James Bond 007: Blood Stone is a third-person shooter action game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision released on November 2.
This is my first time playing 007 series game and I kind of like it, even though I have no idea what does blood stone has to do with this game? In fact, in the opening music scene it shows a lot of diamonds but it has nothing to do with the game.
Anyway, it is a typical third-person shooter game, can’t jump, go from cover to cover, shooter, then shooter more. Specifically here are a few main points:
1. This game involves a lot of chasing game play whether it is on foot, boat or mostly cars just like in the movies. What is disappointing is that there is one part where I thought there will be a flight chasing part but that is just a cut scene. Especially the car chasing is fantastic that keeps me addicted and it is kind of intense. They should just go ahead and make a racing game. So I went to play Need for Speed 14: Hot Pursuit 3 (NFS 14) and it was amazing! Way better than the driving experience in Blood Stone, but it is still good to have it there in a third-person shooter game.
2. There are confusing part in the game like when you have to fight the helicopter for the first time, you are suppose to knock it down with the crane. However, the gunner on the plane is marked as “Shootable”. So I assume that the designer wants me to shoot him. Therefore I shoot his head and feet that is not covered by his shield until I ran out of ammo. Then I ran from cover to cover under the constant fire from the helicopter and got to the crane and knocked down the enemy. First of all, I wasted all my ammo; secondly, anyone should be dead already under that kind of fire power and I did die a lot inside the crane.
3. No freedom. The stealth part of the game just tries to pretend to be Sprinter Cell 5 (SC5). If you melee an enemy you got a focus point (like the execution in SC5: Conviction), However, in SC5, there’s a lot of freedom for you to move around the map and decide who to kill first and how to. You can also climb up and down on almost everything and evade all enemies to bypass them. In Blood Stone, the map is linear with maybe a bypass for you to outflank in 2 missions. You can’t climb up or over obstacles even if you are a MI6 agent. You can only follow a linear path and kill whoever is in your way. Almost has no strategy at all.
4. The scene there you are chasing by a drill is quite intense without really a real danger. Well done by the game designer. Nice melee combat animation too.
That’s about all, it is not too bad, but it just reminds me how much I love SC5 and how much I want to play NFS 14. SC5 has better game play, NFS 14 has better driving feature and Mass Effect has better story and player interaction. However, it tells a nice typical 007 story with typical 007 game play features just like the movies and I guess that is what the fans want.
One more thing: there aren’t much cool spy kits or weapons, or maybe none. That’s not cool. Even the cars are normal.
