The Bourne Conspiracy Review (PS3)

I’m a big fan of the Bourne films and definitely think they’re one of the reasons why the new Bond films are that good. The intensity of the fights and how Bourne just acts on pure instinct to get out of tight spots, blending in to stay hidden and not to draw attention to himself.

In fact I just like to whole espionage scene, sneaking behind your enemy to take him down, shooting people from a distance as not to be noticed. It’s great to see that The Bourne Conspiracy fits right into this category and it’s like playing through a prequel of some sorts to the brilliant Bourne trilogy.

I did play the demo a while back which I thought was quite good, but wasn’t rushing out to buy the full game. But from playing the full game version, I’m so glad I’ve got it otherwise I’d have missed out big time. When the game first starts, it has to install a lot of information to the hard drive and I’m assuming this has something to do with the fact that the game uses the ‘Unreal’ engine, one of the best gaming engines to be used at the moment.

Also the THX logo appears with its trademark earth shaking bass sound intro, and I thought to myself, ‘how nice would this sound through my stereo?’ and it turns out, awesome!

From the opening moments you can see why the game wants to run off the hard drive instead of a disc. It really is like watching a movie at times, but you’re being part of the action in the way you control Bourne and dive straight in.

Now usually movie based games tend to be more or less pointless. How some of them do get made is beyond me, hence the reason I was a bit sceptical about this, but its one of the better ones that I’ve played, if not the best.

The characters are animated very well and looks like the cut scenes have been motion captured which is probably why the game feels more like a movie at times. Obviously the actual in game movements are doing through the normal key frame animation. But they all have very nice fluid motions, where some games fail to do that and everything’s robotic and clumsy.

The physics of the AI enemies in The Bourne Conspiracy is done well also. If you shoot someone in the leg, then they react to it and it’s always good to pull out your gun and get a good head shot off. It doesn’t look robotic in the way they fall like some games can do. To me this shows they’ve took their time on the small details on this game and that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

The guys at Sierra have really tried to make this game like another Bourne movie and to make you feel as involved and immersed in the action as possible, and I have felt like that at times.

The only bad parts of the game I can really pick out are how some of the gun fights can get a bit annoying and the bad guys take a few bullets before dying unless you get them with a head shot. Although the hand to hand fighting is great fun, there are a few fights that will leave you feeling a bit bored as it’s the same thing depending on what’s around you. It makes it loads more interesting when you can pick up a fire extinguisher when you’ve got enough adrenaline for a takedown and smash your opponent round the head with it.

If you’re a fan of the Bourne films, like myself, then I would suggest buying The Bourne Conspiracy as it really is great fun and should keep you occupied for a few days, and you know you’ve always wanted to be able to fight like Bourne can and this is close to achieving that!

3 out of 5

Ender

Related Pages:

1. Bourne’s Back 4 More!
2. Overlord: Raising Hell Review (PS3)
3. Mirror’s Edge Review (PS3)
4. Resident Evil 5 Review (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: World at War Review (PS3)

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