subject: James Bond 007 Blood Stone walkthrough Video Game Cheats Reviews FAQs [print this page] James Bond 007 Blood Stone walkthrough Video Game Cheats Reviews FAQs
They'll be sorted out eventually, of course, and James Bond will return to the big screen. But the question is will anyone feel his absence at all? Fans of the series left anxiously awaiting Daniel Craig's third outing can find solace in the knowledge that there's not one, but two Bond games due out before the end of year. Bizarre Creations' Blood Stone is a thirdperson action game hoping`to blend the gunplay, car chases and brutal hand-to-hand fight scenes which define Daniel Craig's Bond into a single, fluid experience. Fellow British dev Eurocom, meanwhile, is crafting a new take on GoldenEye, the greatest game made to date. But what's the enduring appeal of Ian Fleming's Cold War creation? The world which he was born is long gone, but before he was officially rebooted as blonder model, he was an oddly ageless hero. One man who can tell us is screenwriter Bruce Feirstein, who, penned Pierce Brosnan's first Bond movies (including GoldenEye), has written the script for both Bizarre's title Eurocom's updated take on his screenplay.
At its core, Blood Stone is a thirdperson shooter, albeit one that breaks up its shooting with a powerfully efficient hand-to-hand takedown mechanic. The first level Bizarre shows us takes place in Istanbul. A cutscene sets up Bond's mission to find a missing researcher whose location has been tracked to a construction site in the area. What begins is a simple investigation scene, as Bond walks down a street lined with civilians before talking his way into the site. At this point, he breaks out the only gadget which the gritty, raw, Daniel Craig interpretation of the character will allow: a smartphone one that highlights points of interest on the site, to be precise.
"We've worked with [Daniel Craig's stunt double] Ben Cooke", says Nick Davies, Blood Stone's producer at Bizarre. "He shows us exactly what Bond would do it's great." Once the enemy's disabled, Bond fluidly slips back behind the cover he just leapt from, avoiding the trail of bullets spat from the rifle of one of the unconscious guard's comrades. While standard stop-and-pop gunplay is an option, Bizarre shows us the different ways a scenario such as this can play out over the course of a couple of checkpoint restarts. Cautious players can, through a mixture of cover-based takedown manoeuvres and judicious use of the smartphone, stalk their way to the next objective leaving nothing but a trail of snapped necks and crushed windpipes behind them. Bizarre's demonstration of this approach ends with Bond charging at the last man stading and sliding feet first over his cover and into his face with a move which es smoothly from running into takedown animation.
Scenery is, you're unlikely to notice it at 110mph. You blast through a driving level, burning our months of man-hours in ten minutes which guards they're going to take down, in which order, and when to use focus.
The films nail the pacing, so it's something they absolutey had to get right. It's hard not to notice these set- pieces outdo anything seen in the films in terms of scale. Something which writer Feirstein attributes to the lack of constraints which games offer. "Games are a tremendous amount of fun," he says, "because you sit down and say, 'OK, we need an opening action sequence: let's put it in Athens. Let's use the acropolis'. And everyone says, 'Yeah, that's a cool idea, let's do it'. Whereas in a movie you'd say, 'Let's put the opening sequence in Athens' and the first thing you'll hear is: 'I don't know if we can afford that and if we can get clearance. Let me check it out and see what tax breaks we can get from the Greek government'. In movies the question is: can we execute this? With games it's: that's a great idea how can we top this?"
To stretch a Bond plotline over a multiple hour game, was tremendously freeing according the the writer! You get to do things which wouldn't appear in the movies. In the GoldenEye game you meet a former United States general who now runs security in Dubai. He shows you around a little a bit, and he's a somewhat wry, humorous character. In a movie he would have had, like, four lines, but we spend a little time with him." Feirstein also dismisses the idea that writing a game requires a plotline to be stretched too thinly: "In terms of script, the game isn't really longer. The difference between a two-hour movie and a 12-hour game is the missions and impediments."
