A fun game for fans of the Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale movies, but others may lose interest.
GAMEPLAY (8.0) - The combination of using the Call of Duty 4 engine and Treyarch proves to be a very good one, for the most part. Most of the time you're moving around in a first person view, but the game also offers a cover system that pulls back to a third person view. The fact is that no matter how good you are in the stealth sections there will still be plenty of moments in which you are involved in huge firefights against a small army of enemies, and using the cover system will be necessary for survival. Overall the enemy AI does a good job of working together to outflank you and to flush you out of cover by using grenades, though it does have a tendency to not completely put themselves in cover, frequently leaving themselves exposed for some easy headshots. Unlike some other games, the stealth sections in QOS are actually fun, and if you're caught it doesn't mean game over, it just means that a group of heavily armed guards will attack you and if you survive the fight you can proceed. Creeping through a level and systematically wiping out a crew without them knowing is very satisfying from a gaming standpoint. It's these situations where you'll most likely take advantage of Bond's new takedown system. Walking up behind enemies and clicking the right joystick will trigger a button press sequence, that if hit correctly will unleash a knockout blow. Hacking into computers, picking locks and taking out security cameras are there as well, usually involving simple mini games.
GRAPHICS (8.0) - QOS does a decent job as far as the major characters go, and as you might expect especially Daniel Craig, which is fortunate since you'll be seeing him every time you go into cover mode. As in many other games you'll notice a lot of repetition when it comes to enemy models, but that's pretty much to be expected. Staying true to the Bond movies you'll find yourself in many different colorful and exotic environments, which helps to keep your interest, though compared to some other games you might notice that the textures and environmental details are not as impressive. One thing I found disappointing is that there were many key moments from the movie in which you'll only hear the event, as if you're getting the info from a radio or cell phone, as opposed to actually witnessing it in a cutscene.
AUDIO (8.5) - Fortunately QOS uses the actual voices from the movie actors, so that works out great. Sound effects were fine and of course the James Bond music is always a plus. In fact I found the theme song they used for this game to be quite better than the one they used for the actual QOS movie.
VALUE (7.0) - The SP mode is somewhat short, as it will take most players between 6-8 hours to finish. In addition to playing at higher difficulties there can be some incentive to replay particular levels in order to obtain specific achievements that are related to that mission, which can be fun. It also offers 8 different MP modes, though most of them will feel more like Call of Duty games as opposed to a Bond game.
SUMMARY - Though the game starts at the ending of Casino Royale it actually does not play too much into the QOS movie. After a few levels Bond will go into flashback mode and you'll then be spending most of the game reliving moments from the Casino Royale movie. There's nothing inherently wrong with this but for people that have not seen the movies there could be some confusion as to what exactly is going on, other than following the orders that you're receiving on your headphone. As a top-of-the-line shooter QOS doesn't reach the level of many other games but as a licensed title tied to a movie release, it's certainly better than I've come to expect. For FPS fans in general this might not be worth your while but for Bond fans this is recommended if you can get it for a low price due to it's short SP campaign.