Freedom is the buzzword of the next generation, conjuring up images of sandboxes, free roaming games where anything is possible and trying to do it is encouraged. Nowadays you almost expect to be dropped headlong into a whole world created specifically for your enjoyment, a world where leaps of faith get the blood pumping, where attacks can be planned from any angle and even running away makes you look cool. Add to this an interesting and diverting narrative, one which grabs you by the throat and makes you feel like part of the story, rather than just a pawn pulled along by digital destiny, and it's going to be difficult to not create a brilliant game. If, however, you decide to go against the current grain and make something so linear that you could cut teeth on it, with a story that will be nonsensical to a vast swathe of the population, then you could well be in trouble. Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy cordially invites you back to the last gen in an utterly unashamed fashion.

You play through the game as thirty million dollar super spy Jason Bourne, the plot leading you through the events of The Bourne Identity, as well as a handful of CIA missions from before Bourne got shot in the back and fell into the Atlantic Ocean. However, if you've never seen the film or read the book then you're going to be quite conclusively left in the dark by the whole experience. Exposition is kept to an absolute minimum and you're often left wondering why you're engaged in the current mission. The ending in particular makes no sense at all to the uninitiated, while the oddly staid cut scenes do little to help matters. The set pieces for the film are all in place; the escape from the embassy in Zurich, the mad chase through the streets of Paris, the showdown at the French country house - but none of them are contextualised, leaving you cold, and more confused than the amnesiac Bourne himself.

Narrative, or lack thereof, aside, the game is one of the strictest I've ever played. There are clear divisions between the different styles of play; shooting, hand-to-hand and driving, and clear places where you have to use them. If the game demands that you sneak through a section, taking out enemies with your fists rather than with a firearm, then sneaking it is, no questions asked, all complaints ignored. It's unfair and it makes the game feel dated, old and clumsy. Indeed, there are times when it's infuriating; disarm a soldier and rather than doing the sensible thing and shooting him in the face, you have to engage him in a bout of no holds barred pugilism. And that fighting is hardly a refined system; one button for light attack, one for heavy and one for block. Tactics are as follows; block, light heavy light, block, heavy heavy heavy, repeat until you've built up enough adrenaline for a takedown. Those takedowns are essentially Bourne's fatalities; fill up an adrenaline bar and a red flashing button appears, press it to smash your opponent's head into the nearest inanimate object. For the first twenty minutes such actions entertain, but for the rest of the five hours of gameplay they grate. There's no advancement, no new combos to learn or new moves to master, just lots and lots of button mashing.

The shooting fares little better with an arbitrary cover system that doesn't allow you to hide behind all of the objects in the world, and after performing a shooting takedown - a fancy shot performed after enough bullets have thudded into targets - you're pulled out of hiding like a sitting duck. Add to this the fact that when you get too close to an opponent you're forced to take them on hand to hand, even if there are twenty other people shooting at you, and teeth begin to grind.

The single driving section in the game is little more than a race to different, sometimes badly marked, checkpoints, whilst you are chased by the entirely inept Parisian Police Force, whose sole tactic to stop you escaping is ploughing their cars into yours. At no point can you get out of the car and at no point can you change cars - even if yours is on the verge of destruction. You're stuck with a red mini because it's what the developers want you to drive, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense or is the car you want to be driving. The car handles reasonably well but it sometimes feels a little too floaty and far away from the ground and the emergency brake is all but useless. There are sections where Bourne can burn off adrenaline to make time slow down, allowing easier reactions to the oncoming vehicles, but it's badly implemented and, whilst being a reasonably good idea, never quite works well enough to be of any use. Bourne can also use this "Bourne Instinct" during the other levels, allowing him to better see objectives, enemies and weak spots. In the easiest difficulty setting this costs nothing, but on the harder levels it uses up adrenaline, requiring you to weigh up whether quick kills or direction is needed at that point.

Perhaps the weakest part of Bourne's arsenal are the Quick Time Events (QTEs) that pepper the game. A button flashes onto the screen and you have a few seconds to push it before you die or get caught. It's that simple - either press it or it's game over and back to the last checkpoint. It's an archaic mechanism and whilst it's supposed to increase the tension, all it increases is frustration. When sniping a handful of enemies or dodging a hail of bullets is reduced to a simple button press then any connection to the game is abandoned; you no longer feel like you're Bourne - like it's you who's dodging the bullets and taking the headshots - and that's a tragedy. The chief selling point for this game is that you get to become Bourne, to become a living weapon, but in reality Bourne's little more than a puppet that's controlled by the occasional button press.

The Bourne Conspiracy doesn't tax the Unreal Engine that lies beneath the bonnet; it's a game populated by browns and greys and archetypal crates. There are no "wow" moments, no point where the game makes you stop to take a breath. The only nice touch is the real time damage the character models sustain in fistfights; each blow landed leads to a little more deformation as eyes gradually bruise and blood drips and darkens. Sadly though the models themselves are spectacularly dead eyed and emotionless, and eventually you won't really care if Jason's face is being pummelled black and blue. The music is of a reasonably good quality, sometimes even managing to stir up some emotion. It's a decent enough mix of thick guitar sounds and strings that wouldn't be at all out of place in the Bourne films. The sound effects too are more than adequate, with bones crunching in an almost excruciating manner and guns sounding realer than I've heard before. That the audio component is the game's biggest strength is a very bad sign indeed.

The Bourne Conspiracy isn't a bad game. It's massively, abominably flawed, but there are points where it does play well, points where I was both entertained and excited. The problem is that these points are few and far between with an awful lot of trudging needed to get to them. The plot poses far too many unanswered questions, the graphics are average and the gameplay itself is outdated. If you want to understand how outdated then consider this: upon finishing the game you're given cheat codes that change the way the game plays when typed into the "cheat code" screen. It's all quite 16-bit. There are better third person action games out there, better driving games, better games full stop. It's worth a rental and probably worth picking up for less than half price, so long as you're not looking for anything revolutionary, taxing or long. It's an entirely forgettable game, one that fades from the memory as soon as the controller is laid down. However, as a diversion and a stopgap, if you can look past the last generation style and the frustrating defects, you might find something to while away a night or two.

Reviewed by Harry Slater for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).