Blood Stone 007

The next Bond film may be some way away now, but that hasn't stopped everyone's favourite super-spy from appearing in a whole new small-screen adventure.

Blood Stone is an original story, written by Bond movie scribe Bruce Feirstein and starring a digital Daniel Craig as 007 himself.

Dame Judi Dench also shows up as as M, while pop singer Joss Stone does double duties, providing the game's theme tune and taking the role of a motion-captured Bond girl.

The plot is a typically convoluted tale that involves tracking down and thwarting the plans of a crazed global bioterrorist.

For the most part, however, Blood Stone plays out as a decent if uninspired third-person shooter. It uses similar duck-and-cover mechanics to other games of its type and mixes in a smattering of hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, however, the game does little other than provide you with more of the same.

There are also several driving sequences and, while these help to break up the on-foot sections, they can become somewhat repetitive in themselves.

Meanwhile, many of the espionage elements – hacking, using gadgets and so on – seem rather glossed over and you can't help feeling that the game's developers have somehow missed the point of what the James Bond franchise is actually about.

Despite many authentic touches and a few genuinely cinematic moments, Blood Stone is a curiously monotonous experience. Worse still, the single-player campaign only clocks in at around six hours in length.

Who would have thought a game so short could be so boring?

PEGI age rating: 16+