Bourne Conspiracy Demo Arrives on Xbox Live

I really wanted to like the demo. It failed in a bad way, gloriously. The key to a good game is to make people forget they're playing a game. And Bourne constantly had you checking your gamepad.

There's that generic "Gotta do key-moment action" which is about randomly giving the player 1 of 4 buttons to push with no warning. If you fail in the 2 seconds they give you, the encounter is lost and you have to restart earlier in the level.

Sometimes you'd be interactively fighting someone with combo moves. Other times, it was a short cinematic. So which is it? How is the player going to know if he's going to fight an adversary or just get close enough to initiate a takedown cinematic?

You could attack with "anything" ... but it wasn't really by player choice, it was only if you were close enough to a special item. You don't scope out the area and see options, then use any of them.

The car chase was promising, but very short -- both in duration and distance. The streets were sparse and therefore seemingly wide... more like deserted New York than a (desired) twisting winding European street. Europe might be just like the level, but it's not what I was expecting.

On the upside, they did a great job at re-creating the Bourne universe (cinematics, visual quality of the environments, story moments, etc.)

-- Technically, visually great game.
-- Awful broad gameplay rules and mechanics.

(Most games fit inside of these bullet points. Easy to make things work technically. Harder to find that elusive fun experience.)

I was really looking forward to this game...but the demo left a sour taste in my mouth.

Pros:
* Nice graphics (Unreal 3 engine probably had a lot to do with this)
* Somewhat fun hand-to-hand combat (although seemingly limited range of common combos :( and kicks seemed hard to pull off for me)
* The 'takedowns' throwing guys into the environment was pretty cool

Cons:
* QUICKTIME EVENTS SUCK. Especially their implementation - I was playing on freaking trainee and missed almost every one of them the first time. Did they playtest the demo with regular users at all?!
* Loading times/lame-ass loading screen. If I have to sit and wait for something to load at least give me something cool to look at, not a screenshot + LOADING... with the ...'s animating from . to ...
* Yeah those above two problems pretty much ruined the demo for me, I was frustrated pretty much the entire embassy level, tried the next one (train station) a little and then just gave up.

I see a lot of negativity here. I thought the game had it's share of problems, but felt really cool and urgent. The timed key combos were annoying at first, but you got used to them. The combat is pretty fun, as are the takedowns. The graphics look good, too. It's not a perfect game, but it does a lot of cool things and is worth a play for sure.

The driving mission, however, is abysmal--especially after GTA4.

ergh, pass.

Dear developers,

Just like escort missions, quick time events are NOT fun. Please stop using them.

Thank you.

Only spent a brief time with it, but wasn't too impressed. The brutality is good. There were a couple of moments that seemed to channel the films pretty well, as far as Bourne doing smart things. QTE's suck, in any game, I don't know who actually enjoys them, it's just cheap. I have to give it another go, I'm hoping the fighting has more depth than it appears to.

Any more impressions? Someone earlier said it wasnt all that great.

I got very frustrated with the escape from the embassy. Terrible quick time events, and the fighting mechanics are pretty archaic. The graphics are nice and it controls easily, but after having to restart almost 5 times in the first demo level it just feels like a game that will require a lot of trial and error.