The Bourne Conspiracy
Having been a fan of the Bourne movies, seeing that a more direct adaptation of what is in the books was being made into a video game perked my interest. I had not, and still have not read the books, so I can not speak to the quality of transition between mediums, but I can say that the stories of the game and movies only roughly follow the same track. However, even though the parts that make this a visual experience are pretty good, everything that makes this a game is lacking. Add to that that we have seen most of this story already, with the bits from the book that didn’t make the movie only providing middling interest and you have an over all unpleasant experience.
Let’s start with the good things, because I am a man of optimism, and I like to see the good before I see the bad.
Graphically speaking, the character models and model animations are amazing in this game. When Jason is whooping the tar out of some poor third world soldier you can feel the visceral punishment being delivered. It’s swift and viscous and looks, with a few level boundary issues aside, supremely natural. While Jason or the aforementioned soldiers are being beaten on, blood and bruises will start to show on their faces and they will start to act hurt. Lighting effects are pretty good also, casting real time shadows and giving certain areas a nice gloom , during a particular fight on the deck of a yacht during a lightening storm this lighting engine really shone. Sadly the graphics aren’t amazing all the way through, as textures, “extras” models (what I call background models) and cars all look muddy and undefined.
There are set pieces in the game of Bourne doing something amazing and almost superhuman while bullets are flying and explosions are going off all around him that will just leave a smile on your face. Giving you the feeling that you just did something amazing that no one else could , think the sinking ship at the beginning of Call of Duty 4 , the game will give you one of these every cou ple hours and it helps alleviate some of the tedium.
So I think I have exhausted the good stuff sadly, lets move on to what I consider what brings this game down.
You start the game on the mission that leads to Jason’s amnesia, to assassinate some clown shoes dictator that we are lead to believe is a bad man, but are never really told why he is a bad man. Also you are not told who you are, or who you work for, or who this man is on the radio that sounds a lot like Cipher from The Matrix. You are just dropped in, and told to go take care of some wet work. This would be fine, if there was any sort of exposition during the game play , but there isn’t . It’s almost like the game is fully expecting you to have read the books or watched the movie, and therefore dispenses with the unpleasantness that is character or plot development.
Now what is wrong with that idea though, is that entire scenes of the movie are lifted almost frame for frame and put into the game. From the assassination scene of the dictator to Bourne being found in the water and cared for, to the two cops beat down at the bench in the park to the fight in Bourne’s Paris apartment. This happens over and over again. Leaving me wondering, if they are willing to just use scenes from the movie, why can’t we get some more story set up here. I liked the movies enough to purchase them and watch them on my own time, I’m sure I would like the game just as much, but alas, it is not to be.
When it comes to combat things get even worse. First and foremost Jason Bourne on anything but the easiest difficulty level has a glass… well a glass everything. I’ll give you an example, during the Castle fight, which is Bourne vs. another Treadstone Operative (the agency that Bourne worked for) named Castle , it only takes Castle 4 combos to drop you dead. Jason on the other hand must beat on this man for roughly ten minutes to drop him.
There are many tracks one could take when making a Bourne game. Stealth Action, Action, Detective, Drama… Or, the correct choice of all of the above. The issue here is that Sierra chose exactly none of those choices and instead opted for (for the most part) a quicktime event brawler. You smash buttons at the opponent, block his punches and kicks (it’s amazing how much karate third world soldiers know) smash buttons back until you get to perform a take down and repeat. There are times when they try to take you down, and you have to perform a quick time action. When you want to really be like Bourne and kill multiple people with take downs or gun sho ts, you got it, more quicktime, but only if you have that meter filled, so mash those buttons!
It really comes down to feeling like there is a “Be Jason Bourne” button, and you have to smash buttons to fill the meter that gives you the option to hit that button, at which time you stop feeling like a 12 year old girl and get to slam someone’s face into a urinal. During the game I was constantly fascinated by how weak I felt as Jason, and how over powered his enemies felt. This is the exact opposite of the movies, in which Jason feels weak only as long as he isn’t fighting, and when he is in one muscle memory turns him into a human killing machine. The whole feeling left me vaguely sorry for Jason, who with out beating on a mans face a couple times couldn’t just kick his knee in and chop his neck and be done with it, ala the movies.
I can go on about the combat, how I only hit X and Y together the entire game to overwhelm the simplistic AI, or poor hit detection or the AI not playing by the games rules but I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here. All of this goes right along with the shooting, so again I will step back, that horse do be dead.
The check point system leaves a lot to be desired, typically only saving in about thirds of levels, with levels stretching into the hour and a half to two hour range that could mean a good portion of mediocre gameplay to get through. Which means you will get to see the Counter Strike 1.6 map quality levels over and over again, both in textures and layout. Nice blocky non-descript mostly empty rooms. Truthfully it’s only a couple polish passes from a Playstation 2 game when it comes to the environments, and it most definitely suffers for it.
Why is this horse at my feet again? Oh right, I’ve been beating it. Look, the only reason someone today would want to play this game would be the fact that if you want to sink about ten hours into it you can get a cool 1000 achievement points, I will tell you however that spending more than 4 hours with this game leaves me wanting to do more pleasant things, like go get another root canal. Its games like this that led to the once mighty Sierra to be dissolved. I recommend avoiding it.
