You’re no doubt reading this, eyes rolled into your skull, trying to work out whether The Bourne Conspiracy is the title of one of the films. It’s not. In actual fact, as much as it sounds like it should be one of the films, Conspiracy takes inspiration from all three, along with the Robert Ludlum and Eric Van Lustbader novels, and puts together an entirely new Bourne story in the form of a prequel to the very first movie/book, The Bourne Identity.

Before we get carried away, we’d like to offer High Moon an apology. With this game being a licence, one that’s not even directly connected to a particular film – indeed one where the main character looks nothing like Matt Damon – we fully expected this to be average at best and no doubt, you’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. We were wrong. Hands up. We admit it. The Bourne Conspiracy is looking grin-inducingly brilliant.

The story takes place in the form of flashbacks. Just as Identity began with Jason floating lifelessly in the Med with severe memory loss, Conspiracy begins the same way, only the timeline then shifts backwards and covers the events culminating in that moment. Spanning many and varied missions, Conspiracy, contrary perhaps to some of the shots you see on these pages, is not a run-and-gun affair, but instead an almost entirely new kind of hybrid. Most games of this type are one or the other; a beat-’em-up with a gun thrown in here and there (Condemned), or a shoot-’em-up with the odd spanner (Prey, GOW, BioShock). What Bourne is already achieving is the ability to strike a perfect blend of handto- hand duffing and ‘stop-and-pop’ bullet chucking. It’ll always be down to you how you approach a battle – use your guns, your martial arts or even environmental objects and stealth.

For those who’ve not seen the films, Bourne’s ‘style’ of combat, as well as his basic martial art (a Philippine style called ‘Kali’), is one in which he uses anything he can get his hands on and weaponises it. During hand-to-hand confrontations, he may pick up a book, a TV remote or anything else within reach, and use it to cause eye-watering pain to his assailants. The interaction between fisticuffs and the surrounding environment is unprecedented, Bourne taking great delight in bouncing heads off tables, wall fans, metal cages or just about anything else within reach. It’s incredibly impressive, even more so when taking on multiple mentals, and it carries through to the shooting too, with most of the environment – including cover – destructible to some degree.

The biggest problem in bringing ‘cinematic action’ to the player is that ‘cinematic action’, due to its very nature, relies heavily on camerawork. Therefore, the only ‘cinematic action’ you’re ever likely to see is during cut-scenes. High Moon claims to have solved the problem using a camera engine that introduces fast cuts and handheld style effects to every element of the gameplay, and we have to say having seen this in action, we believe the developer. It works and it works well. We recommend you cast your mind forwards to next summer and if there’s a chance you’ll be broke at that point in time, you’d best start saving now. You heard it here first!

Dan Howdle