The One With… the plot that nicely dovetails into Spectre's.
A James Bond video game, released November 2010 alongside GoldenEye (2010), Blood Stone is a Third-Person Shooter with an original Bruce Feirstein-penned plot and featuring the voices and likenesses of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Joss Stone, who sang for it.
The plot centres around the kidnapping of influential scientists working on the UK's top-secret biochemical projects. In the process of his investigation, Bond is sent to numerous locations worldwide, engaging in infiltration, gunfights and insanely cool car chases.
Preceded by Quantum of Solace and followed by 007 Legends.
This video game contains examples of:
- Auto-Save / Checkpoint: Your progress is automatically saved on occasion as you complete objectives, and should you fail, you'll roll back to the last checkpoint you reached.
- Big Bad: It's Pomerov... No, it's Rak! No wait, it's Nicole! No, it's someone else entirely!
- Boss Battle: There are five of these in the DS version.
- Break Them by Talking: Done by Rak on numerous occasions.
- Chase Scene: After 5 years of absence, the memorable staple of the Bond games returns. Filled to the brim with over the top set-pieces. Understandable, as the driving sequences were developed by the guys who made Blur.
- Continuity Nod: Both this game and the Goldeneye remake heavily use the UI elements of the MI6 scenes from Quantum of Solace.
- Cool Car: The Aston Martin DBS, and the Aston Martin DB5.
- Cultural Posturing: Bond briefly meets a Chinese colonel who likes to boast about China's technological advancements.
- Death by Adaptation / Spared by the Adaptation : In the console and PC versions, Greco lives and Bernin dies. The Nintendo DS version swaps the fates of these two early villains.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation :
- In the console and PC versions, Rak is killed when he tries to shoot a grenade launcher at Bond, but is shot just as he uses it, causing him to aim wrong and blow himself up. In the Nintendo DS version, Bond throws Rak to his death after defeating him in a fight onboard an Osprey that he was using to flee the country.
- In the console and PC versions, Nicole Hunter is killed by a sniper-like shot from a small drone at a bridge in France. In the Nintendo DS version, she is strafed by a larger, manned aircraft in some harbor-like area in Monaco.
- Disney Villain Death: In the DS version of the game, Bond kills Rak by overpowering him in a fight aboard an Opsrey cargo hold and throwing him out of the open door even as he pleads for his life, hanging at the edge.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: You can't use your weapons while sprinting in the DS version.
- Drives Like Crazy: The enemy mooks. Who seem to enjoy barreling into oil tankers with glee.
- Elite Mooks: In the last quarter of the game, your enemies are soldiers with body armor and military-grade firearms, who can take 2 to 3 times as much damage as the thugs and private security you've been fighting for most of the game.
- Evil Plan:
- Stefan Pomerov wants to create bioweapons based on Tedworth's Smallpox and Anthrax cure.
- Nicole Hunter has high profile scientists and corporate executives kidnapped and tortured for their secrets. Her unseen employer also has her dismantle Pomerov's operation, using MI 6.
- Girl of the Week: Nicole, a socialite-turned-MI6 agent. Bond also has an unnamed woman in his bed in one early cutscene.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Nicole reveals at the end that someone who is "everywhere" and "bigger than MI6" was the real mastermind behind the entire plot, but is gunned down by a remote-controlled drone before revealing a name. This was a Sequel Hook that was never picked up, but given the events of Spectre it could be fair to assume it was Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who fits Nicole's description incredibly well.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In the DS version, your first fight with Rak is a speedboat duel you must win to complete the Bangkok level, which ends with Bond appearing to have the upper hand on Rak, only to get knocked out with a canister of stun gas.
- Hellish Copter: In the DS version, you'll see a helicopter that you'll have to blow up in a Boss Battle.
- Hero Insurance: Averted. After your building-shattering car chase through Bangkok, the police try to hunt you down. Intel in an earlier level indicates Rak has bought them out, though, so they'd have been chasing you anyway, with the collateral damage simply giving them a valid legal excuse.
- Karma Houdini: Greco, the terrorist/mad-cap schemer from the prologue, seems to get away completely unharmed, which is particularly noticeable since Bond pretty much slaughters everyone else who crosses him. You can't even run Greco over; if you back up the car and try to do so, slamming into him is like hitting a solid wall.
- Averted in the Nintendo DS version, where Greco himself tries to drive the explosives into the summit, but pays the ultimate price when Bond picks up a rocket launcher and blows him off the road.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Colonel Fu San Ping is assassinated with a single sniper shot while talking with Bond about Rak at an aquarium in Bangkok.
- Last Episode Theme Reprise: In the DS version, the James Bond theme that plays after the first level can be heard again at the start of the final level, where you chase down Nicole Hunter.
- Life Meter: Averted in the console and PC version; played straight in the DS version.
- Limited Loadout: You can only carry two weapons at a time.
- The Man Behind the Man: See Sequel Hook. Most likely it's Silva or Oberhauser.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Rak.
- No-Gear Level: After being captured by Rak, Bond begins the Burma level without his trusty pistol. In the console and PC versions, he also has to retrieve his smartphone as well.
- There are also places where Bond is not allowed to use weapons, such as public places.
- Non-Indicative Name: Along with a non-indicative title sequence - the main plot has zilch to do with conflict diamonds. The closest connection is that Nicole's jewelry designs frequently use large bright red gemstones, but that is barely even a plot point.
- Non-Standard Game Over: If you allow your enemy to escape in a car chase, it's an immediate Game Over. The DS version also has several other ways to get instant game overs, such as failing minigames or getting spotted in an area where you are not allowed to use weapons.
- Recurring Boss: You have to fight Rak twice late into the DS version.
- Red Right Hand: Rak has a King Leonidas-style scar across his right eye.
- Regenerating Health: Also comes in handy when you're taking cover.
- Rule of Cool:
- The chase sequences, ranging from a boat chase through Athens harbor to chasing after a speeding train across an icy river in Russia.
- Also applies to the increasingly unlikely appearances of Aston Martins for Bond to commandeer (especially since 3 apparently separate DBSs have the same number plate: The one used in the tutorial level taken from outside Greco's hiding spot, Nicole's friend's DBS in Siberia, and presumably Bond's own in the epilogue).
- And chasing a big-ass truck through Bangkok.
- Scenery Porn: Notable mentions being the car chase out of the Russian refinery, and the car chase with Nicole through the Riviera.
- That aquarium in Bangkok is also damned impressive.
- Sequel Hook: Either through accident or design, the game dovetails nicely into Skyfall and Spectre, especially given the ending with Nicole telling Bond that everything she did, she did for a man who is 'everywhere' and has more reach than even MI6. Now whether that could be translated as Nicole's lover being in fact Raoul Silva, or even his Man Behind the Man, Oberhauser (aka Blofeld) is unknown, but it certainly fits Oberhauser's typical methods to a T. Of course, it's entirely possible the creators left it deliberately open-ended and ambiguous on the gamble that it would retroactively make sense.
- Shoot the Bullet: In the DS version, you can shoot down RPGs out of the air to avoid getting hit by them.
- Starter Villain: Greco is this. Once you deal with him in the first level as a warm-up of what's to come, only then does the story of Blood Stone begin proper.
- Stuff Blowing Up: An entire compound filled with explosive chemicals, blowing up.
- Third-Person Shooter: Interestingly, of the four Bond video games released by Activision in the seventh generation (the combined Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace adaptation, GoldenEye (Wii), this game, and 007 Legends), it's the only one to primarily be a third-person affair - the others are all First-Person Shooters with, at best, a third-person cover system.
- Under the Truck: In the DS version, you can drive under tanker trucks in car chases.
- Universal Ammunition: Pistols get a strange variant, where Bond's P99 can take ammo from any other pistol dropped by enemies, but on the rare occasions you have the chance to use one of those pistols, they can only get more ammo from other copies of the same gun.
- Version-Exclusive Content: The Nintendo DS version has an extra level in the middle of the campaign about how Bond searched for the individual who tried to make a long-distance call to Bernin. Plus, there are some hands-on mini-games only available on that version that capitalize on the system's touchscreen controls.
- Women Drivers: Nicole lets Bond drive her car, saying "I feel much safer with a man behind the wheel." She later admits that she has wrecked every car she's ever owned. Of course, Bond is even more of a Captain Crash than she is.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The opening sequences lists the city you're in as "ΛTHΣNδ", which would actually read "LTHSNd" instead of "ATHENS."
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the DS version, the man who assassinates Colonel Ping, is executed by his boss, Rak, while being chased by Bond.
