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Read my full review of Robert Ludlum’s “The Bourne Conspiracy” here.

So just a few days ago the demo for Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy (TBC) dropped into the Playstation store for download. Well you know how I do it folks so here is the low down. (Note: This game is still in development so some things I mention may be worked out before the final release)

First off I gotta say that Jason Bourne rocks. The dude is just vicious. Ok back to my thoughts. First I gotta give it up to the developers for making the demo three levels long, each level giving you the chance to get a feel for one of the many components that is TBC.

In the first level, it picks up in that station in Germany or was it Russia who knows. You are recognized and all you know what ensues. This is where you get your first taste of the hand to hand combat system. As in the movies, Mr. Bourne has some tremendous fighting ability and those three guys that are surrounding you, well hey take them down your Jason Bourne after all. Then bullets start to fly and you start to run and some very cool stuff happens.

That looked like it hurt.

In the second level, you are now on the trail of an escaped felon down a train tunnel crawling with bad guys. Here you get your first experience with gun play in TBC. You take on about 5 guys as you make your way down this tunnel and try to avoid bullets and speeding trains. All I will say is don’t let that helicopter take off.

In the third and final level in the demo you get behind the wheel. The driving mechanics are pretty good and even though you just get a small part of the level it sufficiently gives you the feel of what car chases will be like in TBC. From what I saw, not bad not bad at all.

Are these guys serious?

So that was just the preview of the opening levels didn’t really want to give away to much, you will have to download the demo and play it for yourself. So overall I think it will be a really good game though not a great one. The draw of this game will be the hand to hand combat, its cool beyond words and since Jason can use any of the environment around him as a weapon, you get some pretty cool takedowns. Speaking of takedowns, through evading police and beating the crap out of people Jason builds up adrenaline bars. You can have up to five but I never seem to get passed one. The reason being is that when you get an adrenaline bar, you can stop presing the square (light attack) and triangle (heavy attack) buttons and press circle (takedowns). This is where you see the brutal efficiency that is Bourne. I mean if you happen to be fighting an armed enemy, the takedown may involve disarming the enemy and then using it against them. In the few times that I played them demo I saw multiple different takedowns depending on who I was fighting and what was around us, and yes takedowns do work with a gun too, it slows down the action and then using button commands to take down the enemies kinda cool well.. if you press the right buttons.

This brings us to the button prompts, now no PS3 gamer will be unfamiliar with button prompts if you have played Uncharted, Conan, or several other games that have been released. In fact these days most gamers expect them, a button prompt appearing on screen that you must press correctly and in a certain amount of time to make an action occur. Now I don’t have any problems with button prompts, what I do have is button prompts at moments you have no idea that they are coming. Such is the case in TBC. There are several times you will die or be arrested simply because you didn’t expect a button prompt at that moment and you press the wrong button. It would be nice if they had some kind of warning that one was about to occur, and guess what if you die you can’t be ready to hit the button the next time because even thought it will occur at the same time every time you play the button won’t stay the same. So that just takes some getting used to and with the fast paced play of the game you will hit the wrong button more often than not.

Bet he wish he stayed home this morning.

Like I said earlier the fighting will be the draw to this game and the boss battle in level too is just ridiculous, it was a close one especially at a couple thousand feet in the air. The only problem that I have with the fighting is that it takes time to get used to the timing of them and when engaged in a fight with an enemy with a weapon you get the crap beat out of you. I mean the enemies do combos so they don’t just hit you once, so depending on your difficulty level you can get dispatched very quickly. Besides that the only thing I didn’t like was the long loading screens when you died, got caught, or went to another level but hopefully they will shorten that in the full version. All in all I think TBC will be like I said a really good game but the only problem it will have is that it debuts the same day as Metal Gear Solid 4 and that is heavy competition. Between the folks who will still be playing GTA IV and the people that pick up MSG4, there may not be alot of time to unravel “The Bourne Conspiracy”.