The venue was 1 Marylebone Road, London. A renovated church with a massive videowall, a beautiful Aston Martin DB5 and a stunning V12 Vanquish sat just outside. Inside was a collection of memorabilia from the Bond universe: Jaws’ teeth, The Golden Gun, a proximity mine and a collection of watches and toys were on display behind the safety of glass cabinets. It’s a nice glance at some of the 007 history that set the scene nicely for the big event.

The press conference started with the familiar Bond theme tune and we were introduced to Michael G. Wilson from EON Productions. He quips that he ‘wishes he was launching a movie’ and you can’t help but feel the disappointment in his voice. Bond 23 is on hold because of financial difficulties at MGM and EON has been forced to take a dance with the Devil to carry on working on the Bond franchise. If there are two things that strike fear into the hearts of gamers at the moment it is film licenses and Bobby Kotick.

Regardless of any underlying problems with Bond’s movie outings, the first title we are shown is Goldeneye 007, a Wii exclusive re-boot of the 1997 FPS that showed the world that Nintendo could deliver for mature audiences and that a multiplayer FPS could be done successfully on a home console. We are treated to the E3 trailer and then to a staged play through of the first ten minutes of level one. Pierce is gone and has been replaced by Daniel Craig, which although a little odd to see, makes sense in the current timeline setting. While the layout of the level will look initially similar to the original title it quickly becomes clear that this will not be a straight re-interpretation.

You play alongside 006 (who unfortunately no longer resembles the seminal British actor and Sheffield legend Sean Bean) and take on the guards in tandem. The graphics are very good for a Wii game (the team at Eurocom who gave us Dead Space: Extraction is handling the port) and there is a nice use of deformable scenery to erode cover under heavy fire. Some new mechanics have been included including a run option, the ability to peek out from corners, vaulting and a vehicle sequence to make sure that gamers are reminded that we live in a world obsessed with Call of Duty and aping it in almost every single way.

Julian Widows is the producer for this remake and he explains the difficulty of delivering a new experience while keeping in touch with the roots that made the original so popular. He tells the room that one of the key focuses for the team was giving the player choice to play the levels how they want to. There will 4 difficulty levels again and 10 multiplayer maps featuring 25 weapons. There are 8 famous Bond characters (including Oddjob who the team felt was ‘tantamount to cheating’ in the first game) available and all the game variations seem to be back including paintball and big head mode.

It appears to be very much a product of the here and now; FPS games have moved on since 1997 (whether we like it or not) and although the new Goldeneye looks to be far more action oriented in its approach to the first level, if it can carve out a place for it as a faithfully updated re-imagining it will find a target audience. However it seems unlikely that it will be able to perform as well as its predecessor in what is now a much more crowded market.

After the Goldeneye presentation we are treated to the star of the show, the worldwide reveal of 007: Blood Stone, a 3rd person Bond experience for the 360, PS3 and PC developed by Bizarre Creations. It will feature original music and an original storyline penned by Bob Feristein of EON Productions, a man with a fantastic history of Bond writing behind him. The opening trailer showed off the main selling point of the title nicely. Bizarre have attempted to create the feeling of being Bond, driving fast cars, brutal fight scenes (again Blood Stone features the voice and likeness of Daniel Craig as well as Dame Judy Dench reprising her role as M) and exotic locations, and, aside from some distinctly ropy FMV in the cut scenes it looks like they have managed it.

It is refreshing to find out that the graphics are actually better in the game engine as we saw a slightly cut down play through of the first level. In an excellent nod to the films, it was revealed that this is a pre-introduction sequence before the main credits which features the original song ‘I’ll Take it All’ and is reminiscent in style of the Casino Royale video. It is performed by the new Bond girl, Joss Stone, who will be playing Nicole Hunter in the game. When asked how she felt about the role she said that she enjoyed the voice over work because it was ‘like a little acting job’. For anyone who follows the life and times of Ms. Stone I can confirm that she was in fact, wearing shoes.

The first level starts in Athens. Bond is on a cargo plane receiving instructions from M about Greco, an indentikit terrorist who is attempting to blow up the world leaders at a G10 conference. Bond is a bit behind schedule so decides to jump out of the plane and hunt down Greco by foot, by sea and by car. It is clear that Bizarre Creations have spent some time integrating their experience with The Club to their driving engine which looks to handle more like Blur than PGR. The on foot sections looked to borrow key elements from Uncharted 2 (but with a fun looking focus time mechanic that allows instant firearm takedowns when you complete a melee takedown) and Gears of War, the essential cover mechanic reference point. A good deal of punching takes place and that seems to suit Craig’s virtual body as well as his real life counterpart.

A nice set piece follows in a boat with Bond avoiding being blown up and blowing everyone else up at the same time and eventually taking the wheel of an Aston Martin for the driving section of the level. It was later confirmed by the developers that the driving sections will not feature weapons because the new Bond has a more back to basic approach to his gadgetry so they wanted to keep that part of the character intact. The demonstration certainly seems impress the audience, the flowing nature of the sequence evokes feelings of the great Bond scenes and, although the set pieces looked fixed they were exciting enough to look like they warranted at least a second play through.

There was a brief question and answer session with all the stage presenters but unfortunately everyone was too preoccupied with Joss Stone to get any real further information about either title. The one question posed by NTSC-UK did provoke an interesting response though. When asked how the Blood Stone title fits in to the overall Bond universe the answer was basically, that it didn’t. We were told to assume that Bond had ‘been on a few missions by this point’ but the story is completely original and doesn’t have anything to do with the Casino Royale story arc. This was the only point at which it was possible to detect a lack of faith in the licensor, Danjaq Inc. While there seems to be a genuine willingness from the Bond movie team to work closely with Activision on the game, it seems that they want to keep it separate from the film franchise as a whole, perhaps the biggest indicator that Blood Stone is not going to be integrated into the main storyline of Bond at all.

After a rather lengthy lunch and champagne break we had the opportunity to meet with a developer representative from the two titles to ask some further questions.

Blood Stone will have online multiplayer and some spec ops co-operative missions that are separate from the main storyline. There will be multiple villains and globetrotting locations. The title will be out in November and although we didn’t have the opportunity to get any hands on playtime but it was clear from the look and feel of the game that the team is aiming for as broad an appeal as possible. We might be able to expect a limited opportunity to do some free running at some point in the game but this won’t be Mirror’s Edge. Campaign length is expected to be 6-8 hours for the average player. There are no plans for any DLC at present.

Goldeneye will feature plenty of control options including zapper, nunchuck, classic controller and classic controller pro. There was also the possibility raised that we will be seeing a new classic controller based on the N64 controller but the developer could neither confirm nor deny its existence. There will be stacked objectives on the higher difficulty levels which has got to be an important aspect of a Goldeneye game. But, it wasn’t clear whether or not you obtain cheats by completing missions within the same strict time limits as the original game. Multiplayer will be split screen and 8 players online.

All in all it was a slick day that generated a healthy amount of press coverage for the games. From a gamers point of view it was difficult to tell whether Goldeneye will disappoint for trying to re-invent the wheel too much and upsetting the hardcore fans or if Blood Stone will be able to elevate itself above the competition in the 3rd person shooter market later this year. Both titles will launch on the same day and one thing can be said with certainty: if you want to get some Bond in 2010, you are going to need to get one of these titles.