James Bond Blood Stone PC Performance & Screenshots

There is a curse that haunts every movie-to-game adaptation. Most of them suck. Let's face it, this is true. It's also true that due to the low standards and budgets of those games, companies don't support them for a long time. They don't address major performance issues and they don't fix small bugs. That was the case with Nightlife and Quantum Of Solace. So let's see what happens with Bond's latest game, Blood Stone.

We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Nvidia has an SLI profile for this game and there is not a 30fps cap this time. The bad news... this is a console port that is CPU bound. So yeah, it's one of 'those' games that you'll need a I7 CPU to enjoy it at its fullest. We tested it with a Q9650 @ 4.2Ghz, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX295. Blood Stone was running most of the time with 60fps at 1080p with 4xAA and max details, although there were rare occasions where the framerate was dropping to 40-50.

Lowering the resolution didn't affect our performance. This clearly shows a CPU limitation. There is also stuttering when the framerate is dropping to 40, whether you're using SLI or not. Bizarre Creations could have done a better job. Here is a screenshot to demonstrate the CPU limitation. With only two of our cores at 4.2Ghz (for a simulated dualcore system), we have 32fps. With all four cores in action, we have 48fps in the same scene. We are basically talking about a 75% increase when using all of our cores. This proves that Blood Stone is CPU bound, like most of console ports. Performance increases even more and reaches 60fps when using an I7 CPU @ 4.0Ghz.

Graphically, the game is pretty good. We've got some nice 3D models, SSAO can be easily spotted, there are very few pop-ups here and there, normal and specular maps are of high quality and most of the textures are crisp. The special effects are great and there is a nice variation to the levels. The lighting system though is inconsistent. Sometimes it is good and sometimes it's not. The lip-sync and the general animations are good at best and most of the shadows are low-res, especially the self-shadows.

Overall, it is pretty obvious that this is a simple console port. The PC version looks better than both the X360 and the PS3 versions, but this is due to the extra AA, the higher resolution and the AF. You will need a really powerful CPU to get constant 60fps though. Bizarre Creations has already released a patch for the game, so let's hope that they'll continue supporting it. Enjoy the following high resolution screenshots!