James Bond 007: Blood Stone Review

By Dan Whitehead Published 3 November, 2010

Double-oh dear?

Version tested: Xbox 360

With James Bond's cinematic future in limbo thanks to the bankruptcy of MGM, Activision's blockbuster license finds itself in an unusually strong position. Based on an original story by an actual Bond screenwriter, starring Daniel Craig and Judi Dench, Blood Stone is this year's official Bond adventure by default.

Can videogames fill the gap left by Hollywood's flaky finances? Bizarre Creations has certainly gone all out to make it look that way. With globe-trotting locations, bombastic set pieces and a lavish credits sequence set to a new Bond theme song from Joss Stone and that bloke from Eurythmics, Blood Stone looks and sounds the part.

Sadly, the game beneath the glamour isn't quite as impressive. There are two main gameplay elements, shuffled together as the episodic plot requires. For the most part, it's a third-person shooter with a half-hearted stealth flavour. You enter an area and try to remain hidden for as long as possible, picking off enemies with silenced headshots and melee takedowns. Once spotted, you're able to fight back using, well, noisy headshots and melee takedowns.

It's functional and adequate, but this style of play has been run into the ground over the last five years or so, and Blood Stone has neither the depth nor polish to stand out from the crowd. Entering or leaving cover is an awkward, gluey affair, too heavy to cope with the demands of a room filled with AK-47-wielding henchmen. Strangely for a game which often foregrounds stealth play, there's no crouch command. You can dash laterally from cover to nearby cover, but for all other movement, you're painfully exposed. Once you're out of cover, Bond can only stand tall and proud, strolling about like a peacock with a bullseye on his forehead.

3

Craig's voice work is solid, and the animation lifelike. Shame they've made him look like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neumann.

Every hand-to-hand victory earns you a Focus Kill token, which can be used to trigger an obligatory slow-motion instant-death targeting mode, but it's rarely required. Bad guys dip in and out of cover, shuffle backwards and forwards, and occasionally lob a feeble grenade but they ultimately prove no more troublesome than their famously disposable big-screen counterparts. It's surprising how many you can polish off simply by hiding behind a doorway and battering them to death with a single button press as they obligingly walk up to you, one at a time.

The game is often confined to narrow corridors and small rooms, where only objects and features that are essential to progress can be interacted with. Occasionally you'll get the chance to pick one of two paths leading to two objectives, but as both have to be completed, it's an illusion of choice. Ditto for the sporadic areas where you're able to attack from the left or right. It looks like you're making a tactical decision, but there's no real depth to the combat. Nor are there any anterooms to explore or alternate paths to try – you just keep moving forwards, admiring the scenery but rarely engaging with it.

Any movement beyond the advance-and-shoot routine is scripted to a frustrating degree. If Bond can climb, grab or jump from something, then an on-screen prompt tells him to, and you press the button to trigger the animation. There's no reason for this to happen unless that's the way ahead, so you're constantly being led by the nose rather than working things out for yourself.

One of the key factors in Bond's appeal is that he's cool under fire and always knows what to do. By reducing 007 to a rodent in a rat run with big signs saying "CHEESE THIS WAY", Blood Stone never lets you play with that fantasy, never lets you feel like you're the one reacting to each situation with unflappable aplomb. It even commits the cardinal sin of having Bond's coolest fights and stunts take place in cut-scenes rather than under player control.

For all other requirements – objective markers, collectable intel, enemy locations – Bond has an app. A prod on the down arrow calls up his smartphone which magically sprinkles the screen with useful information, directing you to dropped weapons or, just in case you've somehow got lost in the linear corridors, waypoints to the next area. A couple of times you'll also use it to trigger a button-matching hacking mini-game but, like so much else, it's a thin facsimile of a gameplay feature rather than anything substantial.

At least the shooty-shoot stuff is moderately entertaining in a "that'll do" sort of way. Disappointingly for a Bond game developed by the studio behind Project Gotham Racing, the car chase sequences are the weakest parts of the game. Oh, they look the business, with massive explosions and gleaming sports cars that get gradually reduced to scrap, but even on the open road your life as a secret agent is painfully scripted.

The idea is to catch the other vehicle, of course, but this only happens when you reach the point where the game allows that to happen. What you're actually doing is keeping up with the other vehicle, and trying to react to the sequential obstacles the game throws in your way. Whether it's thin ice or an exploding petrol station, everything depends on being in the right place at the right time. Rather than a Bond-esque spin on Burnout's savage racing or Split/Second's epic destruction, you get driving sequences that have more in common with Stuntman's finickety precision or Alone in the Dark's crude herding.

In a flurry of smoke and flame, often with no clear view of what's ahead or where the next hazard will pop up from, if you opt to steer left rather than right then you'll crunch into scenery explicitly designed to spin you around and stop you dead in your tracks. It's irritating trial-and-error stuff, designed solely to look cool when you get it right, not to entertain while you get there.

4

Vehicle sections look awesome when watched as a video sequence, but aren't much fun to actually play.

All told, Blood Stone's 17 single-player levels offer generic amusements in line with the base requirements of the third-person action template, broken up by some explosive but fiddly driving chunks. The story they tell certainly resembles a Bond movie from a distance, but the moment-to-moment gameplay fails to capture his essence, so eager is it to lead you by the hand and hurry you along to the next room of dim-witted henchmen.

The multiplayer options extend to three game modes, comprising of the expected Team Deathmatch, a capture-the-flag style mission mode called Objective and Last Man Standing, which has no respawns. Like the single-player offering, it's thoroughly adequate but adds little of value to the overall experience. It's here because market research says that action game customers like to see a multiplayer option on the menu screen, not because somebody has found a particularly brilliant way of adapting Bond's singular world to the multiplayer arena.

Mostly, the game disappoints because it fails to pass the Brand Name Test. Would we still care if it wasn't James Bond? Almost certainly not. The shelves are full of identical or superior third-person shooters, and while Daniel Craig's taciturn voice work and Richard Jacques' sweeping orchestrations make the rote pop-and-headshot mechanisms seem a little more exciting than they really are, it's not enough to make Blood Stone more than a forgettable weekend diversion.

5 / 10

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About Dan Whitehead

Dan has been writing for Eurogamer since 2006 and specialises in RPGs, shooters and games for children. His bestest game ever is Julian Gollop's Chaos.

Read more articles from Dan by visiting the Dan Whitehead archive page.

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Comments (58) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • sfp_noodle #1 2 years ago

    Looks like Goldeneye is the only chance of having a decent 007 game. It's funny that you have to go 13 years back to find quality. Says a lot about the standard of today's games.

  • bluem4gic #2 2 years ago

    and the Goldeneye Review?...............

  • covfan #3 2 years ago

    I spy a poor game.

  • TopKatt #4 2 years ago

    Fingers crossed for Goldeneye.

  • lcmnick #5 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 12:48:44 14-04-2012

  • Ultrasoundwave #6 2 years ago

    I'll give it a rental because, at the end of the day, its still James fucking Bond!
    Edited by Ultrasoundwave at 03/11/10 @ 14:37

  • StolenGlory #7 2 years ago

    5/10?

    Better than Mafia II then.
    Edited by StolenGlory at 03/11/10 @ 14:14

  • Deckard1 #8 2 years ago

    Was always on the cards to be honest.

  • Beano #9 2 years ago

    Yickes... Should have been called "Bloody Stones".

  • beastmaster #10 2 years ago

    Is this all down to the developers? I think if they had the freedom to do what they wanted, it would have been a much different game. It seems to me that the game or Bond producers laid down the law with this."Must have this set peice followed by...". The Club crossed with PGR in a 007 shell would have been magnificent.

    Perhaps I'm wrong. Either way, it'll have to sell as it seems to be the trend that you're only as good as your last game. I'd it doesn't perform, could be trouble.

  • coolbritannia #11 2 years ago

    hardly surprising. Goldeneye will be shit as well.

  • Shakey_Jake33 #12 2 years ago

    On the positive, it's nice to see Richard Jacques is still around in the industry!

  • Goodfella #13 2 years ago

    Played it, 5/10 is spot on.

  • geeza2020 #14 2 years ago

    007: License to make average games.

  • zisssou #15 2 years ago

    Bring back James Pond

  • Zerobob #16 2 years ago

    "Looks like Goldeneye is the only chance of having a decent 007 game. It's funny that you have to go 13 years back to find quality. Says a lot about the standard of today's games."

    Yep, it's a bit like Rogue Squadren from 10 years ago also being the only good Star Wars game, also strangely on the N64.

    And to think I always regretted a little not having bought a Playstation instead of an N64 and being able to play loads of copied games, but now when I look back all I remember are awesome classics like Goldeneye, Mario 64 and Zelda OoT.

  • Darren #17 2 years ago

    Sounds like a disappointment but ironically despite less than impressive review scores, the license alone may ensure that Bizarre Creations have their first major hit in years after the lukewarm sales of Blur and PGR 4. If so then I doubt either Bizarre Creations or Activision will care about the reviews.

    It does sound from the review like Bizarre Creations had the right ideas of what makes a good James Bond movie but, unfortunately, forgot that this is a game intended to be played and enjoyed. The review reads like the game almost plays itself.

  • RedSparrows #18 2 years ago

    The 'this generation is poor' sentiment is a little hasty when we get a bad Bond game, no? Of far more relevance and concern is Bizarre's future. Hope they get over this.

  • GAmbrose #19 2 years ago

    @Zerobob
    Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
    X-Wing vs Tie Fighter
    Dark Forces
    Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
    Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
    Knights of the old Republic
    Lego Star Wars

    No?

  • Machetazo #20 2 years ago

    Based on what I just watched, online, I'd have stuck this with a 4/10 buyer beware. I didn't feel was even average, in terms of competence and entertainment value, compared to its peers. It was sporting structure and mechanics of a second-rate Syphon Filter (what I've seen of the driving looks a lot better) But, it looked borderline awful. No way!

  • Skywise #21 2 years ago

    Even though this is a movie license game I had high hopes because of the developers involved.
    I hope Bizarre Creations get over this...

  • Eldritch #22 2 years ago

    Craig looks more like Putin.

  • schnide #23 2 years ago

    Sadly, I saw this one coming. This seems like a classic case of game developers trying to be film developers without fully understanding the strength of the license, or the strength of what games do better than films.

  • paulf #24 2 years ago

    anyone remember 'view to a kill' on the speccy? now that was a really bad Bond game

  • urban #25 2 years ago

    well that wasn't obvious.

  • Soton4084 #26 2 years ago

    *sigh* I'm fed up of mediocre Bond games which always follow a similar formula. Generic shooter with a tacked on driving sequence.

    Goldeneye looks good, but sadly I don't have a Wii.

  • ZizouFC #27 2 years ago

    Bomb.... This games Bombed.

  • Ryboy #28 2 years ago

    As if this was ever gonna be any good.

  • coolbritannia #29 2 years ago

    Who's doing the negging? Goldeneye fans? I'm a Goldeneye fan, this new upcoming Goldeneye is NOT Goldeneye, so I guess it's tards doing the negging?

  • NimbusTLD #30 2 years ago

    Tomorrow, Bizarre announces that due to recent failures, they will concentrate on Geometry Wars franchise games for Kinect/Move.

    /cry

  • StolenGlory #31 2 years ago

    @coolbritannia

    Don't let the negging bother you so much. I'm inclined to believe it's just idle, fickle twats who put about as much thought into pressing that red '-' button as they do anything else in their lives.

    They're not looking to validate their own opinion (if they even have one) anymore than they are attempting to oppose your own in any sort of meaningful fashion

    I've long since gone past the point of trying to apply logic to the 'karma' system that the comments thread employs.
    Edited by StolenGlory at 03/11/10 @ 15:51

  • spekkeh #32 2 years ago

    Craig's voice work is solid, and the animation lifelike. Shame they've made him look like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neumann.

    WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN...

  • jack24 #33 2 years ago

    @Dellbingo

    You defend yourself by claiming your joke is good enough to be told twice in a couple of days. Fool. It wasn't.

  • Naptime #34 2 years ago

    Bizarre Creations really seems to be having trouble. Sales disasters like The Club and Blur, followed now by the seemingly mediocre Blood Stone cant be good for the once proud studio's future.

  • Whizzo #35 2 years ago

    The lack of a demo for something that should have a high profile was a bit of a warning.

  • aidey6 #36 2 years ago

    First SW: Unleashed II and now this, what's next on the disappointment list, please don't say NFS:HP....

    I presume Tony Hawk will be getting a similar score

    Oh well at least Activision have COD to keep them afloat

  • StanMadeley #37 2 years ago

    Yes, too scripted. Yes, not the best shooter. And yes, not brilliant as a stealth game. How can I agree with every part of a review yet at the same time think it misses that vital something? I had chance to play some of this and I can't wait for Friday so I can keep replaying certain levels with a big dumb grin on my face. I'm guessing that this might well become one of the best supposedly crap games I've ever played.

  • MiniAmin #38 2 years ago

    "I'm guessing that this might well become one of the best supposedly crap games I've ever played."

    5 = Average = not crap.

  • Uchikoma #39 2 years ago

    I was holding out for this being half-decent with BC at the helm, instead I'm left wondering what exactly went wrong.

    When I see a game like this from a developer that's produced pretty high quality games in the past I'm always curious as to what the real story is, lack of development time? Lack of creative freedom? It would be nice to find out somehow but I doubt we ever will.

  • darkmorgado #40 2 years ago

    I presume Tony Hawk will be getting a similar score

    After the mess that was Ride, 5/10 for Shred could actually be considered a comeback.

  • bwiancohen #41 2 years ago

    I was really looking forward to this. I think I may still invest in it as I have a ton of games to trade in so I wont feel the pinch too badly. Plus, any vids of gameplay that I have seen seem to be ok.

  • Retroid #42 2 years ago

    Oh Bizarre Creations.... what have they turned you into?

    :'(

  • Findus #43 2 years ago

    Completely agree Retroid.

    It's terrible, the once fantastic studio is allowing it's name to become synonymous with mediocrity. Does Acti OWN Bizarre? Is there any chance they could split and go back being independent?

    They don't deserve this.

  • makeamazing #44 2 years ago

    I know two people (not very well) who are saying they are really enjoying this game alot.... so it does seem some people are really liking it out there :D

  • Der_tolle_Emil #45 2 years ago

    Had no interest in this game so I'm not disappointed it didn't turn out great per se - although I am kind of worried about Bizarre Creations. I am a huge fan of PGR and I already had the feeling that they didn't really know what to do with Blur but at least managed to use their experience with racing games to their advantage. Too bad they didn't manage to do the same here because The Club wasn't that bad either.

    I really hope they can get their act together - I'm sure with the sales of Blur and this Activision will be a bit more hesitant to hand them another big project :(

  • LazyNinjaUk #46 2 years ago

    Gamespot were slightly more forgiving and gave this a 7.5. They said "it is a solid shooter with well integrated controls and cover system. A perfectly adequate if slightly unspectacular shooter."

    To me this sounds like what I was expecting anyway, as long as its not another 50 cent BoTS, I'll be happy.

  • Waldo #47 2 years ago

    I thought all UK-developed games got rated on a 7-10 scale around here?

  • Freek #48 2 years ago

    Strange that even without a movie deadline to push a rushed game out the door and a talented developer, we still get a mediocre "movie tie in" quality game.

  • trip919 #49 2 years ago

    This game is shit. *hangs from rafter*

  • menage #50 2 years ago

    I didn't even know this was releasing at all.

  • captainrentboy #51 2 years ago

    I played it for a bit today. 5 seems right, it doesn't really do anything badly, but, at the same time it doesn't excel in any area either. It's just another shooter.
    Although the 3 driving sections ive done so far were actually quite fun, good handling and not that difficult :/

  • GAmbrose #52 2 years ago

    No, on Eurogamer 5 means average.

    OTHER sites it means something else. Hence Gamespot's 7.5 is about equivalent to this score.

  • NBAoz #53 2 years ago

    I got this game yesterday and played it last night. The only criticisms I have are that the game is too easy even on the hardest difficulty (technically second hardest but you can't select the hardest until you complete the game), but it is still fun. It is never boring or frustrating, so for anyone out there looking for a game to RELIEVE stress then this is not a bad option. There is not much thinking involved either. Very much an auto pilot, tune out sort of game, but it does have very smooth gameplay and graphics. There is plenty of variety too to keep things interesting. I loved the speed boat chase sequence, however the driving bits are very unrealistic in the way the car handles. Another thing I really liked were the takedowns which reminded me of finishing moves in The Bourne Conspiracy game. I would rate this game 6 out of 10 so far, but have yet to finish it and play the multiplayer. I would also like to try playing this game on 007 difficulty once I unlock it and see if that improves the challenge.

  • DAN.E.B #54 2 years ago

    5/10 ?
    How Bizarre!?
    Edited by DAN.E.B at 04/11/10 @ 07:48

  • mashk #55 2 years ago

    5/10 ?
    How Bizarre!?

    : )

    Oh baby! you making me crazy.

  • Caspar_Esq. #56 2 years ago

    Sounds like a crap version of Alpha Protocol without any of the muliple storylines or RPG elements.

  • StanMadeley #57 2 years ago

    "5 = Average = not crap."

    Well, perhaps you're right. But in the screwed up world of review scores, I call 5 'crap', 7 'average', and anything above 'good'. And judging from the number of people deciding not to buy this based on a 5, I guess I'm not the only one.

  • LondonSquare82 #58 2 years ago

    Wow, missed this review when it came out. Good work from a dev team that is delivering this game nearly 18 months later than Activision had originally listed it as to retailers. From what I hear the devs were given a blank canvas on this one and it looks like they have painted it beige.