The nation’s favourite spy James Bond is set to return to our screens in late October of this year and as always, its release is to be co-ordinated with a variety of spin-off merchandise of which the one most important to us, is of course the game!

The Bond game series has - much like the movies of recent times -  enjoyed a rather up and down ride of success and failure with some fantastic titles hitting screen and shelves, and some well….. not quite so fantastic. Indeed it was Nintendo which was to be the platform for 007’s first real success in the games domain. Over a decade ago now, the movie Golden Eye was released at the box office to rake in an estimated total of $58,000,000 (around at the time £40,000,000) and the movie was not to be the sole success of the franchise. Developers Rare produced a ground breaking spin-off of the blockbuster in which they produced a top-notch FPS game  coupled with a dynamic and enjoyable multi-player secondary dynamic.

The game was the first of its kind in that it was a game from a movie that could stand on its own two feet. Unlike so many movie-come-game adaptations, it was a well developed, graphically satisfactory, and accurate reworking of its silver screen brother. At the time and often since, developers have sought to spin out a quick, cheap remake of the movie in what is basically a lazy and woefully under par adaptation in which the fact that the game was a movie first is really the only thing that is being used to draw in sales. Essentially Golden Eye was a very good game but what made it more impressive is that Rare didn’t simply rely on the success of the movie to sell their own product. Rare made a grand spanking game all of their own. These days that kind of integrity is hard to find within the gaming world and if early previews of Quantum of Solace are anything to go by, we just might be in for another diamond in the rough.

The graphics look very strong with developers using the latest technology to map the changing contours and features of the main character’s expressions so as to ensure a strong resemblance to the real life cast. In a recently released clip we get to see Dame Judi Dench in the studio along with her younger (and slightly more attractive) counterpart, Olga Kurylenko seemingly dazzled as loads of old men whiz lasers past their head and beam the resulting information to a screen which configures the data and produces a near mirror image of its targeted area (maybe I exaggerate but see for yourselves).

The development team for the game have been closely working with the staff involved with the movie and have even twice visited the set.  This closeness can only help assimilating the styles of  two sects of the Bond franchise and I hope to see a game that feels and looks just like the movie.

The clips available also show reasonably lengthy clips of Bond in action and from what can be seen, the game does seem to match to darker moods of Bond in the latest instalment of Ian Fleming’s legacy.

I think the game is going to be a sharp and well finished piece and hopefully the gameplay will keep the standard high enough to be an enjoyable experience for all. Thanks for reading.

Eire.

123 Eire.