The Cut Scene - Video Game Blog by Variety

The Bourne Conspiracy... behind the scenes on those timed button presses

If you're like me, you may have thought that the timed button pressed in "The Bourne Conspiracy" were... a tad bit excessive? Like maybe the developers were so busy making cool action scenes they forgot to give the players something to do until the last minute? If so, you'll probably enjoy this exclusive "behind the scenes" video from Comedy.com's videogame series Glitch in the System:

Working on a big Activision Blizzard package

Currently in the middle of interviewing all the key executives (Bobby Kotick, Bruce Hack, Mike Morhaime) on the ocassion of the biggest merger in videogame history closing, so please excuse light blogging until then. Though I will be posting details on a new schwag giveaway very soon.

Later today I'll have the first of two stories (one for Daily Variety, one for weekly) about the merger up online and I'll also be posting specific news items and interview excerpts here on the blog. Wondering how long the staff at Blizzard are committed to working at Activision Blizzard? What's the deal with Infinity Ward "re-upping?" Whether Sierra projects are going to continue at Activision? How many layoffs are coming? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, for those interested in the new opportunites for gaming on the iPhone now that the applications store has launched, I highly recommend Kotaku's guide to iPhone games.

The Bourne Conspiracy plays you

Reviewing "The Bourne Conspiracy," I had the weird feeling I wasn't playing so much as getting played.

Not in the figurative sense, but literally... the game was moving along and doing what it wanted and I was almost a passive observer. There are so many interactive cut scenes (push a button on queue to keep the action going) and the fights are so much about hitting the buttons at the rare times when the game is responsive, rather than caught in its animations, that I spent a lot of time just waiting until I had something to do. The level design, similarly, is incredibly directed, constantly pushing you exactly where to go and giving you no options. Superspy Jason Bourne doesn't even have the ability to jump over a police barrier or climb through a window. It's immensely limiting and just doesn't succeed in giving you the feeling of being Bourne.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad game. "The Bourne Conspiracy" does some things very very well. The graphics, sound effects, and visuals are all ultra top notch. The fights in particular look phenomenal. All the time and energy developer High Moon spent working with the "Bourne" movies' fight director Jeff Imada to motion capture different martial arts styles was well worth it, because the action is intense and brutal and real. Though I wish I had more control over the process, initiating a great Bourne takedown move was consistently thrilling for me from the beginning of the game to the end.

(And yes, in the spirit of disclosure, I did finish the whole game, though I had to briefly go down to "trainee" difficulty to get through one incredibly difficult boss fight that was keeping me from finishing the review in time.)

Here in Hollywood, praising a movie's cinematography is usually a polite insult, since it's a way of avoiding discussing bad acting, writing, directing, etc. But in the case of "The Bourne Conspiracy," I mean it as a great compliment. It has the absolute best camera work I've evern seen in a videogame. You can move it, but you never have to. And it simulates the up close shaky camera that Paul Greengrass uses in the last two films but it's never nausea inducing and you can always see exactly what you're doing. Again, the fights are the best example of this. "The Bourne Conspiracy" perfectly captured the fighting scenes from the film without ever compromising the player's view.

Here's an excerpt from my review, now up on Variety.com:

The Bourne Conspiracy" promises gamers the chance to be Jason Bourne, but it's more like the chance to see Jason Bourne and push a few buttons along the way. Developer High Moon Studios did a phenomenal job capturing the look and feel of the "Bourne" books and movies -- everything from the fighting moves to the camera work to the overall mood. But too many of the best moments are almost entirely out of players' control in this heavily scripted and disappointingly unresponsive game. Add in a number of technical glitches, and "The Bourne Conspiracy" will end up being only lightly pursued.

And you can read the whole thing here.

Stats worth pondering from Microsoft, Vivendi, Sony

-Sorry Microsoft, but announcing today that you are the first current-gen console to sell 10 million units in the U.S. isn't much to celebrate. As of March, Nintendo has sold 8.8 million Wii's. And it launched a whole year after you guys. Which means it's a safe bet Wii sales will surpass those of the 360 by later this year despite a one-year disadvantage.

As for Xbox Live global membership of over 12 million... that's impressive, but we have no idea how many of those are paying "gold" members who play online and how many are just "silver" members who ocassionally log onto download an XBLA title or something. So, while Microsoft is still obviously was ahead of its competition in online gaming, it's tough to know what to make of that stat.

-Want a reminder of why when Activision merges with Vivendi Games, the combined company is going to be called Activision Blizzard? And why every title from Sierra (let alone Vivendi Mobile and Sierra Online) has to justify its existence to Activision?

Vivendi just released its first quarter earnings (Variety story here), during which 87% of the total revenue for the game division came from Blizzard. And that's without any new releases. So it's basically just "Warcraft" subscriptions and new buyers.

-Despite significant Playtstation 3 growth, Sony is predicting reductions in its game division as the Playstation 2, eight years after it launched, finally fades into obscurity (Variety story on Sony earnings here). But after a fiscal year (ending March 31) in which Sony Computer Entertainment lost $1.2 billion (a $1 billion improvement over last fiscal year), profits will finally rise as software sales keep growing and the loss per-hardware units falls.

In other words, it'll probably be a while until SCE grows revenue again due to the decline of the PS2, but the PS3 is on the verge of no longer being a black hole for profits.

Does the Prototype delay involve Activision?

It's worth remembering, folks, that when Sierra says it's delaying the release of "Prototype" until 2009, it's not going to be the publisher actually releasing the game. It wasn't even going to be if the game came out on schedule this fall That's Activision, which is going to merge with Sierra parent company Vivendi Games sometime next month, at which points its management will be in charge.

Officially, they're still two separate companies, but as I've previously reported, Activision management is already taking a look at Sierra's entire development slate and big changes and cuts are expected to happen post-merger. After all, Activision made the deal to get its hands on Blizzard and "World of Warcraft," not Sierra. And it's not like everyone at Sierra is dedicated to future of their business these days, as Martin Tremblay's decision to bolt for Warner Bros. showed.

I don't claim to have any specific insight into what's going on with "Prototype." It could just be that Radical needs more time to get the game into releaseable form. Or it could be that Activision execs have taken a look at the game and had a lot of "notes." But if it's Sierra, and not Activision, that really and truly is deciding that the game should come out next year, it's worth remembering that it's a new management team led by Bobby Kotick that will actually be making that decision.

(Check out my initial impressions of "Prototype" from GDC here.)

Sierra games being pitched to new corporate masters at Activision

It's a tough time to be developing a game for Vivendi Games' Sierra label, the division that makes "normal" videogames -- i.e. AAA, boxed, non-MMO games for PC and consoles. That's because all of the label's titles now have to justify their existence to their soon-to-be corporate masters at Activision.

What does that mean practically? I've had numerous sources tell me that development teams on all of Vivendi's games now have to essentially pitch their projects to Activision executives. Until the merger is technically complete, work proceeds as usual, but once it's over, Activision will start making some decisions. And it seems very unlikely that everything at Sierra will keep going as it has been.

Just like when a new executive teams takes over at a film studio, some projects in development get killed and others get changed as the new folks in charge start establishing their own tastes and corporate priorities.

Vivendi's Blizzard label is, of course, quite safe from all this. The merged company is going to be called Activision Blizzard, after all. So long as "World of Warcraft" keeps printing money faster than the Fed, they'll be left alone by Activision's execs to do as they please.

But the future of the rest of Vivendi Games is quite uncertain. Even though Vivendi proper will retain a majority stake in the merged entity, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick will keep that title and his president of publishing president Mike Griffith remains in charge of all non-Blizzard games.

Activision obviously made the deal to get its hands on the biggest MMO, and really the biggest game, in the industry. Everything else is basically an afterthought. Which leaves all of those making the afterthoughts in an uncertain position.

Titles set to come out this year, like "The Bourne Conspiracy," "Prototype," "Brutal Legend," and "Ghostbusters," are probably fine since they're so far along. But those in development for 2009 and later? They'll all TBD.

Question marks include whether we'll see more games from VIvendi's costly Robert Ludlum license, or if Activision thinks its conflicts with its costly James Bond license; whether there will be a sequel to "Scarface" as expected; whether Activision will put out a sequel to "F.E.A.R." in conflict with Warner/Monolith's "Project Origin" (Vivendi retains rights to the name while Warner kept the underlying ideas); and if we'll see more games starring Crash Bandicoot or Spyro.

Also, will Vivendi's nascent Sierra Online and Vivendi Mobile divisions be allowed to continue?

It's all in Activision's hands now. Which leaves some nervous developers at Sierra.

The Bourne Conspiracy: No Damon, all action

Still catching up on some previews in the past few weeks of upcoming games I've checked out... this time, it's Sierra's "The Bourne Conspiracy." (Which sounds exactly like the titles of all the books and movies, but is actually original.)

"Bourne" is the first (and definitely not the last) game that Sierra (a division of the soon-to-be-merged with Activision Vivendi) is making as part of an expensive, multi-year license with the Robert Ludlum estate that I first wrote about in Variety in summer of 2005.

The goal is, pretty explicitly, to make Ludlum for Vivendi what Tom Clancy is for Ubisoft -- though it'll be interesting to see whether Activision shares the same goal (more on that issue in a blog post tomorrow or Wednesday).

"Bourne" is, of course, best known to most audiences today for the movies, not the book, but Sierra's license is for the books. Developer High Moon Studios is heavily inspired by the movies and collaborating alot with the talent, though there are some key differences.

Most importantly, gamers will notice that Bourne is not modeled on Matt Damon. The team was considering making a deal with the star, but abandoned that after Damon said at the Cannes film festival last year that he was done with the character. Getting Damon committed to the game when he was no longer committed to the movies would obviously be awkward. (Although -- oops! -- Variety has since reported that Universal has "landed Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for a fourth "Bourne" movie, even though the director and star seemed ready to wrap it up after three pics.")

But there's lots from the movies. Even though Damon's not involved, Franka Potente is playing her supporting role from "The Bourne Identity" as Marie, which actually strikes me as kind of awkward, but anyway. Film writer Tony Gilroy consulted on the story, which basically tracks "Bourne Identity," but makes all of Bourne's brief flashbacks in the movie fully playable levels, along with some new missions in his past that we haven't seen. Essentially, it's a lot of backstory as we learn more about how Jason Bourne got so f*cked up by the CIA.

The most important collaboration, however, might be with the movies' fight coordinator Jeff Imada, who spent "hundreds of hours" working with High Moon to motion capture all the different fight moves (dozens, if not hundreds) in the game, which are in the exact same style of the movie. Beyond giving Bourne his signature take-down moves using items in the environment, each of the bosses has his (or her?) own unique fighting style designed by Imada.

That's the most important thing because the game is pretty much non-stop action. It's all adrenaline, with basic third person action that we've seen before interspersed with takedowns, which you can pull up when you build up enough adrenaline (or whatever "Bourne's" name for the boost meter is; they all kind of blur together). Not only do they look really cool, but the camera moves in close, with camera angles that mimic the hand-held fast moving camera that director Paul Greengrass used in the second and third "Bourne" films.

All of the takedown moves I saw, which involved using walls, filing cabinets, pens and dry erase boards to take enemies down, along with Bourne's hands and feet, were really impressive. Will they be just as impressive after playing the game for a few hours? Will the shooting and driving -- which seemed fairly standard in the demo I saw -- stand out as much as the hand-to-hand action?And will the multi-player be able to take advantage of the game's signature moves, or in an effort to balance it out will it be a chaotic mess, a la "Stranglehold?"

Those are all the big questions I'm left with leading up to June, when "The Bourne Conspiracy" comes out.

(Oh, and a note to developers: If you want to flatter me during a game demo, tell me that I'm doing a better job than some enthusiast press (IGN, GameSpot, etc.) writers who were there earlier in the day. Sure, you may be transparently flattering me, but it totally worked during "The Bourne Conspiracy" demo, I can't lie.)

Spiderwick Chronicles... the first review

"The Spiderwick Chronicles" tie-in game came out on Tuesday, but as far as I can tell, Variety is the first outlet to review it. (Nothing on any of the big gaming sites, no entries on MetaCritic). I understand it's probalby not too popular with the core IGN reader, while an adapatation of a major film release is much more important to Variety. But I'll still pretty happy that Variety is not only competing when it comes to news and reviews of "mainstream" game releases, but taking the lead on videogames with a Hollywood connection.

Here's an excerpt of the review from our crack critic Matt Peckham:

Games based on family movies often look and play like cheaply made quickies, but that's not the case with Sierra's pleasantly bright "The Spiderwick Chronicles," which turns in a surprisingly enjoyable if brief performance. It's mostly a grand Easter egg hunt punctuated by average mini-games and shallow combat, but what the game lacks in boldness it makes up for in wholesome design and rapid-fire pacing. Except for a frustrating patch during the denouement, "Spiderwick" is a well-made tie-in to the Par/Nick fantasy film opening next week and should sell well with fans of the books and pic.

Read the whole thing here.