stone

Only thing i found annoying is that one guy you think is the main villain then another then another and it was really repetitive. However the gameplay , controls and everything else was pretty good.

Finally a game without being adapted from a movie first. I think its a pretty solid action game in a fantastic world of James Bond even if the story is pretty classic: we see all characters in the james bond movies and i enjoyed to finish the game and wanted to know how it will end. Enjoyed the fight scenes too. The "mise en scene"is pretty good too. I recommend it.

You play through the whole single player campaign on the agent difficulty and not use one focus aim except nearer the end when you have to take out two or three men with laser sight sniper rifle's - using the focus aim feature is the only way of killing them then moving on. Focus aim slow's the action down to get a decent targeted hit.

The game is rather linear, meaning, it is a far cry from a sandbox game so you stay on a straight and narrow path. Think 'Gears Of War' or other less popular game's like Blood Stone such as 'Tomb Raider' and '50 Cent: Blood On The Sand'.

The cover art on the cover of the case look's a bit budget. But hey, it work's for me.

I also own Quantum Of Solace but the first time I played that game it was really doing some unusual thing's making me unable to continue playing.

Just go and buy it from your local EB or online. A bit of a cheap thrill, look at it that way.

When I saw the announcement of Blood Stone, I thought it was going to be like Quantum of Solace, fun but not worthy. Well I played the game and I was impressed.

The story is very well done, all you have to know it's like a movie plot and not a game plot (the cut scene's aren't short but are long, enjoyable and show the true Bond movie spirit).

The game play is very well done, simple but effective. You have incredible take down attacks, Slow Motion (Bond Vision) and a very well done cover system:

Takedown attacks - The Takedown attacks work perfectly, all you have to do is approach to your enemy, simply press "F" (PC) and Bond does the rest. The animations are very well done and it's so fun to do it that sometimes (in Easy difficulty of course) I get out of cover just to do a take down attack.

Bond Vision - The Bond Vision it's very easy to earn and to use. To earn it you have to do take down attacks, each take down attack gives you one focus point (you can store up to three focus points) and you spend them, by pressing "Left CTRL" (PC), then Bond will auto aim to the head of the enemy, then press button 0 of the mouse (PC) and fire.

Cover System - The cover system it's very well done and very easy to do. When you are near a wall press "Space" (PC) to cover, but the best thing of the Cover System is the ability to go cover to cover.

The driving it's really nothing special, all you have to do is accelerate and dodge the obstacles. The driving missions are the one of the things that I hate from the game, the amount of times that I loosed due to the exaggeration of the destruction making me sometimes unable to see anything, turns the driving levels annoying.

The graphics are really nothing special, they give me the impression that the game was made in 2007/08. The characters model don't seem real and the moods are very unreal (sometimes I can't tell if Bond is angry or is neutral).

The sound it's good but not impressive, the dialogs are good and the music gives a true feeling that we are playing a Bond game.

In general, comparing to Quantum of Solace, the game is very impressive, it has some flaws but gives the impression we are watching an interactive James Bond movie.

It took me a decade after this game came out to finally pick it up and give it a try and boy am I impressed and angry at myself for not getting it sooner. If I had to justify myself I would say its because I played Quantum of Solace and while it was cool for what it was, it was just a little too close Call of Duty for my liking so I thought Blood Stone would be the same causing me not to rush to play it but boy I couldnt have been more wrong.

A welcomed change is the return to 3rd person as it really compliments the chase sequences and takedowns and just he overall fast pace that a Daniel Craig Bond game needs. And although it is a faster paced game it still has some strong stealth elements that are not exclusive to this game. Take downs and silencers are your main tools to staying silent so if you've played any other Bond games you are familiar with the stealth in Blood Stone which im not gonna say its a bad thing because I'd rather that than shitty forced stealth sections that go on for half an hour with little or no checkpoints in between.

I would certainly rank Blood Stone among the creme of the crop in the Bond games simply for the way it captures the feeling of the Craig films and as I play this game I cant help but feel more and more excited for IO Interactive's upcoming Project 007 which I hope will breathe new life into the James Bond video game market with recent game technology and developers that we know actually care about the quality of the games we could be in for perhaps the best Bond game since Goldeneye or the biggest letdown since the Goldeneye remaster. Only time will tell.