Bourne Conspiracy Review

The Bourne movies have been pleasing audiences for years bringing attention to Robert Ludlum's Bourne series. With it great action and stories about the CIA, it would make sense that a game would be created. Naturally you would think the developer would bring in Matt Damon to reprise his role as Jason Bourne. However, Matt Damon decided not to because of the violence. Some people believe that it was more of his avoiding the games based on movies since they suck so badly. In any case, good thing for him to avoid this game because it's another entry into the games based on movies that suck.

For the Bourne Conspiracy game, the story mainly focuses on the story of the first book/movie of the series, The Bourne Identity. The story follows Jason Bourne, a special agent for a black ops organization within the CIA called Treadstone, who has lost his memory after failing to perform an assassination. Found in the Mediterranean Sea by some fisherman, they recover his body and tend to his bullet wounds. When he awakes, he has no idea who he is and finds a note with some information on it. At that point, Bourne begins a journey to find out just who he is. You'll control Bourne from the beginning of his mission to assassinate Nykwana Wombosi to the Treadstone safehouse to take down the organization after they sent assassins to take him out. Sprinkled in are some flashbacks of various missions Jason Bourne was a part of.

There are three main aspects to the Bourne Conspiracy gameplay. First there's the hand-to-hand combat. When you get close to an opponent, there is a quick cut scene of Bourne hitting the enemy, and then the camera changes the third person view to a side view. At this point, it's a 1 vs. 1 fight in which you have both a strong and weak attack button. Pressing these buttons will throw different punches while holding will cause Bourne to throw some kicks. From here, it's about creating combos until your opponent's health is down to zero, or until a gauge reaches a certain mark that will allow Bourne to do some patented takedowns. The takedowns are reminiscent of the action scene in the Bourne movies. While the fights are 1 vs. 1, other enemies are nearby and can intervene in the action only for a quick second. At this time, a QTE (Quick Time Event) will pop up where you have to press a button to knock the other guy back. Also, in some occasions when other enemies are shooting, Bourne can move the enemy into the gun fire but it seems to be random.

The shooting makes use of the over the shoulder view popular among new games. It also uses a cover system that's been used a lot recently. However, the overall mechanics are very slow and clunky. What's frustrating is that Bourne can use whatever guns that are dropped by enemies, however when you're shooting, if an opponent comes within a certain distance, the game will switch to the hand-to-hand fight. So what comes about is an enemy that you shoot several times, one shot away from death, can come close to you causing a hand-to-hand fight where you still have the task of depleting the enemy's health. Granted it's lower by that time but come on, Bourne still has that freakin gun. Anyways, just like Bourne has a gauge that will let him do a takedown once it reaches a certain mark, while shooting that same button for a takedown will also let Bourne do a quick one shot kill. Finally, there is a driving part but it's not even worth writing about.

If there's a point where the graphics are excellent is in the cutscenes. The developers did a good job of creating an almost cinematic experience with the cutscenes. Aside from that, the graphics are on par with your average game of this generation. Same thing can be said for the voice acting which doesn't suck but doesn't make me want to stick sharp pencils in my ears. Like the cut scenes, the score is also excellent which should be expected since the Bourne movies have such a great score.

With about 8-10 hours of gameplay, the Bourne Conspiracy does not offer much of a reason to replay it. With all this, the Bourne Conspiracy does nothing new nor does anything special. It has become just another entry to the category of bad games that are based on movies.

- O.G.