The Bourne Conspiracy

Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a huge Bourne fan. I enjoyed the books back in the day, and really enjoyed its reinvention recently with Matt Damon. So when I saw that they were making a game based on the books, but in the style of the movies, called The Bourne Conspiracy, I was appropriately excited.

So, I downloaded the demo on XBL and fired it up. The opening splash screen, punctuated by the look and music of the Matt Damon films built it up.

And then I started playing the game.

The Unreal 3 Engine can put together some gorgeous games (see Rainbow 6:Vegas, Gears of War) and it can put together some really ugly games (see Stranglehold, Blacksite: Area 51). Unfortunately, The Bourne Conspiracy falls more into the Stranglehold camp than the Gears of War camp. I hope they put some sort of post-processing filter on the game, because if the Art Direction was to purposefully create art assets that uniformly bland and washed out, then they succeeded.

The character models are appropriate, but the animations are stiff. Character movement is wonky - Bourne doesn't move like he has a purpose, he moves like he just rolled out of bed and needs to spend five minutes stretching. This is only exacerbated by the fact that there are really cool cinematic portions to the fights that show some really good, creative animation sequences that flow well.

Which segues nicely into the combat system. The gunplay takes a little getting used to, the controls are slightly different than your average Third-Person shooter, but if you are familiar with other console games of the genre, you should be able to get into that portion of the game quickly. The melee combat system, which is supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the game, is made of instant spuds and spam, not roast beef and idaho golds. High Noon, the developers, dropped in some twitch-button sequences to spice up the melee combat sequences, but the sequences fail spectacularly for one big reason: buffer time. The melee system is pure button mashing, but the twitch-button sequences happen so fast, and with so short a buffer time, that when you are learning the feel for the system, you tend to accidentally "miss" the sequence because you were busy pressing one of the attack buttons trying to furiously pummel the enemy.

Finally, there are some definite cheese in the naming of some of the systems. For example, the alternate vision mode to turn on your minimap and view your next checkpoint is called "Bourne Instincts". That was the best name they could come up with? When I saw it, I audibly groaned.

I think the game will garner ratings between 70-75. They tried way too much, IMO, and in the end, didn't seem to get the chance to polish all of it.

Classes and Accessibility

I've been talking quite a bit to folks around the office as well as fellow developers about MMOs. Since I've been a lifelong roleplaying gamer, going all the way back to the Red Box of Dungeons and Dragons as well as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition), there is a certain vernacular that a generation of gamers - call them Generation N - are used to using and have become accepted terms across a variety of genres.

One of the core aspects of Dungeons and Dragons is the notion of "classes". That is, Classes serve a set of predefined terms, abilities, and modifiers that skew that character to a specific role in the group. When someone reads "Fighter", or "Thief", they have an expectation. Not only does this provide a specific level of tactical invisibility - people know what they can and cannot do, based on which class they provide - but it also provides an unappreciated but definitely required accessibility for both experienced and the new player.

Accessibility is a huge part of MMO design (and Game Design in general) if you want your game to carry more than 100,000 subscribers, and the one thing that the high population MMO games all share is their commitment and use of classes. Classes give experienced players a preconcieved notion as to the capabilities of their character from inception, and let inexperienced players easily identify with their character abilities and be able to play effectively from the start.

It's easy to look at WoW and say that is the paradigm for classes and accessibility - and you'd be right. The numbers of subscribers, and simply put, the ease at which it guides a player from 1-60 is something that all developers should stop and admire. Whether you agree with their art style or lore choices, you can't ignore that Blizzard always gives you something to do, somewhere to go, and something else to see along a highly polished path.

Unfortunately, when classes have been implemented in MMO's, few games embrace one of the key aspects of a class-based system: multiple clases. Multiple Classes allows more hardcore players to expand and try additional classes while sticking to what they know and enjoy and creates a player-driven, optional layer of depth that games like WoW are missing. Too bad more games haven't tried something similar as Final Fantasy XI.

I should devote some time to talking about why I don't like Skill-based systems that eschew classes entirely, but I think my strongest arguement is in the continuing popularity of games that use classes as their means of character progression. WoW, Everquest/EQ2, Lineage 1/2, LOTRO, all have done exceptionally well with a class-based systems, far outpacing their skill-based bretheren.

Which begs the question: do skill-based games fail to draw in casual gamers due to the inherent obtuse nature of skill-based progression?

Is this thing on?

Well, seeing as how I work in the dreaded and feared video game industry, I figured I would join the likes of - well, just about every other hip designer I know - and maintain a blog. Now, for those that know me, prior to my involvement in Game Design, I tried keeping a blog.

Several of them, in fact.

Ultimately, however, apathy and my general inclination to play video games rather than discuss and analyze them (as well as the politics of others) trended me away from actually posting.

Now that a lot of that is behind me, the politics anyway, I'm still getting help for that whole general inclination thing.

That aside, I hope to be posting every day, barring that, every other day regarding game design, video games in general, and whatever other pop culture notion that crosses my desk.

Currently Playing:
PC: Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, Team Fortress 2
360: Dead Rising
Music: Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? - She and Him