Not unlike the films it’s based on, The Bourne Conspiracy is incoherent, repetitious and spectacularly violent. With an amnesia-fueled plot, players take control of secret agent and super assassin, Jason Bourne in, a game that maintains the fast paced action and cinematic elements of the Bourne films to create a fun atmosphere in which to blast away evil terrorists and kung-fu kick SWAT teams. Its biggest problem, however, is that it’s equal parts cinema and videogame.
Hiding behind corners to keep Jason safe amongst the varied and richly detailed worlds might make things seem a little too easy when it comes to cover-based combat, but the game maintains a surprising challenge throughout its fairly short campaign. Unfortunately, inconsistency in difficulty will drive players mad. Certain encounters could take dozens of tries, which takes you out of the experience of being “the world’s most badass assassin” and slips you in the shoes of “aggravated gamer who can’t handle cheap enemy placement.” Having do deal with two enemies in the zoomed-in fighting game-alike hand to hand combat sequence while distant gunmen fire wildly at you will frustrate to the point of really wanting to jam a pen into someone’s hand.
But then you realize that it’s that specific kind of violence that makes Bourne so fun. Despite the shortcomings in its faulty targeting and the fisticuff hit detection issues, the intensity of using a special move to slam someone’s face in to an air conditioner (and being able to see the bloody/bruised results) is immensely satisfying, and each visceral punch to the face is as satisfying as the last. Even if the boss fights take up ten minutes of trading blows, they’re still crazy amounts of fun, but the limited combat means it’s more fun to see it play out than to actually press the two buttons required to beat up baddies. The same goes for the gunplay, which works well enough, but aiming precisely over a foe’s noggin to nail a one-hit-kill is abnormally and unnecessarily difficult, so you’ll resort to plenty of cutaway-cam special attacks.
As you progress through the barely explained story (the game expects you to be intimately familiar with the flicks) you’ll come across new weapons and areas to fight in, but the gameplay never evolves passed “move to an arena, kill a bunch of dudes,” which means it feels like a mundane experience when going for it all at once, and its short length doesn’t help it in that regard. But in the end, it is a fun experience that captures the essence of “cinematic” more than any game to date, so if you’re down with the odd quick-time event and power-bombing Russian giants through glass coffee tables while dealing with some busted game mechanics, this might be the best game you’ve ever watched.
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