World of Warcraft is now five years old. That’s a long time to go without a shower, guys. Or sex. Or beating a game. Try GameFAQs.
It’s a pretty big achievement in gaming. EA can’t keep a Madden server running for more than a few years. Of course Counter Striker has been going long but the percentages of CS players who even paid for their copy of HL has been pretty slim. WoW has made more money for Activision Blizzard than Chinese workers buried under a dam.
The figures are staggering. Since November 2004 the following has happened:
- Valve- who released Half Life 2 around the same time have moved to episodic content. At the time of writing, HL2: Episodes 1 and 2 have been released. Episode 3 will be out eventually.
- A black man rules the world and he’s not the final boss in a Capcom videogame.
- MS released Windows Vista, Windows Vista, Office 2007 and the Xbox 360
- Nintendo regained market leadership in home consoles and Sony’s console is in third place worldwide (at least for now)
- Digital Delivery went from being a joke in a proctologist’s examination room to a reality in videogames.
- Wil Wright released Spore.
- Lair, Too Human, Dragon Age were released
- Warhammer Online, Hellgate London, Age of Conan have all been and gone.
- Battlefield games went from 1942 to Vietnam, to the present, then the future, the free to play and then back to 1943
- Call of Duty went from being a more casual gamer oriented PC only title to one of the biggest selling console game series
- You can download Beatles songs to play in a videogame.
- Star Wars is now a real cartoon without any actors involved
- Activision is the most hated company in videogames and the largest.
- Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon went from being realistic hardcore PC franchises into big selling console action title
Congrats to Blizzard and to all the millions of gold farmers who have prospered as a result.
With the explosion of Multiplayer gaming these days, sometimes the old hands forget what it is like to be the new guy. So if you’re new to the world of online gaming, or have been away for a while, here’s what you need to know.
1. You are a n00b. Whatever you do, you are a n00b, even if you’ve been playing the game for years, you are a n00b. You are a n00b if you die a lot, a n00b if you win and a n00b and if you do anything that results in beating another player with a higher ranking fairly and squarely, you are a n00b.
See also nub, newb, noob, just got the game, huh?
2. You use hax. If you play the game using elements placed there for use by the developers of the game, you hax. If you use last stand, you are hax. If you use a scope on an AK47, you are hax. If you use anything at all other than hip firing a bolt action rifle, you are hax. See also get some skill, grow a dick, etc
3. You are cheating. If you use a rocket launcher against another player, or a grenade launcher, you are cheating. Even if they just used the same tactic against you, YOU my friend, are the cheat, you cheater. Mr Cheater C Cheaterton III (really you’re the IV, but you’re such a cheater).
4. You are gay. Even if you’re married with six kids and had more tail than everyone else in the game (which wouldn’t need to be all that much), you are gay. See also: gh3y, WoW
5. You are of colour, Mr Albino from Sweden
6. You are lagging. Even though you’re not. See glitching
7. You are glitching. Despite the fact that network communication iver the internet is quite a complicated and marvelous thing, you are the reason the connection is poor and that they are losing. See also lagging
8. You are camping. This means you have found a quiet spot to fire off a sniper rifle and that your opponents are too lazy to come around behind you to take you out.
9. Bullshit. Whenever someone thinks they are better than you and you kill them, it is obviously bullshit. See also: hax, n00b, lagging, glitching
10. You should develop an interest in the thoughts of 12 year old children. Otherwise you will fail to appreciate the rich social commentary that is only possible from players of this age. Children say the darnest things such as “fuck you, you black jew fag hax nub lagger.” It’s so cute. They think they’re people.
11. If the child in question is headset enabled, you are in for a treat. Not only will you get an aural Live Journal update, but you may also experience the joy that is the favourite music of this child either through an MP3 playing while the child plays, or if you’re really lucky, a live rendition of said child’s favourite song or songs (though it’s usually just the same song over and over again. Actually it’s usually only the first verse over and over).
12. Fuck IWNet. See also Fuck Kotick, Fuck Activision, Fuck Infinity Ward and Fuck Bowling up his Fat Pipe.
So there you have it. The reasons why I never plugged in my headset to my consoles or PC, the reasons to keep out of team chat and the reasons why single player games will never die.
It’s a now playing- but really it’s was playing. 50 Cent’s first foray into videogames a few years back was a bit of a hit, selling over a million G-units. The sequel was kinda of a no-brainer for publisher Vivendi. But after the merger with Activision, Blood on the Sand was cut loose (as was Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend). THQ picked it up and while it’s not GOTY it’s a harmless fun time gosh darn it.
Speaking of no-brainers- here’s the story: 50 Cent is stiffed by a promoter on a Middle Eastern tour and thinks he can be reimbursed by some maguffin skull. The pursuit of this blinged out skull is why you, a rapper, are shooting people in an unnamed Middle East warzone. Either way, It’s just a flimsy way to stick 50 cent and his posse in the middle of a war. 50 Cent and one of his sidekicks (nee bitches) run around busting heads, popping caps in bitches’ asses and generally swearing like motherfuckers. It’s also rather well made and put together with full knowledge that the story is dumber than network programmers at Infinity Ward.
Swordfish have done a good job on the gameplay, settling a third person action somewhere between Gears of War and The Club. The gunplay is well-executed and the presentation is pretty top notch- the game runs at a fairly consistent 60 fps (on 360 a, at least) and yet still manages to have a pretty high standard of artwork which almost no one else has managed to achieve this gen (Infinity Ward, which their idiot savant network programmers, at least have good tech and art). The sound is a big flimsy since it’s made up of gangsta rap from Mr Cent and friends thought there is at least the option to have a purely instrumental soundtrack if you prefer. 50 and co are a pretty verbose lot and so by the time you get to actual in-game sounds, there didn’t seem to be much will left to make the game sound any good (things like smashing a crate and having a pretty obvious wait until the right sound effect played)
Alll in all, as this was a cheapie, I enjoyed the two or three hours I played of this game in the lead up to MW2. It obviously is blown out of the water in terms of quality by Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare 2, but the game is cheap and more importantly, a fuckton of fun. It also doesn’t have dedicated servers or lean.
Reviewed on Xbox 360 and PC. Also on PS3. Developed by Infinity Ward. Published by Activision
Call of Duty’s beginnings as more or less a straight copy of Medal of Honor Allied Assault (which was more or less made by most of IW when they were at 2015) don’t really set the scene for this latest game. Call of Duty was never a popular franchise with the hardcore player who were more interested in Counterstrike, Quake III, Battlefield and Unreal games. It was a hit, but with the people who enjoyed Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers- a more casual type of PC gamer. It was a mainstream hit, but always looked down on by people who were in clans or lugged their 21 inch CRT monitors to LAN parties, fragfests and virginal circle-jerks. All that changed with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare which ditched the WWII setting of the previous CoD games and sold more copies than a street vendor in Moscow selling genuine Rolex watches.
CoD4 was a surprise hit with the hardcore and even the Treyarch WWII-based World at War sold well. So MW2 was so big that almost every publisher put back a large number of their biggest titles to early 2010 just to get out of MW2′s way. But how does it play?
SINGLE PLAYER (may contains traces of nuts and spoilers)
The single player story had a lot to live up to. The WWII CoD games had a basic story to get you into a mission but the overall theme was “defeat the Axis powers before the end of 1945.” CoD4, not being based on anything in particular (parallel to the current wars around the world), need a more defined story. MW2 takes that, runs with it, amps up to 11, char-grills it, over-inflates the bouncy castle and just generally makes the stakes higher. Before we had a nuke going off in an unnamed Middle Eastern country of GAFghanistan, a main character dieing and a race to stop things getting worse. In MW2, it gets worse. An undercover American operative being implicated in a terrorist massacre of civilians in Moscow causes an all-out war. The story is told in two parts with half of the game played from the perspective of SAS operatives and the other half as a US army Private attempting to de-red dawnify the Continental United States. The scale of the story is rather undersold since most of the set-up is done in the form of rather dry voice overs during the loading screens that lack the punch of the similar screens during WaW’s load screens. And it’s way too tempting to just skip these as soon as possible.
The actual game itself is great even though it’s the same as the original MW. Just different settings and perhaps a tad more over the top in its scale. The game is intense for most of the time you’re playing, which isn’t all that long. IW have thrown in a lot of things to mix things up constantly, from snow mobiles to rafting. But mainly, there are lots of levels that make you think “Hmm, I did this on CoD4.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Graphics are crisp and clear with a constant 60fps on 360 and since it’s an enhanced version of the engine used on CoD4, it will run well on most medium spec computers. Sound is the usual fantastic mix of effects and voice, now with added Hans Zimmer music. Even though the game on consoles runs at technically a sub HD resolution, there is very little to indicate low resolution. It looks crisp and runs smoother than peanut butter at a gigolo convention. The only major gripe is the jam gun the enemies fire at you. This is the new blood effect that splatters across the screen to let you know you’ve been injured. Fall from a reasonable height and you will tear a major artery in your eyes.
MULTIPLAYER
Well, since a large number of people skipped the single player of CoD4 entirely and have been playing the multiplayer fairly solidly for two years, you’d think IW would just make new maps and be done (after all, that’s more or less what Treyarch did for WaW). But no. IW have ramped it up to the nth degree. CoD 4: MW’s ranking and perks system helped extend the appeal of the multiplayer modes in this post WoW/ achievement whore world we live. MW2 takes that, jolts it 50, 000 volts up each leg and give it a raise. Now you have a far bigger combination of perks and weapon options, customization kill streaks, emblems (though I’ve yet to see anyone not use the pot leaf), tags and so forth. So not only can you select which killstreak rewards you receive, you can also have a deathstreak, which helps you out if you get spawn-raped by a camping sniper noob who’s been playing for 17 hours and hates the game. This thing will have legs since the number of combinations means it will be a while before everyone just uses the same three or four combos as they did in CoD4.
The netcode is probably a bit better than CoD4 and WaW, but the matchmaking still is a pain since it will routinely hook you up to a game where everyone else in another country- something that doesn’t make the game all that much fun. They could learn a thing for two from Bungie when making peer-to-peer networked games work. Of course, MW2 also brings the PC player into a realm they don’t normally visit: p2p networking without the latest episode of Lost to show for it. In my brief playthough on PC game online, I had no issues, but I did only play two rounds. The problem is you can’t play on a dedicated server as you can for most other PC games, nor can you choose what server you are on- It’s all Matchmaking with one player as the host (whether they like it or not). So far the main issue is listening to the whingeing of the master race (though they have a point- the best online console experiences -Halo 3 aside- have been those with the dedicated server model). My CoD4-playing colleagues at work have been entertaining me with their attempts at playing the game together at lunch. They don’t want to play private games since they won’t get XP. Oh well. Infinity Ward! You got some ‘splaining to do!
There’s also a third mode called Spec Ops which can either be played solo or coop (either splitscreen or online). I haven’t tried it since I can’t see any reason to play this with so much crap in Multiplayer to unlock.
So there you have it. Game of the Year? Well, it’s certainly the shooter of the year and the multiplayer game of the year, for me at least. It’s knocked down on PC simply there’s no reason for the basic server stuff to have been stripped out unless Activision want to start charging for maps on PC as well. Which is likely.
Controller1.com rating 3/3 on console (2/3 on PC)
So like everyone else on the planet with a 360, a PS3 or a reasonable PC, I’ve been playing Modern Warfare 2 on 360. It’s definitely a game where you could tell there was a legacy to live up to and even surpass. And that IW are using their immense power and goodwill to force some unpopular features on PC users.
I reckon I’m about 2/3 of the way through the single player and like MW2 it’s split between an SAS group and standard US army troops. Whereas CoD4: MW was in a more believable milieu that built to a climax that wasn’t totally far fetched, the sequel just goes nuts straight off the bat. Though the story is just an excuse to hang the set pieces on (as always) but instead of those real time cutscenes you would often get at the start and end of the level, we have the briefing screens where the story unfolds as a narration over computer screens. Unlike World at War, which used a similar device to explain the jumps in its barely there story, MW2 puts it all in these scenes and nine times out of ten, I’m just skipping these to get to the action. Note to IW: I WANT TO SHOOT THINGS. CUT THE BULLSHIT AND LET ME, LIKE, SHOOT STUFF DOOD!
SPOILER WARNING, SPOILER WARNING, SPOILER WARNING…
There is a level fairly on, called No Russian. This is the controversial level you may have heard of. It is so controversial that IW give you the option of skipping it altogether. If you don’t want the game spoiler, skip to the next paragraph. You are an undercover US soldier trying to get to the game’s antagonist by infiltrating his group of terrorists. It’s all there to make a story point, but it is one of the most powerful gaming sequences you will ever experience as you are part of a massacre. Now there are two parts and you can choose not to shoot the civilians, but once your group is attacked by the SWAT teams, you have no choice but to shoot them if you want the game to continue. Of course, how many people will also just shoot the civvies in the first half of the level also makes an interesting moral dilemma but I think many of the people who play this might not get the subtlety.
END SPOILERS
The multiplayer is also great and once I started that, I had a hard time going back to the campaign but I wound up alternating between the two. It’s fun but i can’t help thinking they’ve turned this game even more into WoW with the infinite variations and complexity the game now requires in order to do well in an online match. The jump in and play ethos Activision and IW use to justify their decisions on the PC version don’t really gel with the game which really appeals to hardcore users. If I hadn’t played CoF4 for two years, I would find the options bewildering instead I merely see them as overkill since most people will work out what the best combos are, and what the most hated ones will be and stick to those.
Haven’t tried Spec Ops but that doesn’t sound all that appealing to me. Maybe when I have friends over. I also have the PC version on it’s way so I should be able to see if it’s at all redeemable.
So you don’t want to jump on the MW2 bandwagon. What do you play if you’ve already played Trials HD, Infamous, Uncharted 2, Shadow Complex, ODST et al to death?
NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS Wii (Wii)
A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS. let me repeat that: A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS!!! Now with a 4player coop mode similar to Legend of Zelda Four Swords. But it’s a mother fucking Mario game. And a motherfucking Mario platformer and a motherfucking motherfucking 2D Mario platformer! 2.5 D is the new 3D. Super Mario Galaxy was pretty good but I still enjoy the 2D mario games more (despite generally preferring 3D games).
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (PC, 360, PS3)
EA/Bioware’s return to a fantasy-world hardcore western RPG. A tweak everything, serious, 100 gazilliion hours single player experience that makes Oblivion’s single player look brief. If you love RPG’s, have a lot of time on your hands and DON’T play WoW, you’ll probably love this.
BORDERLANDS (PC, 360, PS3)
Poor Gearbox. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Gearbox show that there is something for Fallout 3 fans this year. A shooter RPG with more weapons than Denmark (to paraphrase). The loot whore in us all can take heart in the post apocalyptic wasteland, and then shoot the shit out of it.
ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 (PC, 360, PS3)
Now, the first one was promise unfulfilled incarnate. If you loved doing what you did in the first hour enough to do it for another 15 with less variety than scenes in Groundhog Day, then you would have loved it. For everyone else there were lots of other, better games released then. Ubisoft say they’ve learned lots of lessons from their past mistakes. ORLY?
FORZA 3 (PS3)
What is likely to be one of the better regarded driving games of the year. So if you like driving games. Get this. If you don’t like driving games, get this and return it for store credit and get something you do like. Or don’t. Or do. I don’t care.
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)
Overshadowed by Uncharted 2, there is a new R&C game out. And it may well be the last time Insomniac even attempts making a 60fps game. It’s not Resistance so it’s worth getting.
Saboteur (360, PS3)
I might be the only person interested in this game. I like WWII history. I find it an interesting subject (unlike many). Saboteur looks to be a fun take on the open world genre that has flummoxed Pandemic technically in the past.
A decent selection to be sure. And once you clear those there will be Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Convictions and Bad Company 2 and much, much more… Bring it on!
The PC master race is up in arms with Infinity Ward over certain specs of the PC version of Modern Warfare 2. These basically bring the PC in-line with the console versions in terms of networking much to the consternation of the tweak everything crowd.
So if you run the PC version you now have:
a maximum multiplayer game of 9 on 9 (same as 360 and PS3)
no ability to lean in MP (same as 360 and PS3)
having to connect to a master server to authenticate (same as 360 and PS3)
no dedicated servers, but peer to peer networking (same as 360 and PS3)
matchmaking rather than server browser (same as 360 and PS3)
I am not rabidly going to rant about these changes, but by the same token I am not particularly pleased. The thing that made me buy the PC versions of WaW and CoD4 was the fact the P2P networking of the 360 versions was just not up to scratch compared to Halo 3. There was almost always a very noticeable lag between firing a weapon and the hit being registered on the 360 version of both CoD games. Yes, Valve’s p2p code is far worse but there was one reason why I was looking forward to the PC version. Also, where I live, we have pretty low internet quotas from ISP’s mitigated by the fact that if I play on servers hosted by my ISP- that is ‘free’ bandwidth. So, poo.
On the other hand, there seem to be many issues with CoD games of people ‘hacking’ the game. Though most calls of hacking are against people using ordinary in-game perk combos that the 1337 players are apparently above using (unless they’re losing). Oh dear. So you will connect to IWnet and then the matchmaking will begin. This is what I dread most as the thing that made WaW particularly bad in this regard was the fact that I would end up playing in games with a host who was in another country, leading to a frustrating time playing a game I knew could be good with good pings.
Some developers will see the reaction and make concessions. IW seem loathe to do this based on the time it has taken them to patch their games in the past. Do I think there’s a chance there will be something in the future? Yes and no. After all, PC players made such a small proportion of the overall CoD4 and WaW population that I think IW may just ignore them. Thing is, the thing that I used to love about CoD1 and CoD2 was that the ‘hardcore’ PC players stayed away from the game in favour of CS, Unreal and Battlefield, meaning it was pretty easy to get into. CoD4 becoming a hardcore as well as mainstream hit kinda killed the fun for anyone not in a clan.
John Carmack has also hinted at Rage not supported dedicated servers as well. DICE, however are using this as a wedge to drive PC players to Bad Company 2, which is not a bad thing since for everyone since BC was a really great game and would be great on PC.
So do you listen to your player base or do you use your extraordinary power to enforce your will? Let’s see how this plays out this week when the game is released
So I live in Australia. It’s a nice place. It’s warm most of the year. The people are nice (mostly). We are a fairly laid back lot. We also have a very strong public ‘nanny’ streak running through society where people not only suggest how you should live but legislate that you do so. We also have a strong anti-authoritarian streak. Example: By law, we have cigarette packets that the health warnings covering most of the package and usually with charming photos of organs diseased by heavy smoking. So entrepreneurs sell ‘jacket-packets’ so that you don’t have to be reminded about what you’re doing to yourself. Gambling at poker machines (slot machines/ Fruit machines) is a national epidemic since state governments, craving the revenue, legalised their use in clubs (veteran’s clubs, sports clubs, etc). People leaving their children in a locked cars in the parking lot while they blow their welfare checks in the club made for big headlines so all advertisments for gambling establishments have “Gamble responsibly” written as a tag. We also have a left-wing government who want to impose a filter over all internet traffic to keep out the undesirable stuff. All of it.
Australia is one of the few places in the world where we have a unified ratings system. Everything, from movies, to DVD’s, to television programs, to videogames, is classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (which is funny because books don’t have ratings on them). G rating is for everyone. PG is Parental Guidance. M is for mature (think PG13 or T rating), MA15+ is for adults over 15 years of age (so most R rated movies form the US), R rating for harder material (really horrific movies, soft core porn, and funnily enough, old movies like the Godfather that were classified years before MA15+ was introduced more recently). And X which is hardcore porn and only available in-store or via mail order from stores in the Territories (there are six states and two territories which have some vague differences in how they are run).
Every country has a ratings stem and all of them have their ‘push-button’ issues which cause them to wield the banhammer. In the UK, there’s something in the laws between an 18 and an R based on the angle of the erection. Scandinavian countries banned the Empire Strikes Back back in 1980 because of the violence. The US network TV has restrictions that gimp it compared to cable shows, etc. In Australia, linking sex and violence will get you banned faster than a fanboy troll on NPD day. And anything real-world seems to get their goat up
For some reason, the R rating doesn’t extend to games. Fallout 3 was initially refused classification because your character could get positive benefits from taking Morphine. Change the name and voila- everyone’s cool again. GTAIII was released and the banned when the media hyped the fact you could have sex with a prostitute and then beat her up to get your money back and the game was promptly banned and pulled from the shelves. The same thing happened with GTA San Andreas after the Hot Coffee. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up is still banned because of the graffiti aspect (though Jet Grind Radio got through fine). And Dead Rising- a game where you could do some rather vile things to the Zombies, got through no problem. Silent Hill Homecoming and FEAR 2 were originally Refused Classification, but were resubmitted and passed. GTA IV was never Refused Classification, but Take 2, who have many run-ins with the OFLC over the years on GTA and Manhunt games, decided to go straight to gimping for their big 2008 title. But then the PC version was passed no problem so somewhere along the way the game was quietly patched to bring the game into line with the rest of the world. L4D2 was submitted three times. The original version was sumbitted, RC‘ed, appealed and RC‘ed again and then the gimped version passed.
So last night I played the gimped demo on 360. There are other places on the net where you can see the differences but basically, the minute you kill a zombie, they fade away. They don’t even hit the ground most of the time. If get a machete and slice at a zombie, they will have disappeared from view before you have even finished your swipe animation. The net result is the game isn’t just censored, it’s actually unplayable. I am not a gore hound, in fact gore actually turns me off faster than bald Britney cosplay. But the way Valve have toned down the game to get it through isn’t particularly inventive or worthy.
So that point of Australians working around the barrier comes into play. You can fairly easily hack the demo (on PC) so that the game is the same as most of the rest of the world. It’s fairly forgone conclusion that the full version will also be able to circumvent the gimping by some kind of space-magic fuelled de-gimpification process. At least on PC.
All I can say is, I hope the Aussie media can keep their hands off MW2. Oops, spoke too soon.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, PS3, Wii, DS. Developed by Treyarch. Published by Activision
Mock if you must but for the next few days at least I’m going to party like it’s 2008. I saw a couple of cheap games that I’d been interesting in playing during a lull SO LONG AS THEY WERE CHEAP. The other week I saw Quantum of Solace and 50 cent Blood on the Sand for cheap (AU $30 ea) and I thought “why the fuck not?”
I needed something relatively simple to cleanse my gaming palette after the majesty that was Uncharted 2 and before Modern Warfare 2. Something cheap, short and can’t be looked down as anything other than dumb fun. Quantum of Solace fits that bill quite well. I like James Bond films but I still don’t really know what to make of Quantum of Solace the movie. The title comes from an Ian Fleming short story where Bond is told a story by some stuffy diplomat-type over a cognac, a story about some couple who grew to hate each other. And it’s really quite dull. If I was Bond in the story I would have shot the guy telling the story for being boring. So the movie QoS followed on from 2006′s excellent Casino Royale movie. And then proceeded to ignore all of the lessons of Casino Royale. People didn’t want far fetched Bond plots in 2008.
Why is this important? Well, this game is actually two thirds a Casino Royale game and one third a Quantum of Solace game. A bit of context doesn’t hurt. So you take the Call o Duty 4 engine, give it to Treyarch who were making the better-than-everyone-was-expecting Call of Duty World at War at the same time as this and what do you get? Something that’ s okay rather than great.
As so many games from movies do, any location that appears in the movie is fair game for a full on corridor shooter fest that takes 20-30 minutes to complete. The final scene from Casino Royale is turned into the intro level to this game. Move through level, kill enemies, pick up cell phone’s convenient dotted around the map for intelligence useful (but by no means vital) to your mission. So despite this using the CoD4 engine, it doesn’t necessarily play just like Call of Duty. You run and gun in much the same way but you don’t have melee in the same way. If you get close to an enemy, you can click on the right stick and to trigger a quick time event where you have to press a face button (a different one each time) to takedown an enemy in a nicely animated unarmed
attack.
It feels as though this game took a lot of cues from the first Uncharted game, especially with 3rd person cover and action scenes. You can balance on beams (looking like Treyarch re-purposed some manual meter code from one of their Tony Hawk ports) jump over things and make leaps of faith just because the game says you can press ‘Y’ to jump. You have some hacking minigames which aren’t anything special but then this is a game designed for a very casual audience. That’s code for saying Normal is actually pretty easy.
So how does it actually play? Well it’s fun for a bit and it is thankfully fairly short. In so many ways you think you are playing a game from five years ago in terms of design and quite often the visuals. It also doesn’t run at Call of Duty 4′s standard 60fps frame rate, so it’s hard to see where the extra fidelity is going.
Presentation is fine for a licensed game but it isn’t going to wow anyone in this day and age. We have many of the cast members from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, including a bored Dame Judi and Dame Daniel. Gunfire sounds are somewhat lacking, however, but at least the James Bond theme is used in a more restrained way than some of the EA games on PS2.
So overall- cheap filler when you want something quick to snack on in between the ‘great’ games but there’s no reason to go out of your way to play it.
Controller1.com rating 1/3
