The Bourne Conspiracy review (X360)

Author Robert Ludlum originally wrote the Bourne trilogy about an intensely trained secret agent that uses the identity Jason Bourne. While he loses his memory and has only this identity to lead him to the truth of whom he is his James Bond-esque action skills take focus and cause action set pieces that are repeated in the game. Choosing to tell the story of the first book/movie, The Bourne Identity it may disappoint those expecting a new adventure, or a retelling of all of the events of the trilogy because of its name. Why not just call it The Bourne Identity?

Chronologically giving you control of Bourne from before he loses his memory, and the events only touched upon in a brief flashback in the movie, any artistic license is used really only to expand upon what is already mentioned there. The remainder of the game remains pretty faithful to the film, until the end, which provides a more satisfying end boss style conclusion. In fact, many of the missions that you’ll recognise, screaming through Paris, defeating the assassin that finds you in your safehouse, and the rest seem remarkably faithful for a video game adaptation. Rather than using each action sequence as an excuse to expand upon the levels and provide a lot more gameplay from very little action, the familiar moments are relatively short and to the point, which is a refreshing change from the norm.

Variety works if it’s all fun

Through the game’s 11 missions you’ll be running around some generally well designed varied locations you’ll be taking part in some hand to hand combat, gunplay and one mission even has you taking control of that lovely Mini, in a police escaping massive chase around Paris. Unfortunately the handling is rubbish, and the arrows that point where you have to go can be collided in to, removing any thought of a free world to escape within, and reminding us that this section is just a simple track to drive around.

The rest of the combat however is a lot more entertaining. Shooting, while hardly Gears of War is acceptable, with headshots providing a satisfying instant kill, and five shots to elsewhere on the body is normally enough to take someone down. Fist fighting has its own sub mode that takes control of the game when you are close enough to an opponent. Swinging back to a close up classic beat-em-up style view it’s a case of one on one combat. The X and Y buttons instigate light and heavy punches, with three hit combos being possible through the different combinations of button pushes and once an enemy’s normally invisible health is extinguished they will collapse to the floor with a thud.

More about combat; because we love it

There is also an adrenaline bar next to your radar and health which fills with every gunshot kill, or melee attack landed and is split into three segments. Once you have one filled you can choose to perform a takedown by hitting the B button. If you’re wielding your gun the camera will swoop over and give you a quick slow motion cinematic of Bourne taking aim, and provided you can hit the corresponding button that flashes up (yes, Quick Time Events take place within combat) you’ll score an instant kill. If you’re engaged in hand to hand, you’ll perform a predesigned, but both aurally and visually satisfying take down of your opponent, using whatever is in your vicinity to do it.

You’ll slam enemies through tables, pick up chairs to smash them with and even achieve painful blows with a screwdriver at one point, all depending on your surroundings. Nothing around? Well Bourne will just use his fighting skills to knock the enemy out anyway, so it’s a simplistic yet superb way of emphasising Bourne’s skills. If you’ve got multiple enemies around you, and multiple segments filled you’ll have to perform a Quick Time Event to take out each one, but can do it in one quick session. Yes, enemies will wait for you to defeat one of their number before approaching to take you on themselves, but it is a forgiveable system considering the way the fighting works, especially since they may attempt to intervene, stopped by another QTE.

Shooting and fighting

Strangely, the game kind of allows for a combination of shooting and fighting, placing enemies strategically so that you are generally limited to one style of combat, but if you should stray too close to a gun wielding opponent you’ll automatically disarm him, and continue fighting. Other enemies can still shoot you throughout your combat though, so unless you’ve got a takedown move stored up ready to use, you’ll want to keep your enemy between the shooters and you, or back off out of harms way. The game can be quite unforgiving (justifiably) should you choose to mix these styles, especially on higher difficulties but being able to move around the areas while fighting negates any feeling of it being anything but your fault normally.

There are a few boss battles liberally scattered within and at the end of the different missions, mostly taking the form of a multi-stage hand to hand combat scenario with an enemy that seems to be able to take a lot more damage than the rest of the henchmen, and multiple takedowns. They can also attempt takedowns on you (cue a QTE) and generally enjoying the two characters pummelling each other, especially when ripped from the film’s version caused me to wince and feel for them because it is so well visualised.

In your face Achievements

Slap bang on the main menu is a well designed list of achievements to unlock with the game, and while it may have been my fault, by looking at these during my first play through I found it affected my playing style, so much so that I enjoyed it less. ‘Complete a mission with over 90% accuracy’ may seem harmless enough, but being so obviously placed, and giving you a running tally of your percentage made me limit my ammunition, try and fistfight instead of gunfight when I had a shot at the task and generally play the game other than how I wanted to.

Yes, this may be my own fault, as indeed you’ll get more out of the game if you just enjoy your first completion how you want to, but the information was so easy to reach I must have paused my game 15 times during one mission to see how I was doing. Maybe it should have been a feature to unlock from beating the game, such as the two gun alternatives you can choose to activate, by typing in the codes in the cheats menu.

Typing in the codes?

That’s right. On completing the game you are faced with two codes that you have to remember or write down, only to type them in on the very next screen. What an effort to have to go through for something that should happen automatically; I don’t see why it had to be a password system, especially since you have to re-enter them every time you restart the game. I thought this type of unlocking procedure went out of fashion when we gained the ability to save our game!

There is an extras menu which allows you to rewatch cinematics, check out a decent concept art gallery, replay the boss battles and listen to some of the music of the game, assuming you’ve picked up all of the collectables for each level’s content. It’s another nice way of adding replayability beyond the well designed achievements system in the game and the difficulty levels. Generally, the harder modes just recharge your health slower, make enemies resist damage better and in a method that actually made me smile, remove the overall button layout shape from the Quick Time Event pop ups, so that you’ll have to register which button you are being asked to press, rather than just the position it is on your controller.

Sounds good

While the best part of the package lies in the repetitive but gratifying fist fighting system, a few more issues frustrated me to the end. Simple things like when going for that elusive 90% accuracy achievement, having 91 percent at a vehicular boss section I thought I was safe. Of course it turned out that hitting the weak points of this particular boss doesn’t count as a hit, reducing my accuracy unfairly in my eyes. Equally, a dramatic and engaging beat-em-up boss fight ends, no matter how well you have done in the fight, with a cinematic showing you losing the fight. Yet if you lose the fight, it’s game over?

The Bourne Conspiracy has a lot to like about it, despite when the grainy too bright pre-rendered FMV kicks in, but doesn’t seem to have refined much of the gameplay. You’ll enjoy your seemingly endless skills, hitting the B button only to sit back and kid yourself that you’re really doing it all, but while the campaign is 8-10 hours long it’ll take an achievement whore of my standards to put yourself through it all again. Despite that, I am enjoying it more now that I can play it exactly how I want, and how I think Bourne should play it. So I guess I’d say that it’s definitely worth a rental; maybe more if you like the Bourne franchise and a variety of different gaming styles all mashed up into one game.