The Bourne Conspiracy
June 3,2008 - When you think of movie licenses, for the most part, you probably imagine half-baked action adventures with little to no depth. A lot of times, these games are developed by the team on the lowest rung in the studio and are creatively stifled by unreasonable deadlines, which lead to cookie-cutter games merely hoping to ride the wave of the film’s popularity to make sales. The Bourne Conspiracy is only High Moon Studios’ second game, the first being 2005’s Dark Watch.

Under normal circumstances, a studio that gets a movie license project at such a young age generally falls into the practice of making uninteresting and hardly innovative games. High Moon, however, did an admirable job of breaking from that trend, deciding not to phone-in what could have easily been a mediocre experience.

Although it’s not without its faults, The Bourne Conspiracy does a good job of capturing the essence of the films when it comes time to throw down. The films represent everything there is to love about white-knuckle action pictures, and the game, which fortunately didn’t have to coincide with the release of a film, does well to translate the high intensity fight scenes into the interactive space.

Following the growing trend of simple combat systems, fighting is entirely done through the use of only three buttons, one of them for the sole use of takedowns. Hellish takedowns can be unleashed once your adrenaline meter reaches a certain point. And in true Jason Bourne fashion, you can execute a takedown on up to three people simultaneously, by matching on-screen button prompts as you shift focus from one bad guy to the next.

What adds flair to the easy to grasp takedown system is that they’re contextual to the environment. So, if you’re near a guardrail when you perform a takedown, Jason will slam his enemy’s head into the railing instead of delivering his patented judo chop. Building up your adrenaline in order to pull off a takedown isn’t overly difficult, which makes hand-to-hand combat the star of this game. What sends it over the edge, in a good way, however, is the way the combat is presented.

The action in the film is so engaging because of the way it’s edited. Matt Damon is not a turbo-charged superhuman. He’s a 37-year old actor from Massachusetts, albeit he’s in great shape for his age. If anything, the cinematographer, editor, and director of the films should be credited with making Damon appear so fierce. High Moon attempted to reproduce the emotion of the combat by sharply editing the way the animations are displayed. They are strategically sped up and cut to appear quicker, much in the same way as they are in the films.

This subtlety adds a lot of excitement to the combat, and shows the extra bit of thought that went into the challenge of bottling the energy of the films’ fighting scenes. A lesser-seen aspect of the films is Jason’s use of guns, which also makes its way into the game, though it isn’t anything to especially write home about.

The game’s free-aim method of targeting can be offset by using a feature called Bourne Instinct, which auto-targets enemies within your view. Using Bourne Instinct, however, isn’t really helpful in a game where body shots, even well placed ones to an opponent’s chest, doesn’t seem to inflict much damage. Headshots, unsurprisingly, are the best way to get through an area filled with enemies, but the absence of being able to aim down the sights of your firearm hurts the gunplay significantly. Shooting takedowns, which are one-shot kills, help to aid this, but doesn’t completely redeem the oversight. There is a relatively standard cover system, common in many games of this ilk, which helps to keep you alive during firefights.

Bourne Instinct is also used in general mission progression as a means to highlight key objects and points of interests in sight, as well as on your radar. Context sensitivity plays a role in pushing missions forward as well, prompting you with button sequences during particular cutscenes, à la Indigo Prophecy. There is an overarching problem with the mission and story development, however, in that it feels shallow and disconnected.

It appears as though so much work was put into nailing the cinematic hand-to-hand combat, that the story development fell to the wayside. As expected with any movie-licensed game, High Moon took liberties with the narrative, and built upon the story with fictionalized flashbacks, a hallmark of the films. These recollections, however, happen far too often, making the story stumble along the entire way, and taking away what could have been an entirely new spin-off saga.

The one and only driving level, which was aimed to give players a change of pace, would have probably been better off left out of the game. It’s not that it was especially poor; it was just unnecessary and comparatively average, seeming like more of an afterthought than anything else.

The level design was impressive for such a linear game, avoiding the feeling of redundancy as you made your way through the missions. The inclusion of destructible cover was a nice touch, and is seemingly becoming a norm for action games these days. The visuals’ two weakest links were the driving level and cutscenes. To put it bluntly, the cutscenes look like that of an original Xbox game. It also would have probably served the game better if they were permitted to use the likenesses of the actors in the film.

The audio also took a step in the right direction in the departments of voice acting and weaponry. Although, Jason himself seemed rather stoic, and while that is the nature of the character, even the films developed him further. Should that not be an expectation of a licensed IP?

The Bourne Conspiracy, despite its shortcomings, is an example of a very good movie-licensed game. There are so many ways the fundamentals could have been mishandled, and the entire experience done halfheartedly. Thankfully, High Moon Studios took it upon themselves to step beyond typical expectations and deliver a noteworthy experience in which most casual gamers, who are fans of the films, can easily become engaged. Enthusiast gamers looking for a more engrossing and profound experience, however, may not find what they’re looking for in this well executed, but admittedly flawed adventure.

Games, News, Reviews, Media and More