A valiant effort, but not quite what I expected - be prepared!
The game starts with a poor intro with a 5 second segment of the bond theme on loop while we get to see images cut from the film in very poor resolution with dismal sound effects. Get that out of the way! OK...After a few taps of the stylus we're into the main menu and with no real options or configuration to be checked we jump straight into the game.
Firstly, the game is just about fully controlled with the stylus with the shoulder buttons acting as a kind of 'shift' key whenever you want to shoot a weapon or engage in combat. On the whole this works very nicely and the game doesn't handle too badly. As I'll discuss later on, however, Activision's decision to utilize the touchscreen so heavily does yeild its problems.
The tutorial mission will last you a good hour and basically entails climbing a building full of identical terrorists that you must take out. You can choose to shoot these terrorists or engage in hand to hand combat with them. Firstly, shooting the enemies (providing you have a gun with a loaded clip) is extremely easy. You simply hold any button and tap on an enemy with the gun equiped. You tap, Bond shoots. Easy. The hand to hand combat on the other hand is a little more experimental. if you choose to engage an enemy hands on you will be confronted with a 3rd person view looking over bond's shoulders at your enemy. You then have to swipe the stylus in swift upwards or downwards motions to uppercut, or similarly, side to side in order to swing. you hold the stylus over one of bonds hands to block on that paticular side. This sounds pretty cool but does seem to lapse into a very simplistic battle of wits with the cpu. If you manage to successfully block an attack, it will render your opponent dazed and you can then draw a circle on the touch screen to throw him into an unsuspecting chair or something.
All of this, upon first glance, looks fairly cool and you'll have at least 10 minutes of joy throwing these terrorists around. If I'm honest however, I did have some trouble with the DS misinterpreting my stylus inputs during the hand to hand combat and this drove me to near insanity. If I missed a punch, or bond didn't block when I told him to, it would render him dazed for a number of seconds whilst the evil man in black beat me to death - leaving me scrawling on the touchscreen and getting quite verbal with the game.
All criticisms aside however, this is a valiant attempt at bringing bond espionage to the DS in a non-FPS format and it's clearly a step in the right direction. The graphics and frame rate are fairly sleek during gameplay and the touchscreen (though annoying in hand to hand combat occasionaly) is nice and intuative. Another thing worth mentioning that bugged me slighty was the jerkyness (is that a word?) of the camera as I changed direction or entered a room but I think that would be something you could easily become acustomed to if you spend a great deal of time with the game. The items are varied and plentiful and bond's attaché case inventory screen is a nice touch - you also have a very sleek looking map which will help you plan your moves in advance before you enter a room. Being able to choose a head on gun-fest or a stealthy knife to the neck is what really lets this game stand out. I just think they've fallen slightly short - it's almost like a simpleton's splinter cell.
Give this game a go if you have access to it or perhaps rent it out and see how you it suits you - don't expect it to match the hype of the film or the same game on other consoles though... be prepared to make a lot of allowances. 6/10.