Myself, Traycee, Beau and a bunch of our fellow games press colleagues headed out to Best Buy in West LA last night to experience the midnight launch of Quantum of Solace.

Prior to heading over to the Best Buy set up for Quantum of Solace, we decided to meet up for a little pre-event dinner at Pomodoro restaurant.   There we met up with Rob Welkner, Blanklogo Mike,  Kevin Kelly, Jessica Villareal, Nikole Z and Mike Prasad & crew for a little bruschetta, scampi and good conversation.  It’s always a great feeling to be able to hang out with what some may call “competitive” sites and not let business get in the way.  We had a great time chatting about everything from gaming to pop culture and beyond.  With a few negative posts against girls in gaming popping up around the net in the past few days, there’s nothing like face time with other site heads and writers to show that our community really isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be!

Quantum of Solace Midnight Launch Dinner

At 10pm, the crew headed over to Best Buy to check out the action.   There was an Aston Martin DBS all roped off (but pretty as can be), an area where you had an opportunity to pull a key that could open a safe containing a $2,500.00 gift card to Best Buy or a Sony BRAVIA XBR 52” 1080p Flat-Panel LCD HDTV,  gaming stations set up to preview Quantum of Solace,  Power 106 radio station table, Coke Zero in martini glasses (yeah… they weren’t stirred or shaken.  That would have been messy!), three Guitar Hero World Tour set ups where guests had the chance to play the Bond song “Another Way to Die” performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys which is soon-to-be-released as downloadable content this Thursday and ice cream courtesy of Icepan.

Around the front of Best Buy, two MI6 agents were waiting for guests to pick up their “agent number” card which was their key ticket to winning prizes during the raffles.  With only around 75 - 100 people in attendance, we figured the odds of winning something were pretty nice.

What ended up happening was, out of our group of 10 press people (and we were the ONLY 10 press people who attended) 6 of us walked away with prizes including 2 full Bond Blu-ray sets, an Activision game set and 2 PS3 systems.

Yeah .. you read that right.   2 PS3 systems and guess who one of those lucky winners was?!

Definitely the best moment of the night for yours truly!

All in all it was a less than stellar event.  There were Bond girls walking around but they didn’t really make themselves known as Bond girls.  The other MI6 agents were simply helping to run the gaming stations and there was very little “atmosphere”.   For the most part, the guests who meandered in were really just wanting to play Guitar Hero (and not even the new song but more of the “Living on a Prayer” type songs) or just waiting around for the drawings.

I had the opportunity to play the game prior to tonight and really liked it.  One of the first things to note is the great music.  They really stuck to the Bond feel and added some top notch scores that really added to the ambiance of the scene.

Speaking of scenes,  in most games we just click through those annoying cut scenes however, in QoS the cut scenes are so well done that  you won’t want to click through them.  It’s just like watching a film.  The voice acting is also amazing as is the fact that you feel like you are TRULY watching Daniel Craig’s Bond as the motion capture really nailed his look perfectly.

The lock picking mini-games are fun and add a new spin (similiar to Bioshock where you had the hacking mini-games)  The enemy AI will shoot around corners or ontop of a counter to fire at you.

My main complaint would be the same complaint I have in Gears of War.  While the “duck and cover” effect adds a pinch of realism to the game, it can also become annoying during those times when you really don’t WANT to duck and cover.

Regardless of what any websites say, I would recommend checking out Quantum of Solace.   For Activisions first shot at a Bond title, I’d say they did pretty well.

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