James Bond: Blood Stone (360)

Blood Stone is the most accurate recreation of a Bond film in a video game format. It captures everything that made the films so popular - the tongue in cheek humour, the over-the-top chases and the international plot that takes us all over the world.

The environments and graphics in the game are the first thing that caught my attention. The landscapes that make up the 5 levels of the game are split into different chapters, each diverse and unique - Istanbul, Siberia and Burma to name but a few. The attention to detail in each is fantastic. Even though you'll only catch a glimpse of some areas as you zoom past at 100mph you can tell that Bizzare Creations put a lot of care into creating a realistic, engrossing Bond experience.

The gameplay mirrors Gears of War in many ways. The crouch-poke out to shoot-crouch back gameplay is widely in use here. There's an emphasis placed on slow and steady gameplay. And it suits Bond well. The running-and-gunning approch that made up most past games doesn't feel quite as right as being stealthy, assessing the area and picking guys off one at a time. The controls work well and I think they improve on GoW in some ways. When behind cover, B is vault over and A is go round a corner. Assigning both abilities to one button in GoW leads to mistakes, here, it works well. The car sections, which are numerous, control very well and were enjoyable - to be expected as Bizarre mastered the MSR and PGR series. The guns are typical and most of the time you'll be using either a pistol or a machine gun, some more variety would have een nice.

The gun sounds are accurate and realistic, but don't quite pack a punch or feel like powerful machines. The sound accurately reflects the situations in the game and definitely add to the experience - during fast-paced driving sequences the music is up-tempo and dramatic, and during stealth missions it is suitably slow and tense.

There are many collectables, and, also like GoW or Left 4 Dead, achievement criteria pop-up and update as you play. There is one for meleeing 150 people, and you'll see your progression as you go through the game - a nice touch that keeps you playing. The collectables in the levels come in the forum of intelligence, and thankfully you can see how many you've collected per level, so you can go back and try and find them all. Add on the achievements that reward different play-styles and there's a fair amount of reasons to play through again. Not to mention the extra-hard 007 difficulty you unlock upon completion.

I couldn't try out the multiplayer as only me and one other guy were online! It's a shame that game communities deteriority so quickly nowadays.

Blood Stone is one of the best, if not the best Bond game since...guess when. The graphics and sound material are fantastic and the gameplay works well. The only downsides are the lack of variety in the gameplay, the shortness of the campaign, and the absence of any playable multiplayer..!


Presentation - 7
Gameplay - 8
Longevity - 6
Originality - 6
Multiplayer - N/A

Overall - 7

Another film update

Another work-hectic month. Revision and report-writing are my life right now!

Still, here's a list of the films i've seen over the past few weeks:

No Strings Attached	02-Mar	7
Severance (2)	10-Mar	6
Old School (2)	18-Mar	6
Austin Powers: Goldmember (2)	20-Mar	6
Pineapple Express (2)	20-Mar	8
Extract	21-Mar	7
Friday the 13th: Part 5	22-Mar	5

No Strings Attached was surprisingly good. I genuinely lol'ed a few times and it breaks the mold of rom-coms, somewhat.

Severance wasn't as good as i'd remembered it being. I really wanted to like it, with it being a British horror film. But it did nothing unique, and what it did do wasn't spectacular.

Old School as well was sort of like a poor man's American Pie. Still an enjoyable film but don't feel the need to really watch it again.

I think by the third film the Austin Powers team had run out of jokes. Still a few gems hidden in the film but its a bit mundane really.

Pineapple Express continues to be awesome, as good as i'd remembered it being and still a clever, clever film.

I'd never heard of Extract, not even sure how I stumbled across it. Still, it's smart, funny, unique (I hate to use the word again but it's true ;) and has Jason Bateman in it. All good.

I should probably explain my choice of Friday the 13th: Part 5...I love long-running horror series. So i'm watching all of the Friday the 13th, i've seen odd ones here and there but I'm slowly working my way through chronologically. This has the lowest score of the month as it's not really scary, not really gorey, and the story takes a bit of a weird twist away from what the series has traditionally been about. I'm hoping Part 6 is a bit more enjoyable, but still, i'm sticking it out to Part X (which i've seen before, and was truely terrible :D)