Rating Preview  Fun Factor  5.0   Graphics 7.5  Sound 7.0  Single Player 5.0  Controls 6.0   0.0

Gameplay
          
To begin answering this question, we need to take a close look at the game’s story.  The most fundamentally important aspect of this game is the way it transforms the movie series.  It provides a look into what made Bourne…Bourne.  It gives us gamers a deeper, personable perspective of Jason lacking from the movies.  It is so incredible; those who skip playing this game will miss out on one of the series most important plot events EVER.  So did I hype it up enough for you Bourne lovers to skip my spoiler warning and read on?
 
*SPOILER ALERT*

I bet you’ve always wondered how Jason Bourne ends up getting fished from sea at the start of the first movie.  If you are like me, that scene’s obscurity is more nagging than a sliver of wood stuck under your fingernail and raises several questions.  Questions like: Why is he in the water?  Where did he come from?  Who is he working for?  Are those fishermen really fishing or diving for gold?  So here it is, explained in detail.  See, Bourne was out to kill some African dictator on his yacht.  When he finds the target, he sees the dictator’s children.  He can’t pull the trigger and walks away.  The dictator comes from behind, shoots Jason, who then falls into the water.  That’s it.  For about a half hour of game play, you get this tidbit.  And we still don’t know what the fishermen are all about.  I’ll let you chew on that for a while…

*SPOILER ALERT OVER*

The rest of the game plays out exactly like the trilogy.  If you’ve seen the films, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the game’s plot.  If you have not yet seen the films, playing the game could make for an OK standby, but it’s a long haul of boring, tedious, and mind numbing experiences.  Oh, and no, Matt Damon is not in the game.  This may upset you, but think how great this is for Ben Affleck.  He’s still jealous about getting crappy roles in movies like Gigli instead of The Departed, getting stuck in lame action flicks like Pearl Harbor when he could have done Saving Private Ryan, and wishing he could star as a top secret killer instead of being the lamest superhero of them all.  But enough about the saga of Ben and Matt, let’s talk about the game.

It’s very hard to try and describe the gameplay. There are fun aspects that make you say, “Wow, that was cool!  I want to do that again!”  And there are parts that totally ruin the gaming experience.  So I’ll try to break the Game play down to the lowest common denominators, good and bad.

The Good: The game does include those classic Bourne fight moments shown in the movie, mimicking when the camera angle abruptly changes as Bourne dodges his adversary’s punch and then focuses on him quickly countering with a series of insanely quick and accurate blows, arm twists, grabs, and eventually bashing the person into some nearby object.  It makes you feel like a badass. The game’s designers also took the time to offer a wide arrangement of ways you finish an enemy.  Playing the same game sequence a few times over, I never saw the same finishing moves.  One time, I bashed the guy into a file cabinet.  Doing it again, I threw him over the ledge.  A third time, I broke numerous bones and just let him fall to the ground.  The Bourne trilogy defined this style of fighting and the game’s designers obviously paid attention, getting it spot on.

The Bad: The Bourne Beat Down sequence is used way, way too much.  Overuse of anything is typically not a good idea.  Take crack for example: good every couple of hours, bad every 10 minutes.  Pretty much every single enemy has to go down using the Bourne Beat Down.  To do this move, you need to land kicks and punches while blocking counter moves.  This earns adrenaline.  With enough adrenaline built up, you can simply push a button, activating the beat down sequence, and killing your foe.  Though fun to watch, it gets old and boring after dispensing a level with a ton of baddies.  Remember fighting Glass Joe from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out?  He was so easy.  But you had to wait a while to get the super punch geared up, after which he went down, and you won.  But didn’t you just wish, after playing the game for the thousandth time, that you could just walk up and level him to move on, instead of blocking or dodging until you got a super punch.  That’s basically the feeling of fighting in Bourne.

The Good: You get guns.  Yes!  No more mundane hand-to-hand fighting!  Just pump lead in everyone!  Woohoo!

The Bad: Not so fast, there’s a catch.  Aiming is from a third person, over the shoulder view.  It’s hard to target a guy and get off a shot before he moves.  And when you finally get the guy in your crosshairs, he’s usually got so much armor on it’s no wonder our troops in Iraq complain they don’t’ have enough Kevlar.  It’s all been put into this game!  The hits are also inaccurate.  Headshots should drop a guy instantly, but no, not in this game.  The guns suck.  This game has the honor of having the wimpiest sounding shotgun ever programmed into a game.  I want to hear a loud “bang” and feel the kick!  Not a “pffftt” sound as I pump a few more shells into a guy who should have been dead after the first shot.  The game designers may have known this was a problem because they added a Bourne Gun Beat Down sequence, where if you stored enough adrenaline, you could just activate an automatic one shot, one kill moment.  Or how about the enemies who you can’t shoot?  At least, they won’t die, but will instead run toward you to engage in a hand-to-hand battle.  This is not a joke.  The game makes you fight guys when you could just shoot them.  Why would I do that?  Shoot, even Indiana Jones figured out that if you bring a gun to a knife fight, you win.  And I thought Bourne was supposed to be our government’s most intelligent fighting machine?

The Good: The game uses a feature called Bourne Instinct.  You push a button and everything turns to black and white, except key items, doors, or enemies.  The map will also light up where to go, points of interest, or enemies who are hiding.  I’m pretty sure Marvel will be all over the copyright infringement since it’s a blatant copy of Spider Sense, but I’m not one to start anything.  Though if it does go to suit, I’ll be happy to take a “finder’s fee” (wink, wink, Marvel).  It’s a decent feature when first playing, though, and it can be useful when aiming.  It also helps to give an explanation as to how the movie Bourne was able to always be one step ahead of everyone.

The Bad: The game play is linear.  There’s no reason why you need help knowing where to go since you can only go one way.  If it were a sandbox type of game, Bourne Instinct would be a very helpful device.  But here, it’s an annoyance and I became so lazy, I didn’t use it anymore.  Did that make the game harder or stop me from proceeding?  Nope.  If a game play feature becomes obsolete, why even have it?  And it also costs you adrenaline to use it, but if you don’t have any adrenaline stored you can still use it.  Huh? Why bother charging me when I can “pay”, but is free when I am “broke”?  Just let me have it all the time, at no charge, or make it so, if I don’t have any adrenaline, I’m S-O-L.

The Ugly: Hah!  I couldn’t do a Good and Bad thing without using Ugly, could I? The thing that frustrated me to my wits end came when I would be engaged in a hand-to-hand battle, but enemies in the distance could still pop shots at me.  You cannot leave a fight. It’s a “to the death” cage match.  If you make the mistake of locking up with a guy in an open area where others can shoot at you, you’re doomed.  I thought this was a glitch and managed to avoid it pretty well.  That is, until I came to the part of the game I like to refer to as the “Poop Deck of Hell!”  I was inside the yacht and had to go through some open doors where I saw some guys by a helicopter shooting at me.  As soon as I walked out onto the deck, a guy comes out for the corner and engages me in a fistfight.  I died from the plethora of jerky nimrods shooting me as I fought Mr. Surprise with the tedious block, punch, block, punch, sequence.  Round two didn’t get any better.  I tried taking a wider berth leaving at the far end of the opening onto the deck.  Mr. Surprise got me and I died from lead poisoning.  Round three, I tried to RUN through the door.  Out came Mr. Surprise; down I went.  Round four was a little different.  For whatever reason the shooters aiming skills weren’t as good and Mr. Surprise yelled at them to stop shooting because…wait for it…he was in the way.  The shooters then yelled at him to…get out of the way.  Regardless, Mr. Surprise didn’t relent, the shooters didn’t stop firing, and I died.  But after this interplay, I realized shooting at me while engaged in a fight was not a glitch, but something incorporated into the game.  If I had an anger problem, I would be out buying a new TV, as well as a controller, and trying to explain to my wife how our cat ended up in the attic via the hole in living room ceiling.  Instances like this happened numerous times throughout the game and they all were as insanely frustrating as the “Poop Deck from Hell”.

Graphics and Sound

Graphics and sound were the saving graces for the Bourne Conspiracy.  Environments were nicely lit, set the proper mood, and moderately detailed.  The cut scenes were especially detailed and smooth.  I wished they had saved space from all the redundant fights to add more cut scenes.  You could say it was close to movie quality, at least, as far as computer animation goes.  But I can’t say the cut scene’s graphics were over and above what I expected.  Neither did the graphics set new limits as to what the technology can do.   The game delivered a well-polished interface with nice, in-game, theatrical moments.  I was appreciative, not awed, but surely not disappointed.   And the sound was done well.  Some issues with the guns were noticeable, but very minor when combined with the game’s total sound scheme.

Controls

The Good: The controls aren’t sloppy, or unresponsive.  The aiming is a bit difficult, but with practice, you can manage pretty well (if the darn guys would frickin die already!).  Hand to hand combat is a slugfest with some patterned button mashing.  However, the game doesn’t have too many moments where you push a button and nothing happens because the enemy is doing his movement.  When you punch, you punch.  You might not land the blow, but at least it’s responsive rather than having a “mushy” feel.  The game uses a pretty good cover system with minimal issues.  You can also destroy some environmental objects so your foe has less cover.  They would do the same to you, which forced me to look over an area and pick a good place to hide behind before engaging in a firefight.

The Bad: You get roughly 4 different punches and 2 kicks.  The punches, light and hard, if done in a different order, may give you an uppercut or elbow.  But that’s it.  Kicks are hard to pull off since you have to “load” one up, hoping your enemy doesn’t attack first.  I kept waiting for my character to evolve with better punches or kicks.  It never happened.  Most the time, the game runs like a supermarket deli.  Each enemy “takes a number”, you dispense the “meat”, and yell “Next!” to do it all over again.  It’s a laboriously boring system: punch, block, punch, block, punch, block, Bourne Beat Down. 

And the one brief instance you drive a car, it sucks.  But since it lasts for about 10 minutes, it’s not a big deal.  Also, enemies are pretty dumb and sometimes take cover behind thin rails when a steel wall is next to them.  Which was fine since it takes 4 Uzi clips to kill the suckers.

Conclusion
 
The Bourne Conspiracy dodged the “crappy movie game” bullet. But just barely.  If it weren’t for the polished cut scene graphics and fulfilling feeling of the Bourne Beat Down, the game would have failed miserably.  It can be frustrating and mind numbingly boring, but still deserves a play, if only briefly.  If you’re a fan of the series and want to enter the Bourne world in a more tangible way, give the game a shot.  It’s perfect for a lazy day rental.  As far as replay, I can’t see any reason why you would play this after beating the game.  Actually, after the first few hours I was satisfied without undergoing too many annoyances and could have quit with a bit more respect for the game.  There isn’t a multiplayer mode and the bonus content from collecting hidden items isn’t enough to warrant a replay. So give the game a quick rental, if you got the time.  Try to take your time playing every once in a while, breaking up the dull, redundant moments of the game with the fun, real life moments, like work or watching The Wheel of Fortune.  As for Ben Affleck, this game is all you brother.  With the absence of Matt Damon, you can play to your heart’s content, getting lost in a fantasy world daydream where you are the government super assassin and Matt is just the worm you crushed moments ago.