James Bond 007 Blood Stone Driving Hands-on

The name is Ferris… Colin Ferris…

Dammit, that just doesn’t sound as cool as Bond. While in real life I’ll never save the world and get the girl, I did get a chance to drive around as James Bond in the new James Bond 007 Blood Stone.

While I was unable to try the cover third person shooter gameplay, which was demoed for me, I did get to get behind the wheel of Bond’s car as I chased a train through explosions and chaos with Bond girl Joss Stone at my side.

I also got to meet Jaws actor Richard Kiel, but I never got to ask him who his dentist was…

In any case, the driving in Blood Stone is fantastic. In a level described by one of the developers as “our Michael Bay level”, the chaos on the screen was impressive. Tanker truck would cut me off, jackknife, and explode. Structures around start collapsing as I was racing to catch up to a train speeding away.

The handling of the car was varied as well. Once I jumped off the road onto the ice, I had to adjust my driving. Split second decisions were the different between life and death. Keeping up your speed was essential  in order to catch the train though you had to avoid driving your car into a river.

Arguably, the driving should be excellent in Blood Stone, as it is being developed by Bizarre Creations, makers of Blur and Project Gotham Racing. Not content with just cars, Bond is excellent at driving boats as well. Each vehicle handles differently as the might in real life. I for one would love to test this out in real life, but I just don’t have the budget to buy an Aston Martin.

Unfortunately, they didn’t let me get hands-on with the third person cover and gun gameplay, though they were happy to play it for me. While bond is a master of gunplay, he truly excels at hand-to-hand combat. Encouraging you to engage hand-to-hand, each takedown will give bond a focus point which allows Bond to slow-motion shoot enemies in a brutal fashion.

In fact, the developers got to use Daniel Craig’s combat double for the movies. Putting him in motion capture, they recorded some brutal hand-to-hand moves. In fact, they have over 60 different hand-to-hand takedowns in the game, including my real life tactic of just kicking the guy in the balls.

You too can live your Bond fantasy with Blood Stone this November.