Quantum of Solace: The Video Game

It really can't be emphasised enough: gunplay is all here. Despite the COD4 blood-ties, the FPS it's most like (and deliberately so) is Rainbow Six: Vegas. Clearly this is a solo and not a team affair, but it places a similar emphasis on use of cover, blindfire and timing. For all his tankiness, Bond won't last long if he hangs around in the open, so he needs to make careful use of the environment. The build we saw wouldn't let you forget this - a huge on-screen prompt to Press A To Dash For Cover was all but omnipresent. Treyarch promises it'll be less frequent in the finished game, but it enforces the developer's claim that QoS will have less steep a learning curve than R6 Vegas. It's an action game for a broad audience, not for stern tactical shooter types.

Adaptive AI is promised too, so you'll not face quite the same fight twice - the identi-terrorist might come from the left instead of the right next time. Imagine! Still, gritty realism it ain't. Bond's legion of foes can soak up a ton of bullets before falling over, there's a spot of vent-crawling, and plenty of things explode on demand. It's all fairly heavily physics - sofas spray stuffing when shot, flammable barrels are everywhere and Treyarch demonstrates a chandelier that can plummet from the ceiling, making for that Bond/Phantom of the Opera crossover we've all been dreaming of.

Adding to this vague sense of Hitman-lite is some balcony-shuffling semi-stealthery. It doesn't appear as though there's recourse to avoid combat through brainy sneaking, but you can make your odds a little more favourable but taking circumspect routes through the levels.

So, back to those Quick Time Events. Treyarch wasn't ready to show any of the boss-fights that will feature them, but we did get a taste of the Simon Says hacking sub-game. Near-future computer tech is as close as QoS gets to classic Bond gadgetry, which reflects the grounded approach of the Daniel Craig films, but all that button-memorisation did look a little anachronous and, well, annoying.

Treyarch is convinced it makes for a better game - "something that isn't just about moving your cursor around to hit guys". One might argue that a driving section would be a more Bond-appropriate method of achieving this, but Treyarch claims that would have been too much of a change of pace - the devs want to keep it a pure combat experience. Perhaps they're right, but it's hard to shake the worry that Bond without car chases is like Christmas without presents.

So, right now it's hard to picture Quantum of Solace really going toe-to-toe with any of the big first-person shooters we were blessed with over the winter. Still, there were apparently some three or four months' of work left to go on the game when we saw it running back in June, which may be enough time to shed the worrying tang of insert licence, pull lever. The actors' faces are there, the cut-scenes are there, the music's there: it's definitely a 007 game in aesthetic respects.

Beyond that, it was tough to identify a definable personality. Whether those four months of final coding were enough to give QoS some flavour of its own remains to be seen - more than likely, it won't matter. It's got guns in it and Daniel Craig will be on the front of the box, and that's what matters, right?