Quantum of Solace: The Game Demo

[Wombat]

Although I prefer more darker and believable setting than that of Bond movies, I must admit that the demo definitely has the feel of them. Of course, personally, I expect more in-depth role-playing game-play such as NPC interactions and interactive plot with interesting themes. However, the game-play of the demo felt fluid and captures the non-brainer atmosphere of Bond movies very well, which possibly puts the hurdle high to Alpha Protocol in this respect. Also, generally speaking, while action games don't need to consider the aspect of the pace-down of role-playing games and set the game-play strictly with meta-rules, role-playing games don't have this luxury. This reminds me of the unfortunate, unavoidable and unfair, should I say, comparison between Half Life 2 and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

 

Any thoughts?

[Hell Kitty]

The QoS demo was too short for me to really get anything out of it.

[Wombat]

The QoS demo was too short for me to really get anything out of it.

I agree that it's very short. People on the net comparing it with CoD4 because of the common engine. Most of shooting games appear to be vanilla to me but even shooting game fans are criticizing its being too vanilla. As for plus side, I haven't played CoD4 but game-play felt quite smooth to me, which may have made me feel the length even shorter.

 

Some people who don't have enough bandwidth to this short demo can watch a game-play video.

 

This is not included in the demo but Gametrailers.com has a stealth game-play video, too.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

I thought it was pretty enjoyable. Nothing new, but good production values and the action felt right. The CQC system was clever too.

[Wombat]

I thought it was pretty enjoyable. Nothing new, but good production values and the action felt right. The CQC system was clever too.

I don't play shooting games so often but the cover system is just intuitive and worked fine to my eyes. The first person/third person shift is smooth. I felt the enemy AI bit idiotic but, at least, Bond's wiping out multiple opponents with showy explosions cannot be blamed as unfaithful to the movies. Although it may not satisfy hardcore shooting game fans, I feel it carries the feel of the movies.

 

That said, however, my attention is toward Alpha Protocol. I am wondering how Obsidian keeps the balance between speedy/streamlined action scenes and in-depth role-playing ones. Also, I hope the high production value of QoS won't make Alpha Protocol look dated, which happened in the past when Troika released Bloodlines. Thinking of blighter side, gamers' seeming to be tired of yet another shooter may turn out to be favorable winds for some of Obsidian projects. Eidos seems to be have judged it's a good time to give another chance to Deus Ex, the original role-playing/shooting hybrid, too. Again, little are new/original here but hopefully, they are getting better at what they are doing.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

Well, yeah. The problem with shooter/RPG hybrids is that they tend to be worse-funded and attempt to do more feature-wise than pure shooters. Inevitably, something has to go and technology/graphics tend to be it. AP looks decent to me, but I'm notoriously un-picky about my graphics.

 

Re the balance of roleplaying and action, in what sense? I mean, so far we have the example of the arms dealer at the end of a mission whom players can choose to spare, kill, or arrest. Based on that, I get the impression that it will be similar to SC: Double Agent in that most of the time you're just doing your thing and occasionally a plot-relevant decision will pop up (either during or between missions). Hopefully there are more decisions than SC:DA, though.

 

This is all speculation though, which is pretty much how I roll on the AP forums.

[SirPetrakus]

This is all speculation though, which is pretty much how I roll on the AP forums.

 

Don't we all.

 

I haven't checked the demo. Is QoS out for the PC too? I don't own any consoles besides a handheld DS.

[Wombat]

Re the balance of roleplaying and action, in what sense? I mean, so far we have the example of the arms dealer at the end of a mission whom players can choose to spare, kill, or arrest. Based on that, I get the impression that it will be similar to SC: Double Agent in that most of the time you're just doing your thing and occasionally a plot-relevant decision will pop up (either during or between missions). Hopefully there are more decisions than SC:DA, though.

Personally, I'm interested in NPC-PC iterations and the impacts on story-development through choices of PC. However, of course, some other people are probably interested in character customizations/equipments/crafting. Guess too early to discuss these things, though. Too little information, too much room for speculation.

 

I haven't checked the demo. Is QoS out for the PC too? I don't own any consoles besides a handheld DS.

Some questions are better asked to search engines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_of_Solace_(video_game)

It's for pretty much every single platform around including MS Windows. We are talking of single-player PC demo here.