The Bourne Conspiracy

Sadists, you are in for a treat. As we controlled the paperback-based (read: non–Matt Damon) version of Jason Bourne during a recent hands-on session of The Bourne Conspiracy, a crowd of fellow staffers and the development entourage repeatedly winced whenever we unleashed a bone-breaking Adrenaline-fueled move during the game’s frequent hand-to-hand combat sequences.

“Kinetic” and “painful” are the two words that best describe Conspiracy’s gameplay—something the High Moon team claims is intentional. “We want to make [the action] feel like Paul Greengrass’ films,” described Design Director Paul O’Connor, citing the jarring camera cuts and in-your-face battles that defined the movie trilogy.

We saw numerous examples of this style. In “Escape the Embassy,” Jason must flee a U.S. embassy by getting upstairs and to the rooftops. The SWAT-equivalent forces standing in our way demonstrated the aforementioned melee combat that will comprise a large part of this third-person actioner. It’s simple on the surface: press X for light attacks and Y for heavy hits. Chain them together for various combos, and build up your Adrenaline meter as you land punches.

Once the Adrenaline meter fills, pressing B unleashes Takedowns, whereby Jason uses the environment contextually to inflict a finishing blow. For instance, we saw Bourne slam an officer into a filing cabinet in his office; drive his foot into another man’s kneecap — straightening his leg and shattering the bone — on a rooftop; and later pull a fire extinguisher off a wall and introduce it to some poor guy’s skull.

A later shooting-centric mission was admittedly less impressive — it felt a bit generic in the wake of all the hand-to-hand hotness — but at least the Takedown system applies to gunplay, too: juice up your Adrenaline and you’ll be treated to a Max Payne–ish “follow the bullet to its target” mini-cutscene. All told, we’re pleased to report that Bourne has an exceptional chance of chasing away the movie-game blues. With several months of development left to go, the game’s already pretty engaging.