A Bourne game?

I’ve never read any of the books about Jason Bourne and I’m not at all sorry about it. I have seen the first and the third movie though and I quite liked it. Especially the fights. What can I say? I'm a simple man and simple entertainment appeals to me.

After watching GameTrailres TV episode where Keighley visited High Moon Studios, the game’s developers I got intrigued – the combat looked solid, the people were actually making sense when they were talking about their creation and to add that the game is neither a movie nor a book adaptation but a separate entity made things even more interesting. When I heard that a demo is coming to XBL and PSN I decided it will be worth taking a closer look. When the time came I logged into Live only to find out someone at Microsoft or Vivendi decided to screw me over once more and that since I live somewhere on the outskirts of the third world (Poland) I won’t be “allowed” to get a taste of the game. F them.
After a short deliberation I logged on PSN instead and downloaded the demo from there (the demo was twice the size, no doubt).
First thing I’ve noticed is that the game takes painfully long to load. Since the first impression makes half of the total image this one was probably scribbled by a retarded monkey. The first impression was saved a bit by the music, which is surprisingly good, very movie-esque and sounds very professional. Even if it was made with a computer and not performed by a real orchestra I couldn’t tell.
Ok, Press Start, choose difficulty and… another 30 seconds of loading. Good God, it was preinstalled on a hard drive for the love of the afore mentioned.
A short cut-scene showing Bourne is some embassy and bang, right off the bat melee combat. I press the square and triangle buttons alternately but all I get is a simple punch combo. Where the hell are all the fancy moves, the arm locks, reversals and throws?
Then I get prompted to hit circle and J.B. grabs one arm of the guard I was fighting and bangs his head against a nearby desk. Nice and stylish, but the developers obviously though the target players of the game are too stupid to make something like that with a button or movement sequence so they made people push one button when some “adrenaline meter” fills up. If you have a weapon equipped you can do instant kills with this as well.
I have to admit that after killing ten guys in this way the game made me feeling like a complete moron who can’t tie his own shoes. The only nice thing about this is that when fighting hand-to-hand with some random dude, while other random dudes shoot at you Bourne can make an effective human shield from the unfortunate enemy.

The embassy section of the demo requires a lot of running away, some melee combat and a few QTEs. It’s all fairly fun, but if you get shot/caught or you fail to do a QTE the game will load from the last check point. Since you can screw up like five times in a two-minute span, and since the loading always takes so long you might find yourself looking at the loading screen more that actually playing the game. And this breaks the flow of the game more than the Hoover Dam breaks the flow of Colorado River.
Oh, I’m sure everything in the full game will be properly explained but most of what’s going on in the embassy level makes absolutely no sense.

The second playable level in the demo is a chase after… well, another random dude. Bourne’s job is to catch and kill the guy. This level features pretty much the same type of gameplay as the embassy but with a lot more shooting, so you’ll have a chance to try the cover system. Apparently every third person game must have a cover system there days. Too bad not all have a good one. The one in Bourne’s Conspiracy isn’t a particularly bad one, but it’s far from perfect – you can’t hide behind things that should enable you to do that; for example at the end of the level you can’t hide behind a car for some reason. Also the aiming is not very precise, it’s often hard to hit anything that is smaller than a tanker especially when the target refuses to remain stationary. After you kill an army of random dudes you board a plane – melee, QTE, melee, QTE, melee with QTE and that’s pretty much it.

The last level is a driving section and that where the games falls flat like a pancake on a concrete sidewalk from a ten story building.
Let me tell you this. This game doesn’t look particularly good. It’s actually on the mediocre side of the graphic meter. Take away the specular lighting and lower the texture resolution and the game will look like a PS2 title. The characters are blocky, and the animation should be a lot more fluid. It doesn’t hurt my esthetic feelings, but doesn’t please them as well.
The driving section is a completely different story though. This is probably the ugliest, least detailed 3D environment I’ve seen during this generation of consoles. The streets are terrible, the buildings even worse, textures are blurry and the traffic cars models are a friggin’ travesty. It’s like looking at Driver 2 again. I can’t even find words offensive enough for this. When I saw it I barely restrained myself from locking myself in the bathroom and crying while hugging my teddy bear.

To sum things up. Bourne’s Conspiracy is a decent action game even in spite of its flaws, but for anyone considering buying the title I strongly suggest that you try the demo before and check if your brain can survive the driving sections. I know for sure I will need therapy after this… or at least some tranquilizers.