The official UK PlayStation magazine features what appear to be the world’s first screenshots of Bond’s first video game outing since the mediocre From Russia With Love (based on the Sean Connery film and starring pop star Natasha Bedingfield for reasons one can only try to comprehend). The new game, based on the upcoming movie Quantum of Solace, will feature Daniel Craig in the starring role and will take on the gadget-free, adrenaline-surged style of the newer films.

More on this (relatively) exclusive news after the jump!

Not long after the release of From Russia With Love, Activision nicked the Bond license from EA for a cool $70million and handed development over to Treyarch, who are hard at work on the game as I type. Despite the game’s title, Quantum of Solace will cover the events of Casino Royale and the new movie, presumably because the game that was to be based on the latter movie ended up in development hell. It’ll also use the same engine as Call of Duty 4, meaning everything from the graphics to how the game plays should be pretty hard to screw up.

The nature of how the game plays looks to be pretty interesting; for the most part, you’ll play as Bond in the first-person view, able to cap goons with barely a flick of your wrist, but take cover and the camera will flick to a third-person perspective and you’ll be able to pop out and take down your enemies. With work being done over 2 years to nail the system and keep the flow going, Treyarch hope they’ve aced it and have done their best to ensure that the fast, frantic pace of first-person running-and-gunning is retained when you’re hiding behind your chosen cover point. Not sure how frantic keeping perfectly still can be, but hopefully they’ve found a way.

Constant Hollywood-style set-pieces are promised, with explosions, gunfire and general “woooooah” moments promised throughout. Stealth kills are also in the works, since it’s worth remembering that Bond is an agent of espionage. With context-sensitive button presses, Bond can chop throats or kick faces in for instant knockouts, but in louder situations these button presses can be used to, say, push enemies over balconies or simply deliver a running punch. It all sounds good, as long as Treyarch don’t go the way of The Bourne Conspiracy and [grits teeth] throw-in-cutscenes-every-single-freaking-second.

The health system is the same old staple food of any game that uses cover, such as Uncharted: stay down long enough without taking any hits and you’ll be good as new in moments. Apparently though, according to the magazine, rather than go for the simple indication of imminent death (referring to Uncharted again, for example, the screen’s colour fades as your health declines) the iconic rifle-sight that rolls over the opening credits of every Bond film begins to close in on the spy until you die; that’ll get a little annoying if it’s too intrusive and makes your death all the more probable.

Still, I wont deny that I’m excited. The last Bond game I played was 007: Everything or Nothing, which featured Pierce Brosnan in the role and featured the ridiculous gadgets that his era of Bond films was accustomed to (such as remote control spider scouts and, er, an invisibility suit) so the whole thing felt a little fake.With Daniel Craig in the role Bond regained his edge, cutting out the gadgets completely in favour of some kick-ass parkour and fight moves you may think he picked up from a certain amnesiac CIA agent. It’s inevitable that Quantum of Solace will follow this new direction and this can only work in favour of the final product. Craig is even acting as quality assurance, keeping an eye on his likeness and the progress of development; after all, he’s a gamer himself and has the occasional go of Guitar Hero on set to wind down.

The new Bourne-esque direction that the James Bond movies has taken has delivered exceptionally good results on-screen and in the box office, so I have pretty high hopes for the new game, with the gimmicky gadgets gone and some much-needed adrenalin injected into the gameplay. Quantum of Solace is set for an October release on PS3, 360, Wii and PC.

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