CVG’s recently reported on an interview Treyarch’s Garrett Young had with the Official Xbox magazine. Young was quick to compare the upcoming Bond license game, Quantum of Solace, to Vivendi’s recent The Bourne Conspiracy game, featuring that other free-running, gadget-free secret agent. By “compare,” I mean describing it as “utter trash.”

Oddly though, he didn’t trash it for any of the right reasons. Hop the hop, skip the skip, jump the jump to find out why.

Commenting that the Bourne films, featuring Matt Damon, were utterly fantastic, Young then began slating the Bourne Conspiracy video game. However, he didn’t lay into the game’s huge emphasis on quicktime events every few seconds. He didn’t criticise the two-dimensional control system when it came to combat. He didn’t even pity BMW for letting the developers include their new Mini in the lackluster driving sections.

Nope, Garrett Young’s beef with the Bourne Conspiracy was the fact that Matt Damon’s likeness wasn’t plastered onto the visage of the in-game Jason Bourne. Forget the gameplay, the audio, how it looks, any of that: nay, the fact that the actor from the movies wasn’t in the game is why it was such a bad game.

Wait, what? I’m pretty sure that every other critic of the game would be quick to point out everything else that was wrong with the game before moving onto the likeness (or lack thereof) of Matt Damon.

“The Bourne game… we did download the demo, we did look at it,” commented Young, who is the producer of the upcoming Bond game. “[[We were]] not super impressed with it.. it’s always tough though when you make a game and you don’t have the lead character from the movie.”

Ah, yes, of course. Surely the most critical thing in a movie game is likeness. Suddenly, I’m not so impressed with Quantum of Solace, if the game’s producer is going to be this much of a douchebag towards other games: “We have Daniel Craig’s face, ergo our game is the best.”

While I’m not exactly going to leap to the defence of The Bourne Conspiracy (although driving sections aside I thought it was very much an enjoyable game) I have to say talk like this is neither big, nor clever. It’s being nit picky, smarmy and a little bit disconcerting. Oh well. Part of me hopes that Treyarch manage to break Quantum of Solace so Vivendi can get their own back when it hits the shops.

Bond dev “not impressed” with Bourne - CVG

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