James Bond 007: Blood Stone

As for the acting talent involved, it's pretty much identical to that of GoldenEye, and it's interesting to see the respective developers rubbernecking at each other's games, having both essentially been given the same raw materials and told to go away and come back with something good.

The original script from stalwart Bruce Feirstein takes Bond on an obligatory travelogue through such Champions League hotspots as Athens, Istanbul, and Monaco, as well as the sex tourist haven of Bangkok. And if you've just come in, there's also a bespoke Bond girl in the shape of East Coast (of Devon) songstress Joss Stone, who has also written the theme tune and sung the theme tune, along with Dave Stewart. Called "I'll Take It All", I've just listened to it fully expecting to hate it, but it actually sounds like a proper Bond theme. She's certainly got a set of lungs on her.

Cars! It would be a gross dereliction of duty for Bizarre Creations to make a Bond game without some driving sections, and it's reckoned to be roughly a 30/70 split between wheels and feet. Perhaps tellingly, the only hands-on action we're allowed is with a driving section, which features James Bond, in Siberia, in a car, chasing a train, being shot at by a helicopter. There's also a woman with him, which, given her baffling mid-Atlantic accent, may well be Joss Stone. In terms of handling it's definitely more Blur than Project Gotham Racing, and there is no need to enter the apex correctly in order to shave a hundredth of a second off your time.

The idea is to make you feel like you're pushing the car to the limit and teetering on the edge of disaster. It certainly achieves that, and indeed I teeter over the edge three times, sliding off the frozen tundra and into the drink, accompanied by some low-level swearing. When I finally get it right - by remembering not to crash - I catch up with the train and dramatically jump over it, flying through the air as the camera switches to a fully cinematic view.

Despite a traumatic flashback of Octopussy, it gives me a mild sense of euphoria - I'm doing it, I'm actually being Daniel Craig's James Bond. Not for long though, as I'm unceremoniously bundled out of my seat as a cut-scene kicks in, left only with a further reminder that it's masking the loading time for a seamless cinematic experience. Well done, keep that up.

Multiplayer is nowhere to be seen, but we are promised 16-player team-based action with MI6 taking on a bunch of mercenaries. And in a nice aspirational touch, the most efficient player in terms of kills-to-deaths ratio gets to automatically become (Daniel Craig's) James Bond. Men want to be him, women want to be with him, and everyone wants a decent Bond game, particularly in the absence of another film on the horizon.