Blood Stone 007 is packed full of action scenes with explosions, beautiful women, chase sequences and a multitude of fire fights throughout, it definitely plays like the Bond films. Blood Stone is an action-adventure third-person shooter with hand-to-hand combat elements with an original story that follows our well-known MI6 spy, James Bond. Blood Stone was written by Bond series writer, Bruce Feirstein, who has done such works as Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. Take a look after the break for my review for Blood Stone 007 and see if you have what it takes to be Bond, James Bond.

First, I'd like to point out that the cinematics for Blood Stone were actually done quite well. Seeing digital reincarnations of Daniel Craig, Judy Dench and Joss Stone on my TV were great and it gave a sense of realism to the game that you would only be able to find in the Bond films. Once the opening credits came onto my screen, I knew that I was going to be in for a ride, but the real question that I wanted to ask myself was "how long is this ride going to last?" And then ultimately, I questioned "is this ride over yet?"

In Blood Stone, you travel the globe in order to put a stop to a group of terrorists. You have your first encounter in Athens, when the terrorist Greco plans an attack on the G-20 Summit at the Acropolis structure. After you stop a car littered with explosives from destroying the Acropolis structure, you are sent by M to rescue a missing professor, Malcolm Tedworth. Originally Tedworth was feared dead, but you receive an anonymous tip that he is still alive and go on the search for the missing professor and his secrets across the globe. Of course, in order for this to be a legit Bond story, you'll need to be double-crossed as well as fight for your life.

Throughout Blood Stone, you'll encounter a great number of combatants who are geared and ready to take you out. Unfortunately for them, you have a lot of experience with this type of thing. You'll be able to experience a handful of car chases in practically every major location in the game that can get a little exciting, but watch out for falling debris and well as water, since your vehicle is definitely not amphibious. I actually had a lot of fun with the car chases, but in all honesty, they were a little too short and a little bit too easy for my taste.

The majority of the enemies aren't overly difficult to take down, many of them you can just run up to them and perform a take down on them, hide behind cover and then repeat. But some of them you may actually have to fire your gun at. As you move through the game, you'll be able to attack the enemy by a series of different take down techniques and with each take down, you'll obtain a mark towards your precision and be able to use it towards a one-shot kill execution. You'll be able to have three precision marks at once. I had a lot of fun running around as Bond and attacking enemies with stealth and silent take downs, as I'm sure you may as well. But, that is really what this game is all about... taking down terrorists covertly.

You will also need to search for intel with your cellphone throughout the game, but beware that constantly being within this view when searching for the intel gets rather hard on the eyes at times.

You will also find within the menu screen that there is a section for challenges to be completed. They go towards your trophy and achievement collection, so I'd suggest trying to get them completed if you are one of those trophy hunters or achievement junkies.

Unfortunately, Blood Stone wasn't that long of a game overall, taking me roughly 6 hours to complete on the hard difficulty (Agent). Rather disappointing in my opinion. That's one sitting for some people, and not really worth $60 bucks if you ask me. If you decide to go for the precision route with each enemy and not set off the alarms or be seen by your enemies, then it will most likely take a bit longer. And of course, playing higher than hard will need more strategy as well.

Multiplayer was a flop in my opinion. I began playing it but became so frustrated with the other players due to spawn trapping that I had to leave. Why? Why must people always spawn trap? I don't get it. In multiplayer, you'll be able to fight against and alongside up to 16 other players in team deathmatch and many objective-based battles where you'll need to work as a team to attack or defend. You'll be able to pick your weapon from a weapons crate once you spawn, and there are many to choose from such as shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, and many more. It honestly reminded me a bit of Uncharted 2 in a way, especially with its cover system.

This game wasn't bad, but in all honesty, it wasn't that great either. I'm a Bond fan, but not a die-hard one. Huge fans of the Bond series would enjoy this game for the fact that its story goes hand-in-hand with the James Bond character, and almost plays like another Bond film. I loved the story of Blood Stone, I thought that it was intriguing and Feirstein did a great job with the script, but it really did stop there.

The core gamer might want to pass on this title due to its ridiculously easy degree of difficulty. I actually believe that if people decide to purchase this game, you may only play it a maximum of two times before getting tired of it. I started to play it a second time but got about two-fifths of the way through (the second day of having it in my possession) and decided that enough was enough. I hate to be brutally honest here, but this game didn't quite make my list of games to run out and get. I'm sorry, Activision and Bizarre Creations, but I'm going to have to give this a rating of...

  • Title: Blood Stone 007
  • Platform Reviewed: Xbox 360
  • Developer: Bizarre Creations
  • Publisher: Activision
  • Release Date: Available Now
  • MSRP: $59.99
  • Review Copy Info: A copy of this game was provided to DualShockers Inc by the publisher for purposes of this review.
James Bond 007: Blood Stone
4.5 / 10

Platform(s)
PC , Nintendo DS , PS3 , Xbox 360
Released
November 2, 2010
Developer(s)
Bizarre Creations
Publisher(s)
Activision
ESRB
T For Teen due to Alcohol and Tobacco Reference, Blood, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence