While fans of the classic GoldenEye fawn over its remake on the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners are duking it out on another James Bond game. 007: Blood Stone allows up to 16 players to go online a crack each others' skulls.
I took a break from the single player campaign earlier this week to see if there was anything worth fussing about. Immediately I noticed the ranking system, which is pretty much standard fare these days. By ranking up you can unlock player skins and guns.
There are five classes of guns to use in multiplayer: pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. You can carry your choice of one pistol and one other type - a primary weapon, if you will. To change your primary weapon in-game, you can simply swap what you have out at a crate that corresponds to the type that you want. It's very straightforward, with holographic signs hovering over the crates for easy reference.
The multiplayer controls are an exact clone of single player, which means you have the opportunity to melee attack if you get the drop on someone. Just like in the single player campaign, melee beatdowns give you Focus Aim tokens (you can have up to three of these)...these allow you to make insta-kill shots. In multiplayer, however, you don't get the slow-motion effect...just a satisfying POP and some XP.
I was very pleasantly surprised with how simple and polished the versus mode was. Finally, someone has latched onto the style of gameplay that made Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow for the PSP so much fun. After playing the demo for The Club, I'd been hoping that Bizarre Creations would make something good of the James Bond license. There's something delightfully simplistic and fluid about the way their games control.
