The Scoreboard #12

The Bourne Conspiracy

Simplistic combat and linear levels? Who cares! The Bourne Conspiracy has a gang of Achievements that need your immediate unlocking attention. Rewards come in all shapes and sizes, but kicking dudes through windows or stabbing the chumps with screwdrivers take center stage over “complete this mission” and “don’t shoot like a maniac” any day of the week. How can you say no to a game that demands hundreds of ass beatings and feeds you fist fodder by the dozen? You can't!

Best Achievement: Treadstone Assassin (100 pts. — and a crazy bonus!) Completed all campaign missions on Assassin — Bourne’s adventure isn’t entirely difficult. It has its frustrating moments, but they’re easily surpassed on the highest difficulty, Assassin. This monster Achievement certainly feels like one, especially after you turn hundreds of nameless thugs’ faces into mashed potatoes. As an added bonus, High Moon Studios was gracious — sorry, make that smart enough to include retroactive-difficulty Achievements. Finished Assassin? You also get the other hundred points for the easier modes, so this is ultimately 20% of the game’s total Gamerscore!

Worst Achievement: Deadeye (25 pts.) Finished 3 missions with an accuracy of at least 90% — We can’t recall a single mission where this Achievement is even conceivably unlockable. If you’re a crack-shot, work on headshots; but if you’re a messy blind-firing maniac, you’d best keep that pistol in your trousers, where no one will get hurt. Your best bet is to get a 100% rating by squeezing off a shot or two, ensuring that they hit their mark. From here, you could theoretically play the rest of the stage with fisticuffs, but you’ll need to be one sneaky assassin if you plan on avoiding whizzing bullets. There are too many situations across each stage that have a heavy emphasis on long-range gunplay, so this junker of an Achievement is barely feasible. Pass.

Easiest Achievement: Adrenaline Junkie (15 pts.) Use three full bars of Adrenaline while driving through the streets of Paris — The single driving sequence in Conspiracy is pretty lengthy, and considering the amount of pedal you’ll be putting to the metal, we’re going to promise that your Adrenaline meter will fill up in time for you to press the time-slowing Y button. The only possible way to fail is by not going into the bullet-time–alike phase, but let’s admits it: slow motion makes you feel cool.

Hardest Achievement: World Traveler (30 pts.) Collect all Passports — Because of how much ass-whoopin’ you’ll be dishing out, you won’t be thinking about finding the shiny bunch of Passports littered around each level. Nor will you be using your Bourne-O-Vision (we know it’s called “Bourne Instinct,” but that’s way too cheesy) to find them — it’s a little tough to focus on finding scattered trinkets when bullets and batons are careening past you. No doubt, exploring gamers will find loads of these unfortunately misplaced legal documents, but certain situations require precision movements and prior knowledge to get ‘em.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 8 (out of 10) — By playing through on Assassin and keeping a keen eye out for the passports, you’ll naturally earn half of the game’s Achievements. A second go-‘round will probably unlock the rest of the specific combat-based Achievements. Conspiracy isn’t very long, but it’s worth more than a weekend for anyone who wants to eek out a good chunk of Gamerscore plunder.

Overall: 8 (out of 10) — Since he's the consummate kung fu badass, we should have expected Jason Bourne to be dropping his gloves every 30 seconds to break noses and kick fools off of buildings, but the pure amorality of Bourne Conspiracy’s Achievements has us in a kind of dilemma. Yeah, unlocking them is simple and fun enough, and it’s definitely a great addition to your Gamerscore, but the encouragement of hundreds of murders in exchange for a simple number and in-game pop-up kind of disturbs us deep down in the core of our souls. But hot-diggity-damn, do we love us some secret-agent Achieving.

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