The Bourne conspiracyPublisher: Sierra
Platform:Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
UK Price (as reviewed):£30.99 (inc. Delivery)
US Price (as reviewed):$58.99 (inc. Delivery)

Sigh – again, with the movie tie-ins. There’s been a fair few movie-game adaptations come across my desk in recent weeks – Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, for instance.

Each time we have the same burst of hope and the same eventual disappointment. It’s quite tiring after a while. Still, if you’re looking for reasons to get excited over The Bourne Conspiracy, then there are a few things which definitely make it stand out. The delay between the films and the games for instance.

Normally, a delay isn’t a good thing. It usually indicates something wrong with the game. With The Bourne Conspiracy though, the wait between the game and films tells us that the game hasn’t been built as a tie-in per se. Also, it hasn’t been rushed to coincide with the release of the film.

Instantly, two of the main reasons why game adaptations usually suck are gone and The Bourne Conspiracy starts to look a lot more promising. The question is though, can that promise be realised in other areas too, or is The Bourne Conspiracy going to be little more than the ramblings of a drunken hick in a tin-foil hat?

Matt Damon!It’s almost impossible that anyone reading this article hasn’t seen at least one of the recent Bourne films or read one of the books, but there’s always a chance that you just stumbled across the game by happenstance. Out of journalistic obligation we better explain the plot at least a little – but don’t worry, it’s totally predictable.

The Bourne Conspiracy casts you, funnily enough, as Jason Bourne – a man who wakes up aboard a fishing boat off the coast of France with no memory. All he has is a bullet hole in his shoulder, the address of a swiss bank and some super-lethal ninja moves he stole from Jackie Chan.

Already then, the plot is pretty obvious to pretty much anyone intelligent enough to stand in a room with a kitten without resorting to LOLcatisms. It quickly becomes apparent that Bourne is a highly trained government assassin who botched a hit and is now being hunted by his former warmasters. Naturally he isn’t anxious to return to that employment, thanks to a moral shift.

The details of the plot then play out almost exactly as you’d expect, with the game taking the opportunity to expand on things through various flashbacks of previous missions.

It’s a riotous ride of explosions and up-close melee brawls with other assassins and CIA operatives – all of it a million miles away from Matt Damon’s planned game which probably would have featured more open philosophising about whether Bourne’s morality is tied to his memory.

The sad thing is that after playing the actualBourne Conspiracy, Matt Damon’s proposed Myst-alike starts to sound much more interesting than what we’ve ended up with – primarily because of all the quicktime events and repetitive gameplay quote-unquote cinematic moments…