The Bourne Conspiracy

I’m a great fan of Jason Bourne. The books had me gripped as a teen, and I hung on Robert Ludlum’s every word, eagerly turning each page as the unbelievable story of this secret assassin unfolded before my eyes.

And then the blockbuster films came out, with Matt Damon starring as Jason Bourne. What a hit they were! Although deviating from the books somewhat, they were still fantastic, and rekindled my interest in the Bourne series.

So when I found out that there would be a game, I was keen. Keen to see how the game would unfold, keen to see if I would enjoy it as much as the books and the films.

It was therefore with eagerness that I downloaded the demo from the PlayStation store, waiting with bated breath for the 1gb plus file to download... and then it did.

There are three demo levels to play in the game, and each allows three levels of difficulty. Each level is designed as a tutorial – level one: escape from the building using hand to hand combat skills; level tow: learn how to use firearms; level three: evasive driving. Fantastic.

One thing that instantly struck me was the fact that you can choose either level one, level two or level three. But, being the systematic kinda guy that I am, I played them in their correct order.

Level one starts with you, as Bourne, in a government building, with no weapons but your hands. Your mission: Evade the people hunting you down. Get out of the building before lockdown. Like Tomb Raider Legend, there are interactive scenes, where you have to press buttons on the controller to complete the scene. Get it wrong, and you have to do it again – but here’s the twist – it’ll be a different button. So: Press triangle to get under the dropping barricade. Fail. Try again, but this time, you have to press circle. The game stays one step ahead. I like that.

During hand to hand combat, you only need square, triangle and circle. Square is for lighter attacks, triangle for heavy attacks, and circle for takedowns – so when you’ve punched your opponent a few times, press circle to grab them, spin them, break their arm, and smash their head off of the desk in the process. Nice. The takedown sequences are great – if you are running, you can do a running takedown on an opponent.

One thing that I really liked about this demo level is that you can’t fight the men with guns. They have guns, you don’t. Logically, you need to run away from them, not towards them. That’s realistic, that’s gritty, and that’s good.

Moving on to the second level, you start in an underground train station, armed with a pistol. You quickly realise that you are under fire, so take cover behind the destructible objects. Mind the trains though, because they are frequent, and they are deadly – but you can use this to your advantage. Taking aim and shooting is relatively simple, and again, build up your adrenaline, and you can perform a takedown shot, which I found really impressive. Bourne switches to hand to hand combat when close to opponents, and a simple L2 whips the gun out again when necessary. I found an opponent hiding behind a car – a few shots towards the engine of the car, and it explodes, taking the enemy with me. Fantastic.

Level 3, although very short, gives an indication to the driving capacity of the game. Basically, you need to evade the cops whilst getting out of Paris. Although a short sequence, and not nearly as near as the car chases from the films, it is decent enough to let you know that there will be jumps, there will be smashes, there will be handbrake turns, and Marie will scream all the time. Sounds like when I drive everyday then...

All in all, this game looks fantastic. The graphics are smooth, the movie sequences are slick, and the gameplay is awesome.

My rating: 9

Will I be purchasing this game? Definitely.

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Burnout Paradise

The demo of this game is absolutely fantastic. Now I’ll tell you straight: I’ve never played a Burnout game before – I was generally put off by the box art, of a burning car tumbling recklessly out of control. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve played a couple of them games…

So it was with an open mind that I downloaded the demo version of Burnout Paradise from the PlayStation Store.

The game starts wonderfully, explaining that although this is just a demo, you can still race, perform jumps, smash through billboards and even race online. Cool.

You can only drive one car in the demo, a bashed up stunt and jump car. It’s a great car to drive, and once you find a repair shop (which you are directed to anyway) it’s restored to it’s original glory. You can even find a paint shop and change the colour, but only one colour change is available in the demo. I’m not sure how this will work in the full game – do you have a choice of the colours or not? Let’s wait and see.

Handling wise, the car is superb. It’s rocket-fast, and easy to slide and drift around corners.

The demo has a fairly big map to explore, in which you need to find 34 yellow gates to smash through, which is exhilaratingly fab, 15 billboards to smash, and 6 insane jumps to find. I’ve not played on it excessively, and have therefore not found all of the above. My fave? Driving into a multi store car park, and launching off of the roof.

The graphics are phenomenal too, albeit blurred by the speed at which you travel.

To start a race is easy – pull up at a set of lights, accelerate and brake at the same time, and you’ve entered the event.

Equally, getting online is simple – just a case of using the right button on the D-pad. It’s surprisingly easy.

Two things that I’m not keen on, but could get used to: No navigational arrows – you’ve got to work out the route yourself, which isn’t a great difficulty, but I personally found the mini map hard to read at blisteringly fast speeds. There is a navigation system of sorts – road names appear at the top of the screen, indicating how close you are to a junction. But take your eyes off the road to read them, and you’re likely to wreck the car.

The second thing that I missed sorely was a speedometer. I love to be able to glance at the speedo and think, “Yeah, I’m blasting around streets at 220mph – unlikely!” But there was no speedo, which left me feeling a bit empty.

I love the slow mo effect when crashing, it’s stomach churningly realistic.

My rating: 8

Will I buy this game: Definitely.

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Skate

I've only played it twice, but I can tell you this now: I love this game. I’ve always been a fan of the Tony Hawks series, but I only ever played it on the PC, so I was a bit apprehensive of learning the controls to Electronic Arts’ Skate. But it’s fantastically simple, and the tutorial on the demo is easy to follow. The FlickIt system works a treat, and is easy to master.

Graphically speaking, it looks good – but please bear in mind that this is only the demo version that I’m trying, which means that I’m restricted to staying within the recreation ground. And, of course, the lack of HDTV obviously impairs my judgement. But compared to Tony Hawk’s 3 – the last skating game that I played – the graphics are fantastic.

The demo has an annoying 30 minute time limit, and then after that you need to reboot the game and redo the tutorial, which is tedious once you know what you’re doing.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the full copy of this game, and get customising skaters, boards and tricks, and exploring the vast city that is promised.

My rating: 7.
Will I buy the game: Definitely.