Overall not a bad game by any stretch but there are many FPS games on PC that offer a better experience.
Playing through the game on the Field Operative difficulty setting (normal) there were some charming aspects to it. There were many environmental ways to effect enemies such as shooting a fire extinguisher and having it spray on an enemy which would disorient them giving you a clear shot. There were also electrical boxes which could be shot and shock to death any enemy near by. I also enjoyed the take down feature of the game. When you crept up behind an enemy you had the option to go into take down mode in which you had to make sure to line your circle up with the second moving circle. If the two were lined up in the brief time allotted then Bond would proceed to do such things as break their necks, or knock them unconscious. There were a few different take downs I saw and they were enjoyable to watch and saved ammo. They weren't very hard to pull off but it was one of the few times I have enjoyed quick time events. While not a ground breaking addition I liked how you could attach a silencer to any weapon so you could go about the mission with more stealth. The game had a checkpoint save system which usually I am not a fan of over quick saves but the intervals between check points were short enough that it didn't really bother me, in fact it was kind of nice because I didn't have to remember to quick save. Another nice feature was how you could take cover say behind a wall and then dash to the next available cover. It made picking when to move up easier. My only problem with it was I found it a little difficult to control which piece of cover Bond went to next. This made for some annoying moments and a few deaths.
The game play was not all rosy. When loading a previous save you were forced to watch the opening video for that chapter all the way through every time you loaded. This became very annoying very fast. I also found the enemy AI to be a little on the stupid side. Very rarely did they try to do things like flank you or use any sort of tactics, some times they didn't even use cover that was available. Once in a while they would do something smart like throw a grenade to my position to try to flush me out but not often enough to give me much challenge. Another gripe I had was that you would get little clues to the enemy plans by finding cellphones lying around the level. My problem became that I put my thinking cap on and found this to be a very implausible way to tell the story. Seriously, just how many discarded cell phones can you find before you start to question it ? What went through the minds of the AI, "hey, let's throw this cell phone on this table, no one will take it and use it against us". While hacking doors I was also annoyed to find that your weapon switched to a different weapon then the one I was using before I hacked the door. I don't know to call this a glitch or what but I had selected my gun for a reason and I found myself having to switch back to it after every door hack. The hand holding also started to bother me. All important items you could want to find were brightly highlighted which I took as an insult to my intelligence. It was as if Treyarch didn't think I could find these things like health and ammo on my own.
The graphics of Quantum of Solace weren't bad. The lighting was nicely done especially the sunlight. I also liked the water although it lacked movement and ripple effects. The gun models were well done and made using the weapons more enjoyable for me.
It was no Crysis though. Make no mistake there are better looking games out here On PC but there are also much worse looking ones. The main problem Quantum of Solace had was that it was poorly optimized. I ran the game with maxed out settings but I had to keep the AA to 2X or my frame rate would drop to an undesirable level. I do have to say that Crysis runs better on my system. I can max out Crysis albeit without AA but it looks better maxed out without AA than QOS does with AA. The only other slight I had against the graphics was that I thought the character models were rather poor.
I really did like the sound effects for QOS. I especially liked the sound of the bullets as well as the sounds of the impacts the bullets made. This made firefights more enjoyable. I would say one gripe would be that sometimes the characters mouths would not be moving while they were obviously speaking.
One surprising aspect was that the story was actually somewhat fresh. While the game was based on the movie they took certain liberties and changed some things up. This made the game more interesting because I couldn;'t always predict what would happen just from seeing the movie. As for the options menu there a decent number of options but there was no support for EAX and also no support for anisotropic filtering. There was also only support for up to 4X AA in game.
Games For Windows Live is used in Quantum of Solace and there are achievements to earn. Most of them are just for basic stuff like beating a level or chapter. There are also four difficulty levels to choose from for those that like to play all of them. There is an online feature but I didn't try it out.
Overall Quantum of Solace is a decent game. If you are a fan of FPS games than you will no doubt enjoy certain features it offers. The game has faults but none are so severe they deprived me of much fun. I just can't say it is a great game because the most common feeling I had was "been there done that" It reuses so many things you have seen and done in different games without offering much new. To FPS fans I would suggest giving it a go if you can find it for $10 or less.