Yves MakhoulReview: The Bourne Conspiracy
June 12th 2008 03:55
Robert Ludlam's The Bourne Conspiracy - Sierra Entertainment - Released June 3, 2008
I apologize for my absence, for any of you who noticed...I had a couple of finals in some of my post-graduate courses and I haven't had a lot of time to play games, much less write about them.
However, I did pop in The Bourne Conspiracy over the weekend. Despite a lot of the mixed reviews (it's currently enjoying a Metacritic average of 73, though I didn't read any of the synopses out of fear of that they may color my own biases, which are bad enough) I really think this is a great game...
...for a few hours.
Really, the selling point to this title is definitely the "takedowns"...the environmental specific actions you can take against your enemies in both fist and weapon fights. It's a neat bit of trickery, really...while it seems spontaneous and as if there are endless variations, each elegantly choreographed fight takes place as much in cinematics as it does in real time...and to be clear, there are a finite amount of things you can smash a combatants face into at any given point. Yet, it was intensely more satisfying than even the goriest abuse of any one of the psychos in Condemned 2, which employed a very similar gimmick. [Sidenote: Why does Jason Bourne look more like Matt Damon (who had no association with the game...at all) than Ethan Thomas in Condemned 2 looks like Ethan Thomas in the first Condemned?]
Basically, I giggled like a Japanese schoolgirl watching a John Hughes film every time I body slammed an enemy into a fuse box/air conditioner/rolling serving tray or beat him senseless with his own night stick. But the play mechanics get stale quick, and the shooting sections of the game just remind you of other games that did it much better (all of them). The driving section isn't worth mentioning...just get through it as quickly as you can so you can return to destroying some random soldier's ability to ever walk again. And Sierra, just because you disguise exploding barrels as automobiles doesn't make them barrels any less. Please hire Al and Roberta Williams back.
The amount of satisfaction you'll receive from renting and playing The Bourne Conspiracy is inversely proportional to how pissed off you'll be if you buy it. So don't. GameFly and Blockbuster are your friends this Summer, fo sho.
That's all I got.
I apologize for my absence, for any of you who noticed...I had a couple of finals in some of my post-graduate courses and I haven't had a lot of time to play games, much less write about them.
However, I did pop in The Bourne Conspiracy over the weekend. Despite a lot of the mixed reviews (it's currently enjoying a Metacritic average of 73, though I didn't read any of the synopses out of fear of that they may color my own biases, which are bad enough) I really think this is a great game...
...for a few hours.
Really, the selling point to this title is definitely the "takedowns"...the environmental specific actions you can take against your enemies in both fist and weapon fights. It's a neat bit of trickery, really...while it seems spontaneous and as if there are endless variations, each elegantly choreographed fight takes place as much in cinematics as it does in real time...and to be clear, there are a finite amount of things you can smash a combatants face into at any given point. Yet, it was intensely more satisfying than even the goriest abuse of any one of the psychos in Condemned 2, which employed a very similar gimmick. [Sidenote: Why does Jason Bourne look more like Matt Damon (who had no association with the game...at all) than Ethan Thomas in Condemned 2 looks like Ethan Thomas in the first Condemned?]
Basically, I giggled like a Japanese schoolgirl watching a John Hughes film every time I body slammed an enemy into a fuse box/air conditioner/rolling serving tray or beat him senseless with his own night stick. But the play mechanics get stale quick, and the shooting sections of the game just remind you of other games that did it much better (all of them). The driving section isn't worth mentioning...just get through it as quickly as you can so you can return to destroying some random soldier's ability to ever walk again. And Sierra, just because you disguise exploding barrels as automobiles doesn't make them barrels any less. Please hire Al and Roberta Williams back.
The amount of satisfaction you'll receive from renting and playing The Bourne Conspiracy is inversely proportional to how pissed off you'll be if you buy it. So don't. GameFly and Blockbuster are your friends this Summer, fo sho.
That's all I got.
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