James Bond 007: Blood Stone announced

Surprise! Well, sorta. The Wii-exclusive game based on GoldenEye got the big press at E3, but PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and DS gamers are not being left out this year. Activision announced James Bond 007: Blood Stone this morning, featuring Daniel Craig as James Bond and an original story by Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein (GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World is Not Enough). Most interestingly, the game features a “Bond girl” with a twist. Joss Stone is not only in the game as a leading character (seen here), but she’s also contributing an original theme song for the game: “I’ll Take It All,” which she wrote and recorded with Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics fame).

The third-person action/adventure is being developed by Blur developers Bizarre Creations over in the UK. I got a sneak peek at it when I visited the studio; there’s plenty of shootouts from behind cover, an interesting hand-to-hand combat mechanic, 16-player online matches, and — good news for Bizarre Creations fans — driving sequences featuring Bond’s trademark Aston Martin. Understandably, the Liverpool-based team is thrilled at the chance to do the quintessentially British secret agent justice.

The DS version will be built from the ground up by the team at N-Space (follow them on Twitter) which has handled the handheld version of Modern Warfare as well as the Wii edition of MUA2 and the upcoming Tron: Evolution — Battle Grids, which was one of my E3 sleepers to watch. I don’t have any screens of that but, in the interest of managing expectations, I don’t think it will look like the above.

All versions ship this “holiday” which is definitely coming up sometime this year — probably near the end. I will get some more details and pass them along when I do.