The Bourne Conspiracy Progress Report
April 18, 2008 - Since July, we've been breaking arms, shooting foes in the chest and running around embassies in the Bourne Conspiracy, but in those nine months, we've never had a chance to really sit down and play the game until our eyes bled.
Or at least we hadn't until Sierra rolled into San Francisco last week.
Our time with High Moon Studios, the folks who brought us Darkwatch and are in the middle of bringing us Bourne, was twofold. To begin with, we got to sit in on an Xbox 360 demo of a handful of new levels -- Bourne vs. an APC, Bourne vs. some European cops, Bourne vs. the Professor in a burning barn, Bourne vs. every inanimate object in a European library -- but when the developers were done beating on foreigners, they handed us a PlayStation 3 preview build of the game's first four missions.
Our hands-on time actually covered a few parts we've seen in previous previews, but that only helped showcase the changes High Moon has made and gave us context to Jason Bourne's story. The game begins with a cutscene of Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea after the famed failed Wombosi assassination that kicked off the Bourne Identity and flashes back two days earlier to when Jason was woken up by a cell phone call. On the other end of the telephone line is Conklin -- Jason's cover is blown, another assassin named O'Connor is on his tail, and Wombosi's blowing town.
Bourne's got to fix all of that.
From our two hours or so of Bourne Conspiracy, it would appear that most of the game is going to flow in this format. High Moon has gone on record as saying that about 60 percent of the game is playing through original flashbacks and forty percent is playing through re-imagined parts of the Bourne Identity. In our time, when something reminiscent of Identity came up, we'd flashback. Remember that scene in the movie where some dimwitted cops disturb a sleeping Matt Damon and he lays them out? That's a cutscene in the game that flashes you back to one of your old missions. You don't actually play the cop beatdown … or look like Matt Damon.
Back to the problem at hand. Before Bourne can focus on his Wombosi mission, he's got to eliminate O'Connor. The game starts off with Jason making his way through a populated courtyard as the tutorial kicks in to tell us about the Bourne Instinct. If you've been reading our previews of Conspiracy, you probably know all about Bourne Instinct -- press a button, and the game highlights enemies and objectives. However, the special vision has been tweaked this time around. Now when you click the button, the screen switches to a washed-out black and white while objectives, enemies and hidden items switch to a flickering yellow highlight.
It might be a minor tweak, but after wailing on some of O'Connor's men in a local pub, we pressed triangle by accident and the Instinct actually spotted a Passport -- these hidden documents are key to unlocking Achievements, Accomplishments and extras -- that we missed.
Eventually, after taking out some guards with the trademark takedowns -- you fill a three-tiered half circle around the HUD called the Adrenaline Meter as you fight and can then use each tier for a one-button instant kill -- and hoofing it through the streets, we caught up to O'Connor on rooftop and took him out with some hand to hand combat … we also smashed his head into a neon sign. That was cool.
Now, our previews have talked about how the fighting system in Bourne works, but this was our first time really getting the chance to go at it again and again. So far, one thing has stood out: breaking jaws doesn't get boring.
Let's face it, the fistfights could have easily gotten tiresome thanks to the three-button control scheme -- light attack, heavy attack and block -- but the ferocious hits and combos that have your enemies spitting blood, the real-time damage to Bourne's face, and the stiff punches that knock people out standing up kept us entertained. That could change when we spread the experience out for multiple hours, but for now, it was fun.
Of course, the ability to do multiple-person takedowns helps. Now when you're running through a level, the camera is behind Bourne. You can control it and swivel it with the right stick, but the default position is behind you -- at least until you get into fisticuffs. You can engage an enemy from afar with a weapon and the camera won't leave your back, but once you get within a few feet of an enemy, there's a quick scene of him hitting you or you hitting him depending on who ran up to whom and then the camera changes to this Fight Night-esque standup that puts Bourne on one side and the enemy on the other.
The POV can't be changed by you until you've taken down all of the bad guys you're fighting by hand or until the enemies make a move. See, when you get surrounded by a group of fistfighters, they'll come at you one by one, but occasionally on of the other guys will try to throw a jab your way. When this happens, you get a quick-action event and have a chance to reverse the attack.
Quick action comes around again when you're ready to take out a number of bad guys with a takedown. I ran into one of the later airport levels chasing a fleeing prisoner with my tiers already full, and three guys jumped out at me. I hit the takedown button -- circle on the PS3 and B on the 360 -- cleaned the first guy's clock, pressed the on-screen button, kicked a guy in the gut behind me, pressed the next on-screen button and kneed the guy in front of me in the balls. The action slows down when these prompts come up so you get to see Jason's move heading for its brutal landing.
For as much as we got to fight in this demo, we also got to shoot. Once you're through the O'Connor mission/tutorial, Jason's generally armed with a secret agent staple -- the silenced handgun. As we took on the hordes of Wombosi troops on our way to the main man's ship, we picked up shotguns and machine guns, but as we progressed through the game, it seemed we were constantly falling back on the pistol.
Now -- keeping in mind that this is a preview build of the game -- gunplay in Bourne seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, you have this Gears of War interpretation of cover where you'll be walking along, a bad guy'll pop up and a note on your HUD will let you know you can tap a button to grab cover. It's a nice feature. It you're running at the cover spot, Jason will slam himself into the barricade and grimace in pain. From there, you can rotate the camera and press a shoulder button to pop out, get a sight and fire. But here's where the "other hand" comes in. To begin with, moving the tiny aiming dot on the screen takes a lot of time. True, you can adjust look sensitivity, but it's still a pain. On top of that, if you don't shoot an enemy right between the eyes, he becomes a Terminator.
True story: I was chasing that on-the-lam prisoner from before through the Zurich airport, and a guy popped out and started coming at me while I was in the free aim mode. I took a bead on him, started firing, and came up with a good three or four rounds in his left arm. The dude didn't react. He didn't stop coming at me. He didn't act like it hurt. I had just ripped this man's bicep apart, and he was cool as a cucumber.
Above all, these stop-and-pop battles don't really feel like Bourne. For three movies, we've been trained that Jason can and will run into a battle and take out a person hand to hand. Lot of times, that shows through in the Bourne Conspiracy -- you'll come into a room, and you'll need to shoot one guy to death before running up and engaging the second guy in hand-to-hand combat. However, there are also more than a few times you'll run into a room full of bad guys, take cover and slowly eliminate them all by shooting them in the throat four or five times. Worse, I had times where one of the group of shooters would engage me in a fistfight, and while I did my best to KO him, the dude's friends would shoot me to death.
We're not condemning the Bourne Conspiracy by any means. The fighting is fun, the takedowns are brutal and it seems like each level -- there are 11 of'em -- will keep you playing for awhile. If you're ready to loose your memory and grab a shotgun, a Bourne demo is coming to the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live in May and the game ships this summer.
Until then, watch for our signal to catch your next mission update.
Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/867/867814p2.html
Or at least we hadn't until Sierra rolled into San Francisco last week.
Our time with High Moon Studios, the folks who brought us Darkwatch and are in the middle of bringing us Bourne, was twofold. To begin with, we got to sit in on an Xbox 360 demo of a handful of new levels -- Bourne vs. an APC, Bourne vs. some European cops, Bourne vs. the Professor in a burning barn, Bourne vs. every inanimate object in a European library -- but when the developers were done beating on foreigners, they handed us a PlayStation 3 preview build of the game's first four missions.
Our hands-on time actually covered a few parts we've seen in previous previews, but that only helped showcase the changes High Moon has made and gave us context to Jason Bourne's story. The game begins with a cutscene of Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea after the famed failed Wombosi assassination that kicked off the Bourne Identity and flashes back two days earlier to when Jason was woken up by a cell phone call. On the other end of the telephone line is Conklin -- Jason's cover is blown, another assassin named O'Connor is on his tail, and Wombosi's blowing town.
Bourne's got to fix all of that.
From our two hours or so of Bourne Conspiracy, it would appear that most of the game is going to flow in this format. High Moon has gone on record as saying that about 60 percent of the game is playing through original flashbacks and forty percent is playing through re-imagined parts of the Bourne Identity. In our time, when something reminiscent of Identity came up, we'd flashback. Remember that scene in the movie where some dimwitted cops disturb a sleeping Matt Damon and he lays them out? That's a cutscene in the game that flashes you back to one of your old missions. You don't actually play the cop beatdown … or look like Matt Damon.
Back to the problem at hand. Before Bourne can focus on his Wombosi mission, he's got to eliminate O'Connor. The game starts off with Jason making his way through a populated courtyard as the tutorial kicks in to tell us about the Bourne Instinct. If you've been reading our previews of Conspiracy, you probably know all about Bourne Instinct -- press a button, and the game highlights enemies and objectives. However, the special vision has been tweaked this time around. Now when you click the button, the screen switches to a washed-out black and white while objectives, enemies and hidden items switch to a flickering yellow highlight.
Eat it, O'Connor!
Eventually, after taking out some guards with the trademark takedowns -- you fill a three-tiered half circle around the HUD called the Adrenaline Meter as you fight and can then use each tier for a one-button instant kill -- and hoofing it through the streets, we caught up to O'Connor on rooftop and took him out with some hand to hand combat … we also smashed his head into a neon sign. That was cool.
Now, our previews have talked about how the fighting system in Bourne works, but this was our first time really getting the chance to go at it again and again. So far, one thing has stood out: breaking jaws doesn't get boring.
Let's face it, the fistfights could have easily gotten tiresome thanks to the three-button control scheme -- light attack, heavy attack and block -- but the ferocious hits and combos that have your enemies spitting blood, the real-time damage to Bourne's face, and the stiff punches that knock people out standing up kept us entertained. That could change when we spread the experience out for multiple hours, but for now, it was fun.
Of course, the ability to do multiple-person takedowns helps. Now when you're running through a level, the camera is behind Bourne. You can control it and swivel it with the right stick, but the default position is behind you -- at least until you get into fisticuffs. You can engage an enemy from afar with a weapon and the camera won't leave your back, but once you get within a few feet of an enemy, there's a quick scene of him hitting you or you hitting him depending on who ran up to whom and then the camera changes to this Fight Night-esque standup that puts Bourne on one side and the enemy on the other.
The POV can't be changed by you until you've taken down all of the bad guys you're fighting by hand or until the enemies make a move. See, when you get surrounded by a group of fistfighters, they'll come at you one by one, but occasionally on of the other guys will try to throw a jab your way. When this happens, you get a quick-action event and have a chance to reverse the attack.
Quick action comes around again when you're ready to take out a number of bad guys with a takedown. I ran into one of the later airport levels chasing a fleeing prisoner with my tiers already full, and three guys jumped out at me. I hit the takedown button -- circle on the PS3 and B on the 360 -- cleaned the first guy's clock, pressed the on-screen button, kicked a guy in the gut behind me, pressed the next on-screen button and kneed the guy in front of me in the balls. The action slows down when these prompts come up so you get to see Jason's move heading for its brutal landing.
For as much as we got to fight in this demo, we also got to shoot. Once you're through the O'Connor mission/tutorial, Jason's generally armed with a secret agent staple -- the silenced handgun. As we took on the hordes of Wombosi troops on our way to the main man's ship, we picked up shotguns and machine guns, but as we progressed through the game, it seemed we were constantly falling back on the pistol.
Now -- keeping in mind that this is a preview build of the game -- gunplay in Bourne seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, you have this Gears of War interpretation of cover where you'll be walking along, a bad guy'll pop up and a note on your HUD will let you know you can tap a button to grab cover. It's a nice feature. It you're running at the cover spot, Jason will slam himself into the barricade and grimace in pain. From there, you can rotate the camera and press a shoulder button to pop out, get a sight and fire. But here's where the "other hand" comes in. To begin with, moving the tiny aiming dot on the screen takes a lot of time. True, you can adjust look sensitivity, but it's still a pain. On top of that, if you don't shoot an enemy right between the eyes, he becomes a Terminator.
True story: I was chasing that on-the-lam prisoner from before through the Zurich airport, and a guy popped out and started coming at me while I was in the free aim mode. I took a bead on him, started firing, and came up with a good three or four rounds in his left arm. The dude didn't react. He didn't stop coming at me. He didn't act like it hurt. I had just ripped this man's bicep apart, and he was cool as a cucumber.
Silence is golden.
We're not condemning the Bourne Conspiracy by any means. The fighting is fun, the takedowns are brutal and it seems like each level -- there are 11 of'em -- will keep you playing for awhile. If you're ready to loose your memory and grab a shotgun, a Bourne demo is coming to the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live in May and the game ships this summer.
Until then, watch for our signal to catch your next mission update.
Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/867/867814p2.html
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