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What Is It?

The Bourne Conspiracy is based on the Robert Ludlum book and The Bourne Identity movie.  It is developed by High Moon Studios and published by Sierra.  You lead Jason Bourne through a highly cinematic, third-person, extremely action-oriented set of missions.  When Matt Damon, star of the Bourne motion pictures, refused to offer his voice or likeness to the video game because it was too violent, we all had a good laugh primarily because the movies are also violent, filled
with lots of crazy-looking stunts and shooting.  He stood by his statement by citing his belief that video games are different than movies and that he believed that they desensitize children to violence.  Given that this title is rated T for Teen by the ESRB, it really depends on how young his definition of "child" goes.

How does it play?

Almost all of The Bourne Conspiracy consists of three gameplay activities: third-person shooting, hand-to-hand combat, and quick-time events which are also known as escape-and-evade moments.  All three of these combine to create a game that has a very strong run-and-gun, fast-moving, action-movie feel, and in that sense the developers succeeded very well.  Each of the three gameplay types, along with the story, are well executed if a little bit on the simple side.  The gameplay doesn't feel oversimplified, however, and it permits the story to move along at a brisk pace.

The third-person shooting engine features a strong, destructible cover system, a small but effective selection of firearms for Jason to choose two from at any given time, and allows for firefights from a variety of enemies all using cover intelligently.  Weaker cover, such as wooden structures and crates, will splinter to nothingness as they are shot, and while there isn't a lock-on ability to help you track your enemies while hunkered down, there is a "Bourne sense" that will slow time down for a few seconds and show red dots for enemies on your mini-map as well as highlight them on-screen.  This keeps you from getting ambushed by the limitations of any third-person camera view, and the Bourne sense becomes indispensible as it highlights your next objective clearly -- something you need when there are timers in certain parts of some levels.

Taking damage during third-person shooting or hand-to-hand displays your health meter along the left side of the mini-map, while your adrenaline meter in four segments is on the right side of the map.  Avoiding damage for a short time will automatically refill your health meter, and this is perhaps my favorite part of this game.  It's easy to die if you're caught in a crossfire, and the difficulty level of the game would be downright ridiculous if this healing feature wasn't here.  It basically allows you to scrape by a tough fight and be ready to go for the next one at full health in a matter of less than ten seconds.

Hitting your enemies with either gunfire or in hand-to-hand mode fills the adrenaline meter in varying amounts based on the type of hit.  Filling it past each of the four tiers (each being 25% of the whole meter) gives you the option of pushing the circle button to execute a special quick-time attack.  In shooter mode this is a cinematic showing Jason loading his weapon, the quick-time event sound happens, and you push a button shown to execute the instant-kill attack.  In hand-to-hand mode, you get another animation and quick time attack and Jason does a special, unblockable melee attack that does extra damage to your foe.  It also has a very cinematic touch where if you are surrounded by multiple enemies in either shooter or hand-to-hand and you have more than one tier of adrenaline available, hitting circle will use one tier at a time with a quick-time event to take out multiple targets.  It looks great and is very satisfying, especially when taking out a pair of very irritating shooters at a distance or when grabbing a troublesome boss by the shoulder, and slamming his head into an iron railing.

You might be getting the picture that quick-time events are everywhere in this game, and you'd be right.  Outside of combat there are often events that mean instant death if you miss them and they can be chained together during a particularly cinematic sequence, like when dodging sniper fire while being seen from the sniper's point of view.  The downside is that if you're not alert you can die quickly, just about breaking the unwritten gamer's law that you shouldn't have to die to learn how to get past a particular area.  The upside is that the checkpoints are very frequent, so that even if you die often you only have a short load from the hard drive to get back into the game.

Speaking of the hard drive, this game features a 14-minute, 4681-megabyte install when you first start it up.  It's big, but load times are mercifully short as I said, which makes death not that hard to deal with.  Add that in to a wonderfully forgiving checkpoint system where reloading a previous game will put you at the exact checkpoint you were at when you quit -- including right up to a boss fight you might have been stuck on -- and it's a tradeoff I'm not unhappy to make.

The developers did, however, do a great thing with quick-time events.  They show the entire four buttons on the controller as empty circles, only filling in the one that needs to be pressed.  This lets you use two aspects of your reflexes instead of just one: the first is your muscle memory as to what button to push based on position, and the second is the actual picture of the button face itself.  This combination has made it much easier for me to pass these events.  Had this not been done this game would have had far more frustrating quick-time events than the God of War games did.

Hand-to-hand combat is impressive in this game even though it's not deep.  Your square button gives light hits, triangle gives heavy hits, and X will block indefinitely.  You can't always wait out your foe by leaning on the X button because they, too, can try to use takedowns on you, triggering quick-time events to counter them.  Circle is still used for a takedown -- which only damages bosses instead of taking them out entirely.  As I mentioned before, takedowns "weaponize" your environment in satisfying ways and give you a little breather during which Jason regains some health -- a necessity when up against some punishing boss fights.  You'll send enemies crashing into wooden furniture, strike them with fire extinguishers, grab their incoming punch before breaking their arm and flipping them to the ground, all sorts of fun stuff.  That said it does seem to get repetitive, and when timers get involved late in the game it can be extremely difficult to get a hit in edgewise while a boss pounds you into hamburger.

Hand to hand is also seamless with the shooting gameplay, too much so in some cases.  Anytime hand-to-hand begins you're treated to a quick in-engine cinematic of Jason disarming your foe or leading in with a good punch or kick before you're in hand-to-hand mode.  This is frequently forced on you -- walk through a door and your weapon is automatically holstered and you're squaring off against three enemies.  This is tricky when they force you to fight one while another nearby still has a gun and happily takes potshots at you while you fight.  It's also irritating when you rush into a firefight, happen to get a little too close to one of the gunmen, and are immediately forced into hand-to-hand while the others gleefully and quickly ventilate you.

Aside from those relatively small irritations, there are car chases in the game and the driving game seems like a poor choice to break up the shooting and hand-to-hand action.  Yes Bourne drove around in parts of the movie but there's really no threat of losing in this mode.

How does it look and sound?

The graphics engine does work rather well with the gameplay, especially in terms of the cover system, but environments aren't very detailed.  It distinctly reminds me of The Godfather video game's relatively blocky environments and not-very-detailed character models, but the character models are distinct.  You know when you're up against a hired hit man or terrorist and the character models fit their roles very well.  When Jason gets beaten up badly you can see it on his face, so the texturing work shows some nice details to further lend action-movie flair to the game.

Sound-wise the game ratchets up the tension and keeps it at a very high level.  Your mission control contact chats with you by radio link intelligently without sounding repetitive, the sound effects are good, and the music keeps you running.  I had hoped to collect more passport items in the game to unlock more music tracks than the one I got as a freebie on the car chase level, but I wasn't that diligent.

The cinematics deserve special mention here for a couple of reasons.  First off, they nearly always worked very well to advance the story.  Secondly, they occasionally showed some rough edges -- character models that were speaking when no dialogue was recorded to play for them.

The hand-to-hand combat also deserves attention in the sound department.  While the combo system is simple, the look and sounds of the frequent fist-fights, while somewhat repetitive, are very cinematic and visceral.  When you catch the enemy's punch, crack his arm, and then flip them into a metal railing you wince for them and feel a thrill of satisfaction when they go down.  You also get a moment to grit your teeth when they get back up to keep fighting, looking none too pleased at your little stunt.

How is the replay value?

With a full suite of Achievements on the Xbox 360 and in-game-only Accomplishments on the PS3, there are lots of little things to work towards, all of which are laid out clearly in the menu system.  Add in the 10 passports hidden in each level to unlock movies, concept art, and music tracks and you have something a completist wouldn't mind replaying.  The plot itself, however, is extremely linear.  There is only one story here, and one way to tell it.  Trying to diverge at all from what they want you to do and where you want to go is just stopped in its tracks.  If you're looking for multiple branches in a plot, this one probably isn't for you.

There is also no online play at all in this title.  Nothing on the box hints that there is, so players shouldn't feel disappointed.

Is it worth it?

Other reviews have mentioned the game's length, and I have to agree that it's more of an action snack of a game than a full meal.  With a number of reloads and deaths I took about 5 hours to reach the second to last boss in the game, where I got stuck and decided to stop, having seen plenty of what the game has to offer.

If you're an 18+ gamer you really have no excuse to buy this game at full price in the face of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4.  I enjoyed my time playing, however, so action fans who fall into the Rated-T category and who can't get GTA4 or MGS4 to play because of their age could get a good chunk of enjoyable play time out of this game, especially as a rental.  I just wouldn't recommend it at full price with other very good games around.  I do think what High Moon did with this cohesive, action-packed, gunplay- and melee-heavy game deserves to be seen by more people.

I give The Bourne Conspiracy 4 out of 5.

From Aeropause.