Quantum of Solace (DS)
For fans of Jimmy, this game is bad, real bad.
11/13/2008 7:57 PM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2
What's Hot: Well, it hasn't been shown to cause testicular cancer in lab rats. Yet.
What's Not: Wonky controls make you feel like you've been shaken, stirred, drugged, and then slapped around by Dame Judy Dench.
Paul Semel
Status: So jealous of Scott Jones's amazing hair
You can, by drawing a circle on the screen, then toss grab and your dazed attacker. But this is only cool because the look on their face when you've lifted them up and are just about to toss them is so bad, so blocky, that it's unintentionally hilarious.
There are some mechanics that do work the way they should. Obviously a fan of the Splinter Cell series, Bond can sneak-attack someone by moving up behind then while crouching, and then bonk the guy in the head. Though if you mess up, or are seen, it's a pain to have to stand back up and either go into melee mode or arm your gun.
Bond can also do a rushing attack, which is performed by quickly sliding the stylus from the aforementioned circle around Bond's feet to his target. But while this works well, and is effective, it doesn't seem like a very Bond thing to do. I may be wrong about this, but I don't think James ever played linebacker for the Buffalo Bills.
The game also has a really irritating checkpoint system -- or lack of one. If Bond should die -- and given the controls, you know he will, a lot -- he doesn't always restart the mission anywhere close to where he died. Often it's so far that you end up playing massive chunks of this game repeatedly, whether you want to or not.
Visually,
Quantum of Solace isn't anything to write home about, though for the DS, it's fine. Well, except for the fact that the character model of Bond seems to have no eyes, which made me think of the children from the movie version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
But the worst thing about
Solace is that it's dull. I hadn't even finished the training mission at the beginning when I started to wonder what was on television -- at 2 p.m. on a Thursday. I also never felt like I was truly in control of Bond, thanks to the controls, which make the game more frustrating than challenging.
Maybe they should've tried to make this a first-person shooter.
This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.
