Review: The Bourne Conspiracy (360)
Review by: Dale (Gruel) Kulas
Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy is a unique approach to the typical movie licensed game. Instead of trying to cover the whole trilogy in one game, players guide Matt Bourne through missions of the first movie, The Bourne Identity. Around half of the missions are based on events in the Bourne Identity, including the insane car chase through Paris and the intense encounter with the assassin sent to hunt down Bourne. The other half of Conspiracy’s missions is flashbacks to chapters taken from the earlier books by Robert Ludlum when Bourne was a Treadstone agent, including the mission that led to Bourne’s amnesia.
It should be noted that fans of the films will be disappointed that Matt Damon’s voice and likeness is absent. Apparently Damon didn’t want to see himself portraying such graphic T-rated acts of violence in videogame form. For whatever it is worth, Sierra did an admirable job replacing him with the
closest Damon clone they could without going to court.
When I think back to the Bourne films, I remember the frantic pace of Bourne consistently being on the run and the thrilling chases and gun fights. Conspiracy captures this, and puts a Bourne twist to the fundamentals of a standard action game. One part of this is “The Bourne Instinct,” a second sense of sorts that Bourne can temporarily activate that displays a radar where rivals and the next mission checkpoint is at. At its heart, the majority of Conspiracy revolves around a third person stop ‘n pop gunplay, and hand-to-hand combat. Some may dismiss hand-to-hand combat entirely in favor of blowing away bad guys, but Sierra did a tremendous job at making basic hand to hand fighting fun. As Bourne lands more quick blows, his adrenaline meter rises which will allow him the ability to execute a
Takedown maneuver which could be a deathly fast series of blows, or have Bourne adapt to his surrounding by smashing heads against rails, pillars, etc.
Now while performing Takedowns and unleashing quick blows is crazy fun, it wore thin as Conspiracy marched on. Why the developers couldn’t have implemented the ability to land more than three hit combos and some kind of move unlock system to further flesh out what was a good, but could have been an amazing game mechanic is puzzling. This is especially noticeable in the boss fights, which are like most other hand-to-hand fights, but instead the boss has an enormous life bar the player will spend a good ten minutes trickling away at. Imagine the frustrations when running into a boss fight
later on in Conspiracy where Bourne has a two-minute time limit to make things interesting.
Another aspect of gameplay in Conspiracy that came short of greatness is the gun play. As noted above, it plays primarily like a stop ‘n pop shooter that benefits from making use of cover. One interesting part to the cover system is that it can be destructible. It is satisfying to see a game finally break that barrier where a simple wooden crate or bench doesn’t provide invincible cover, and forces the player to find more durable surroundings. Takedown can also be activated in shootouts, though they don’t look anywhere as spectacular as the hand-to-hand Takedowns. The shooting works quite well, but what prevents it from standing out is that the cover system doesn’t feel as natural and refined as in titles like Rainbow Six Vegas and Gears of War. Sometimes Bourne will twitch in and out of cover at the slightest press in the wrong direction on the thumbstick. Also notable is other than a wisely placed headshot, Bourne’s enemies don’t react where they are being shot at, which means they’ll keep firing away at Bourne no matter how much ammo he lays into them until they randomly decide to keel over.
Almost all of Conspiracy consists of waging war with weaponry and fisticuffs, though there is a hint of mission variety in a stage that places Bourne in a high speed chase throughout the streets of Paris. Conspiracy isn’t the longest game out there, which is probably a good thing as the gameplay started to feel monotonous towards the end. It only lasted about six hours for me, though I read many other reports of players blasting right through the campaign in less than four hours. My extra time was spent
looking for collectable passports that unlock musical tracks and concept art. It’s too bad there isn’t any multiplayer of some form; Conspiracy seemed to be begging for it.
Graphically, Conspiracy is no masterpiece, but holds its own all around. Sierra did a bang-up job at recreating the locales from Bourne Identity such as the US Embassy and the aforementioned streets of Paris. The fighting animations and intense fast camera work make up the visual highlights. Sierra also gets recognition for scouting out some good voice talent. None of the voice actors sound like they are phoning it in, and they help make the all-too-brief cut scenes stand out. The memorable score from the Bourne films also assists the cut scenes and gameplay. It’s no orchestral classic by any means, but its upbeat tempo meshes perfectly with the intense gameplay of Conspiracy.
For a movie licensed game, The Bourne Conspiracy is one of the few entries that truly stands out from the pack of rushed out pile of mediocrity that dominates the market. Granted, Conspiracy still contains faults that prevent it from being the complete package, and for only being so long, it’s difficult to recommend Conspiracy for the $60 it retails for. However, if you enjoyed the films at all then you have to at least give Conspiracy a rent, as it is a worthy adaptation of the franchise.
Related Posts
Tags: 360, bourne, conspiracy, matt damon, xbox
