It used to be that you could pick a bad game out simply by finding the ones based on movie franchises; bad videogame cash-ins were routine. Publishers churned games out after short production cycles for simultaneous big-screen releases dates, and cynically draped established IPs over mediocre games to cash in for a quick buck. It’s a practice as old as the industry, though not necessarily a practice guaranteed to result in poor games. Unsurprisingly consumer confidence and publisher profit margins were shaken (but not stirred) as a result.
Today licensed releases are fewer and further between and discerning consumers tend to opt for the routinely decent Lego-themed licensed games; a franchise license is no longer a license to print money. This may be why in 2006 Electronic Arts, no longer seeing the value of the Bond license, relinquished it to Activision.
The first Bond game Activision commissioned was a lazy, sub-par shooter that only had the most superficial veneer of Bond. So we were pleasantly surprised to find that James Bond 007: Blood Stone is a veritable improvement over its predecessor – and although not perfect, it makes a concerted effort at doing justice to the license.
Take the plot for example: Blood Stone is an original adventure written from the ground up by Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein. Whilst nothing spectacular, in the spirit of the films it mixes high octane shooting with the spectacle of car chase stunts. Blood Stone even has a rousing intro number by British pop-star Joss Stone. Stone also lends her likeness to a character that isn’t quite a Bond girl - but more on that later.
The story follows the titular super spy as he intercepts a bomb attempt on a gathering of world leaders. Bond finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy over a weaponized form of Anthrax that becomes a 6 hour globe-trotting adventure set against exotic locales such as the jungles of Burma and the rooftops of Bangkok. Although it doesn’t quite see resolution, it provides a more than serviceable backdrop for a spy story.
Developer Bizzare Creations were most notable for their work on racers such as Metropolis Street Racer, Project Gotham series and Blur, so Blood Stone’s mix of Uncharted-esque third-person cover-shooting interspersed with (a handful of) driving stages places the developer slightly outside of their comfort zone. Surprisingly given the developers’ history, it’s the shooting sections that are solid whilst the driving segments flounder.
At least, this is the case when playing on any of the default 3 difficulty modes. 007 mode (which unlocks after story completion), offers a tougher challenge but it also plays differently from the other modes, highlighting a lot of the shortcomings in the shooting sections. Players are advised to skip the basic “Recruit” and “Field Operative” difficulty modes as an over zealous target assist (which can’t be toggled off) makes the game trivially easy - and this is already an accessible game for the TPS-illiterate.
The target assist also undercuts the utility of the “Focus” system, reducing the depth of the game. The Focus system is similar to Splinter Cell: Conviction’s “Mark and Execute” mechanic, whereby physical takedowns are converted into an auto-target-insta-kill ability. Fortunately Blood Stone’s implementation of this mechanic is more balanced, allowing you to only make one insta-kill per physical takedown.
The Focus Mode reliably targets enemies who the game considers high priority threats - such as distant snipers or death dealing shotgunners. You can only stock up to three focus shots at a time, potentially chaining them together for a maximum of three insta-kills. This compels players to risk physical takedowns in lieu of safe silenced pistol shots, or even allow some enemies to get close - running the risk of being flanked.
Some of the most exciting gunplay comes from gaming the Focus system; 3 enemies close in on you, you dash out of cover towards the first and deliver a debilitating arm-break - one Focus shot earned - before you smoothly transition into insta-killing a hapless goon in the distance and make a break for the next set of cover.
The Focus system isn’t the only quirk Blood Stone has up its sleeve either. Hitting down on the d-pad brings up a HUD overlay courtesy of Bond’s smartphone, letting you see enemies and the weapons they’re carrying from a distance as well as highlighting ammo, dropped guns and displaying a waypoint marker. This aids pacing, eliminating time spent trying to figure out where to go or scrounging for weapons and ammo. But it also eliminates the need for situational awareness - enemies sneaking up and flanking you is a relatively rare occurrence, and when it does happen, dealing with the situation is messy.
But we’re okay with that. This is Bond you’re playing after all, not a one-man army like Marcus Fenix or Nathan Drake. And we mean this is Bond. He aims around corners with one-handed weapons in the iconic arm-outstretched pose. Knock an enemy out and he’ll casually glance around to check for witnesses, before sauntering back to cover with dapper nonchalance.
And it’s not just the minutiae of Bond’s portrayal that the developers have nailed. Characters squint and recoil from gunfire that whizzes by at head height. Bond’s suit attracts dust as he goes about fighting. Most impressive are the takedown animations: strangle an enemy from behind and they’ll grope and claw at Bond’s face, leaving slight depressions under their fingers. Take an enemy down from the front and Bond will kick the weapon from their hands; his heel making perfect contact with the weapon with nary the slightest hint of clipping.
This lavish attention to detail and some of the striking visual design work in Blood Stone give the initial impression of high production values to rival the likes of Uncharted. One sequence that comes to mind takes place on a fast-moving hovercraft caught in a snowstorm. But whereas genre behemoths like Uncharted feature jaw-dropping playable set-pieces, many of the more explosive moments in Blood Stone are relegated to short cutscenes; exposing it as a small production at heart.
Sadly, although the presentation is highly polished the game overall is not, thanks to numerous bugs. Over the course of two playthroughs we ran into game-freezing bugs four times, and in two instances events failed to trigger correctly - forcing checkpoint reloads. We also found stuttering present in some of the cutscenes, something that becomes exacerbated by skipping them whilst the game is still loading the upcoming level into memory. Blood Stone looks fantastic, but it could have benefited from some more time in QA.
Fortunately Blood Stone isn’t just a pretty (albeit buggy) shootout gallery that plays out in a collection of shoebox levels. The designers demonstrate a solid grasp over pacing, placing the players in varied situations. You’ll go from being armed to the teeth against a crack squad of assassins, to chasing someone down over rooftops, before taking pursuit in a vehicle and then having to stealthily evade enemies with only a stun-gun at hand. The scenery, the scenario and the number of aggressive options constantly fluctuates, keeping you from becoming burnt out from one gunfight too many.
If there’s one weak link in the game, it would be the driving sections. Developer Bizarre Creations was no stranger to putting people in cars that go fast, of course; But racing down a track is a little different when explosions are going off all over the place, limiting visibility and making it hard to respond to oncoming obstacles. There’s the option for the player look behind themselves - which is completely pointless - but none to pitch the camera and get a better view of the road ahead. An element of trial and error is necessary to negotiate these levels skillfully, and it feels like it shouldn’t be there. Fortunately these sections become more interesting when attempting trophy/achievement runs in the post-game. A stolid “chase” sequence becomes a lot more interesting when you’re trying to clear it without hitting any oncoming traffic.
The reverse is true of the shooting sections. Revisiting them post-completion in 007 mode shows up a host of problems and inconsistencies that you wouldn’t have noticed in your initial run. Melee attack animations can’t decide if they make you invincible or not, enemies will sometimes shoot from impossible angles, their bullets clipping through cover. Some sequences require you to perform specific actions in a limited amount of time but the explanatory text prompts take too long to scroll onto screen.
All of these are minor nuisances that pale in comparison to the way health regeneration is handled. In 007 mode you are either at full health or healing, and if you are healing it takes only the slightest graze to kill you. It doesn’t help that you are up against enemies best described as pistol-totting ninja snipers; try so much as to blindfire and you’ll have a pack of enemies all landing a perfectly clean shot on your exposed pinky.
This transforms seemingly low-risk maneuvers in the recovery phase - like transitioning between cover - into suicide runs. You’ll end up pinned down, waiting to heal between every shot in a pace-killing pop-and-stop rhythm - the ebb and flow of combat effectively stoppered. The enemy’s artificially enhanced aim and the slow-working health regeneration conspire together to ensure that in two particular sequences (which took us almost an hour of retrying each) progress is earned by sheer luck. In these sequences the game’s shortcomings make playing it less of a minor nuisance, and more of an abject frustration; controllers were broken.
Still, persevere through the frustration and you’ll find that the atmosphere of Bond is replicated so convincingly that you’ll come away from the game feeling satisfied; from the aforementioned animations, to the understated score that wouldn’t be amiss in a Bond film, Blood Stone sees the developer successfully condensing a Bond film into videogame form. Sadly, it doesn’t feel like they took an entire Bond film - Blood Stone ends on a cliff-hanger and leaves the identity of the villain up in the air, hinting at a sequel which never arrived. Moreover, pop-warbler Joss Stone’s character - Nikki - doesn’t quite fit the role of Bond girl, flirty asides…err…aside, there’s no fizz in the chemistry between her and Bond. And no chance that anything would happen between them, given that Nikki seems preoccupied with other men.
Still, the story does a more than serviceable job of providing a backdrop for varied gameplay scenarios, and works just hard enough to keep the player moving onward - and it does it all with a mostly quintessential Bond flavor. Sadly, despite what the ending credits say, Bond will not return to finish this story; Activision famously shut down the developer in 2011, and their rights to the Bond license have since expired.
James Bond 007: Blood Stone isn’t a brilliant game; neither it’s driving or shooting mechanics are truly great. It’s a game that stumbles in places, but not because the game was cynically thrown together; it’s a concerted effort from a developer who had the misfortune of working outside their comfort zone. This is evident in the care and attention to detail that has gone into distilling the feeling of the Bond universe into the game.
It’s not a great shooter, or even a great driving game - but then Blood Stone is one of those games that’s greater than the sum of its parts, even if those parts are buggy and frustrating at times.
Shehzaan Abdulla
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