Bourne Conspiracy

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This game's rating falls badly due to the terrible boss battles. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The cinematic presentation of The Bourne Conspiracy is actually very good. They did a great job of capturing the feel of the movies with that unique style of fancy camera work (the moving camera with quick edits). And really, that's what saves this game from being just average.

The graphics in some areas are impressive. One drawback however is the characters faces, they look pale and sickly. Towards the later part of the game there is an explosion that is one of the best I've seen in a videogame, the developers knew it was good too because they put it in slow motion! The voice acting is serviceable, but I didn't like how Bourne was done. He's too laid back and speaks in a monotone. It takes some air out of the game because you're spending your time with this guy and he barely even registers as a person. The story? I don't know it wasn't much really. I guess they followed some parts of the movies but really everything was just an excuse to have gun fights and hand to hand combat.

The game is in third person and there's a pretty good cover system. You can peak from behind cover and it's very simple and it works, unlike some games I know (ahem GTA4). However, it can be unresponsive. You'll be standing near a wall and pressing the button and it wont register. I like TPS games with this type of cover so that's one of the main reasons I enjoyed this game. You better like it, because that's basically all you do in this game, besides fight.

Fighting is interesting, but basically it's just button mashing and very simple in medium difficulty. There are combos but it's not deep or anything. Extremely cool is the takedown. When you build up enough adrenaline during a fight, you can press circle and you'll bash the guys head into whatever is in the environment. It's pretty cool and a nice job by the developers to pull it off. There's a long car chase in the middle of the game, and it was fun and looked cool, however there's not much skill involved. Also, there are many quick time button pushes throughout, and I guess it adds to the game, but again, not much skill involved there. You do need quick reflexes sometimes though.

And now the major flaw in this game. The hand to hand boss fights. About 4 of them. It's basically broken. You'll be fighting the guy, trying to land some punches and for some odd reason they keep switching to a quick time cinematic and you have to push a button to land a punch. It does about no damage and it happens over and over and over during the fight. You can barely get any momentum going because the fight constantly keeps getting interrupted by this cinematic. It's awful. I swear I thought the game was broken so I went online to watch a walkthrough and I noticed the guy was having the same problem as me. So I knew it wasn't me. I couldn't take it anymore so I put these boss battles on easy mode. And I never do that. The game loses one star because of that alone.

Other than that, I actually enjoyed this game more than I thought considering all the lukewarm reviews it got. Cool game. Is it worth buying? No. But absolutely worth a rental.

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I should mention that this game was given to me as a birthday present together with my PS3. I hadn't played video games in a long time and really only got the PS3 becasue we wanted a blu-ray player and figured why not get the PS3 since it's pretty much the same price. So the first game I got to play is this one, so I'm not sure if I can be totally thorough in comparing it to other games on this system but here is my impression:

I've had it for a couple of weeks and have been playing enough to make it through the first several levels. It definitely starts off really fun for anyone who's a fan of the Bourne movies. Each level takes pieces of the Bourne story and that becomes your mission. There is a good mix of cinematics which are very cool if you like the movies. During the actual gameplay, most of the time you are either fighting in hand-to-hand combat or shooting.

The hand-to-hand combat is cool in the sense of good animation and graphics, but there isn't much you can do in terms of variety of moves. There are just two buttons to engage one is "light attack" and the other is "heavy attack". Most of the time I just randomly press those two buttons and watch in delight as I kick the bad guys butt. It's kinda fun but it's not like some of the other games where you can really orchestrate moves and get creative w/ your attacks. You can't really even do a kick unless you hold down one of the attack buttons but since your opponent is hitting you, I never feel I have time to "hold" a button long enough to get a kick. In addition though, when you're in a fight and your "adrenaline" level is indicated to be high enough, a graphic pops up on screen indicating to press the "circle" button and this initiates a "take down" which is basically a animation of doing a really cool move on your opponent, but again, other than just pressing that one button, you don't actually play a part in the move, you just watch the animation until it's over and then either that's it you've killed the guy or you get back into the fight and continue pressing the same 2 buttons.

The other major form the game takes is shooting. This is ok, but again, not that great. The aiming is tedious and there aren't a whole lot of weapons to choose from to give it variety. Also, often you'll be in a mission and encounter a whole slew of attackers shooting at you. You patiently shoot them all down, survive and advance, only to realize the next scene is almost the same thing with more people to shoot. It's kinda fun but can get pretty old after a while.

I think the game will eventually having a driving component when I advance enough, but I haven't gotten there yet. For the most part, it seems like the shooting and the primitive hand to hand combat make up the meat and potatoes of this game.

So in short, if you liked the movie, and really enjoy games w/ good cinematics and graphics, you'll get a kick out of this game. But you if you're expecting a game with a lot of layers to the gameplay, you may get tired of this game eventually and find it a disappointment.

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The graphics are amazing and the storyline isnt bad. However, on the trainee setting the game can be beat in a matter of hours. I found myself wanting more playtime for a game that takes nearly a half hour just to install 5GB of files on your PS3.

Overall, the fighting isnt as smooth as advertised as you can only engage one enemy at a time in hand-to-hand combat and the shooting doesn't lock on to targets very well.

I thought this game would cover the entire storyline of Jason Bourne, but instead it is a remake of the first movie with a few extra missions thrown in.

In the end, I wondered why I purchased it instead of renting.

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When I first heard they were coming out with a "Bourne" game, I was giddy with excitement. I was a big fan of the books and the trilogy held up really well. This game however, does not. The title of the game is what is misleading. By calling it the "Bourne Conspiracy" you are given the impression that you will be either playing your way through all three chapters of the Bourne saga or playing an original story that you haven't seen. Neither is the case. This game should have been called the "Bourne Identity" because all you do is travel through the first movie...plot point by plot point. You do get to play some other missions, in several flashback sequences, but it's not as much as I would have liked. The fighting controls are a little simplistic for Bourne's fighting style, but it's pretty cool to see the frenetic pace in which the fights do happen. I played this game on the easy level and beat it in 5 hours, and medium in 6 and in hard in 6 1/2. I think this one should go in your rental pile. Maybe it was my high hopes that disappointed me, but it's still kind of fun to play.

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Bourne Conspiracy is in essence the video game version of the first Bourne Identity movie, with a few extra situations thrown in. There are some great cinematics but a few gameplay issues as well.

First, the good. The fight scenes in the game are fairly impressive looking. You interact with the environment, weave back from kicks, and it looks immersive.

If you're a fan of the story / movie, it's fun going into the scenes and then delving beyond it as well. It's satisfying to end up the game and reach the movie ending, and getting that sense of completion.

But this causes a problem too. Most of us by now equate Jason Bourne with a man with a certain look and feel and voice. This Bourne character is nothing like that. Surely we've had this challenge with other games before, where they didn't have the rights to the likeness. But here it's a real issue. The character we get is fairly dull, plodding, and monotone. Since we have such high hopes for him, it's a fair letdown.

The fights can look brilliant. But the trade-off is that they are extremely scripted. They aren't organic and natural. Instead, the reason they can look so powerful is that they are full of built-in movie sequences. You're mashing along and suddenly you lose control while something happens. Then you get control again, and just when you're getting into the fight it's lost again.

There are some great sequences, where you stealthily creep up on enemies and take them down. There are other silly sequences. The problem is that they're all mixed in together.

Another problem is that the game is relatively short. So even if you do enjoy the story, and immersing yourself in this world, you don't get that pleasure for long.

I'd recommend renting the game. That way you can play through it and see how you enjoy it. If you do enjoy it, then that's fine! You can always buy it then. But if you're done in a day and have no desire to play it again, you haven't paid the full price for it.

We purchased this game with our own funds in order to do this review.