Quantum of Solace (Xbox 360)

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James Bond is back on our consoles

Just look at those eyes. You can see them peering out into what looks like nothing as Treyarch's Bond, viewed from a third-person perspective whenever he snaps to cover, calmly, collectively waits to pounce. You see, there's about a million bad guys around the corner, just gagging to put a bullet in 007's head. And it's your job to stop that from happening.

Before we get to all that though, some positive factoids. QoS is being built with Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare engine, and Treyarch is working very closely with their fellow developers to make sure they get the best out of it. Another positive is that Treyarch has over 100 people working on the game right now, according to executive producer Garrett Young, who's demoing the Xbox 360 version of the game for us. And if that wasn't enough for you positive factoid junkies, here's another one. The game kicks off with QoS and tells the story of Casino Royale through flashbacks, so there should be plenty of game in there for spy fans to sink their teeth into (the sub six-hour long single-player The Bourne Conspiracy campaign is still fresh in our memory banks).

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Now for a not so positive factoid. Quick time events will play an important role in the game. Quick melee kills, electronic lock picking mini games, the lot. The problem is that we're getting pretty tired of QTEs (The Bourne Conspiracy suffered from QTE overload). We know why developers use them - it's an accessible and easy game mechanic and it allows them to present much more cinematic action events. But we always end up feeling cheated by them - wishing we could have done the really cool thing we've just seen happen rather than, well, just watch it. And, when they're applied to mini games, we tend to think they're needlessly annoying and frustrate through overuse (Mass Effect springs to mind).

Treyarch is officially describing QoS as a 'first-person action' game, but that doesn't tell the whole story. While the primary perspective is first-person, there are plenty of moments when you'll get to see the iconic spy in all his suited and booted glory, mainly when Bond is crawling along wall ledges, snapping to cover and kicking lumps out of bad guys in melee combat. Those of you longing for a pure Bond FPS ala GoldenEye only have yourselves to blame. Garrett tells us that although most gamers said they wanted an FPS Bond game when it went out and asked them, around a third wanted to see Bond as well. In the end, based on that consumer research, the developer decided to do both.

While mainly first-person, while in cover you see Bond from a third-person perspective.

Garrett compared QoS with Ubisoft Montreal's popular FPS/Third-person hybrid shooter Rainbow Six Vegas, but with a less punishing learning curve. We get a sense of what he's talking about from a live demo of a level in the game that mirrors the aftermath of the famous Bond versus Le Chiffre gambling scene in Casino Royale. Fans of the film will remember well when Bond goes up to his hotel room and all hell breaks loose. The level we're seeing is Treyarch's expanded take on that.

The first thing we noticed was that Treyarch's given Bond a lot, and by a lot we actually mean a ton, of bad guys to sort out. Such is the endless stream of goons that pour out into Casino Royale's many rooms and hallways that warlord Steven Obanno, whose money Le Chiffre has lost, must have some kind of henchmen cloning factory built into the back of the hotel. Obanno's completely taken over and, as you'd expect, chaos ensues.

The second thing we noticed was how often the visual 'dash to cover with A' sign post pops up at the bottom of the screen. We know it's needed, hell, even Gears of War, in our opinion the best cover-based console game yet, has them. But it pops up so frequently in the QoS build we're seeing that it's just annoying. And we're simply watching. While Garrett reassures us that the team is working on sorting this out, we're praying that it doesn't end up becoming more annoying than useful in the final build.

When Bond is in cover the perspective, as we've mentioned, shifts to third-person, and you can see 007's piercing blue eyes and expressionless face as well as his classic black suit while you wait for goons to pass by or bad guys to pop out of cover. There is a degree of destructible environments - some things you can't shoot through and some things you can. A bad guy hides behind a luggage cart. Shoot through it! we mentally scream at the HD TV. Oh, must be amazingly expensive luggage. And made out of Adamantium.

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