First of all, let's talk about the name of the game. It's called Quantum of Solace, but you're actually playing bits and pieces of that movie combined with flashbacks of Casino Royale. To be honest, the game Casino Royale provides more gameplay moments to this game than Quantum of Solace.

Quantum of Solace looks and plays like your average shooter but it gives your the opportunity to hide behind walls and other things like you could do in Gears of War, Uncharted and pretty much every other shooter available these days. When this happens, the camera switches to third person mode, so you will get a clear view of Daniel Craig after all. The man didn't lend his face just be used on the box you know.

The game certainly looks and sounds ok. The engine that we know from Call of Duty 4 mostly delivers nice graphics and some cool effects. Although the graphics and especially the environments tend to be a bit uninspired, we can't really complain. Loads of standard environments though, and the enemies came straight of the “tough Chinese gangsters and Russian maffia box”. Some of the backgrounds look like cardboard postcards but beside that everything is fine enough. Sometimes you will just stand still to look at the graphics, and the water effects are really well done. The music is also an advantage: really atmospheric and the fans will love to hear that some famous Bond tunes will be heard while playing this game. The other tracks are also nicely done, for example the opera music at the concert mission.

Yet nothing compares to the gameplay, which is a bit less impressive. Not that it's that bad, but everything you do in Quantum of Solace comes out of the text book of shooters yet its performance is mediocre. It never does anything daring but does stay miles behind when it comes to gameplay. Instead of a thrilling experience you're just shooting hundreds of goons without even caring. Yes you can use the environments in your rampage, but this only means shooting gas cannisters and fire extinguishers most of the time. Sometimes, at very scarce moments, you will be able to shoot something else(three times I believe), causing some nice effects in the environments.

During your mission the game can change into some platform action. You'll have jump over ridges and walk over small poles. It doesn't offer much satisfaction though and the effects of Bond moving are badly done. It looks a bit cheap and Bond moves a bit stiff, making him look comical. When hiding behind walls, Bond also moves a bit strange, as if he's wearing roller blades.

The story is less entertaining as you would think, offering loose moments from the two movies, and some things that you didn't see in the films. It doesn't seem to have any structure and the characters don't have anything useful to say. This makes that Quantum of Solace, the game, is nothing more than shooting goons with countless weapons. The raw emotions of the movies are all lost.

After four hours, your mediocre adventure with James Bond is over, and it's needless to say that's a few hours too early for a stand alone game. I don't expect every game to cover 30 hours, but if people pay € 65 for this, you can at least expect it to take a while before you've finished everything. There's an online part as well though, so if you're in the mood for it, you can hit to multiplayer. There are enough options to keep you going, but the graphics are remarkably less impressive and the maps aren't very interesting. I do believe it is a great first game to play online for people who aren't familiar with this, because I found out the competition isn't all that hard.