Developers of games based on James Bond movies face two major problems; the first is extending a two hour movie into a full length video game, while the second is dealing with filling the rather imposing shoes left by Rare’s GoldenEye 007. At first glance, it seems like Treyarch has all the answers, adapting both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to pad out the game based on the latter, and utilising the game engine from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, one of the best shooters of recent memory. Quantum of Solace provides a really fun, action packed experience, but it’s a bit too simplistic and short-lived to make a lasting impression.

As previously stated, the Quantum of Solace game encompasses both its motion picture namesake and its predecessor, Casino Royale, effectively repenting for the lack of a game of the former, and cementing itself as the official “new Bond” experience. Rather than push players through the Casino and Quantum stories linearly, Treyarch has instead decided to scatter the narrative all over the place. The game starts out in Quantum of Solace’s story, then jumps to the early events of Casino Royale, throws in a few filler missions, finishes the Casino Royale story, then wraps up Quantum of Solace. It feels like they have unnecessarily complicated something that’s really quite simple.

With the Call of Duty 4 engine at their disposal, one could be forgiven for thinking Treyarch could deliver a similar level of visual fidelity. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case; some aspects of Quantum of Solace look great; it runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, and the Bond model based on Daniel Craig looks fantastic – other visual components of the game, like the enemy soldiers, architecture and environments look like they saw very little attention. The same mix extends to the game’s production values; the main actors such as Daniel Craig, Eva Green and Dame Judy Dench provide rather good voiceovers, yet the in game cut-scenes look extremely poor – like they could have easily been achieved in real time, or replaced by footage from the films.


Unlike recent James Bond video games which have tried (and failed) to cover a multitude of genres, Quantum of Solace is - unapologetically - a first person shooter. It attempts to shoehorn a number of recent genre trends into the gameplay; you jump to a third person view when you take cover from which you can pop out and shoot enemies, there’s quick-time events galore, insta-kill melee sequences, and the thing that modern first person shooter is complete without: health regeneration. The important thing is that Quantum of Solace gets the basics right – the guns feel like they do some damage, and taking down your foes provides that right degree of satisfaction.

That satisfaction does take a while to filter through, however. Early missions in Quantum of Solace are not very pleasing, charging the player with simplistic duties such as running from point A to B to hit a switch and kill some enemies – almost like “Baby’s First FPS” in a way. Once you’ve got a few missions under your belt, the game starts to stack the odds against you, giving you more interesting tasks and a few restrictions. Stealth sequences are handled pretty well; players have to sneak through particular areas as you’d expect, but you’re weapons free, and blowing your cover does not result in an automatic mission failure – instead, players will have to fend off an influx of soldiers dispatched to the location to respond to the alert. It’s a nice break from the typical mandatory stealth sections from recent Bond games.

Quantum of Solace has a couple of particularly good missions, such as a level set on a train where Bond is tracking down a dealer linked to Le Chiffre. This mission is an example of where everything in Quantum of Solace comes together and works well – it looks excellent, there’s plenty of gunplay, and a number of exciting action sequences that have you jumping between trains while dodging fire. Most of the lousy missions in the game surround the poker tournament in Montenegro – one of which is mostly just an overly long quick time sequence while falling down the stairs, while another has Bond stumbling out to the carpark after being poisoned. These missions feel passive and unwieldy; if players wanted to watch James Bond do cool stuff, they’d watch the film – they’re playing the game because they want to control Bond’s actions, and this is something that Treyarch seems to forget at times.


The most disappointing thing about Quantum of Solace is its length. Players will have no trouble blasting through the single player side of things in four hours. It’s a little insulting – surely in two years, Treyarch could have come up with missions and levels to pad the game out beyond the combined length of the two movies, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Each version has its respective Achievements and Trophies to entice completionists for a second run through, but there’s not really any more justification for a replay beyond that.

Treyarch makes amends with Quantum of Solace’s multiplayer mode. There’s a good selection of play modes, and each map offers something different. The majority of the multiplayer modes focus on team based play, with one side taking the role of MI6 and the other controlling The Organisation, a mysterious group of no-goodniks. The game implements a few measures seen in other multiplayer games, such as between-round weapon purchasing made famous by Counter-Strike.

Aside from the usual Deathmatch and capture-and-hold matches, Quantum of Solace provides a few unconventional game types. The Man with the Golden Gun is a retread of the mode of the same name from GoldenEye, where one player is armed with the titular golden gun, which is capable of one-hit kills – in this instance, those one hit kills are worth more than regular kills, so players have more incentive to fight for control of the weapon. Bond Evasion is a team based escort mission where the MI6 agents must help a player controlled Bond reach an escape point on the map, while the Organisation blokes have to stop them. Bond Versus, on the other hand, pits everyone as Organisation mercs against a singular Bond. The player who controls Bond has a few tricks up his sleeve, including a few gadgets and an extra life. Multiplayer is restricted to online play over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, but runs seamlessly.


Treyarch’s first attempt at a Bond video game is pleasing, but ultimately will fall short of most players expectations. Multiplayer somewhat unexpectedly arose as the better part of the game, with a nice variety of play modes, each of which offers something a little different, and a quality selection of maps. The single-player side of Quantum of Solace is generally good – there are some really amazing sequences, but they’re offset by some rather dry parts. At times it can be a little too simple with cut-and-dry objectives, linear levels and little challenge, and the length of the game is somewhat insulting. Quantum of Solace feels like Treyarch got the basics right and felt that was enough – they could easily have done more with the game.