There’s something worse about playing an average game than a bad one. At least with a bad game you’re often given a few (unintended) laughs and some anecdotes to share in the pub. With The Bourne Conspiracy, on the other hand, you’re constantly wishing that it was half as good as its cinematic presentation seems to suggest it could be, tempted by the promise it shows of something better, led on by a belief it will improve, and ultimately left with little but the knowledge that it’s a missed opportunity.

On a superficial level, the game makes an impact: it’s visually neat and the varied environments are full of bits and bobs that Bourne can smash his enemies with or into. Allied to this, the camera is an accomplished stab at importing the films’ supple cinematography, with frequent cutaways and close-ups of the melee combat particular highlights. This is also the flipside of The Bourne Conspiracy’s biggest problem, however, which is the desire to be cinematic beyond the breaking point of interactive entertainment.

The vast majority of interactions in the game, beyond the standard hand-to-hand combat and gunplay, are single button-presses that trigger a spectacular move on Bourne’s part. These can be violent ‘takedowns’ on your enemies, or simply contextual jumps and clambers, but they share the characteristic that as soon as the button is pressed, your involvement with the game is over for the next few seconds. It is, at times, like Dragon’s Lair. It wouldn’t be such a problem to have these moments so frequently punctuating your progress if it wasn’t for the fact that Bourne proves rather sluggish and uninspiring the rest of the time: you’ll go from a death-defying leap across rooftops to being unable to get past a suitcase or other piece of knee-high debris, often within the same sequence, exacerbating the strict linearity of your route.

It’s not just Bourne’s route-finding that shatters the game’s slick illusion. The hand-to- hand combat system is awfully shallow, and lacking in either challenge or fun. Allied to that, your enemies are indistinguishable in their tactics, and fighting more than one at a time makes no difference barring the odd signposted QTE. Boss encounters, meanwhile, are absolute slogs, with human foes happily taking 50 bullets in the face before going hand-to-hand and surviving ten or so takedowns.

Gunplay fares marginally better, but although it takes its influences from just about any cover shooter you might pick, it doesn’t do anything new. Worse than that, it doesn’t really even reach the minimum standard players have come to expect by now: your reticule is horribly fiddly on headshots, enemy intelligence is basic at best, and none of the weapons have any real sense of oomph about them.

Dialogue is fairly well written as far as it goes, and the game is capable of offering up some hugely atmospheric moments (some of Bourne’s exchanges with Conklin are more than worthy of the source material). But the story in general is so scrunched together as to be almost nonsensical, ill-advisedly jamming narrative flashbacks into the spaces between an extremely simplified version of the books’ events. Considering such emphasis is placed on presentation in the rest of the game, it’s a notable failing, and the cursory nature of the ending will surprise even the most forgiving player.

The Bourne Conspiracy is a wasted opportunity, a game that heads down a blind alley and abandons its improvisational promises for the easy option of QTEs and, above all, you never really feel in control of what’s going on

Verdict: 4/10