Bionic Commando Review

It's a busy year for Capcom. Now that the company successfully continued its most popular and top-selling franchise -- i.e. Resident Evil -- they turn to other titles such as Bionic Commando, Street Fighter 4 (PC) and Lost Planet 2. No matter how you look at it, Capcom is a respectable development studio and publisher, with a fast-growing reputation as one of the best in the industry. In addition to several other projects lined-up for 2009, Capcom made an effort to reboot a classic licence - Bionic Commando. After Bionic Commando: Rearmed, the highly praised retro style platformer, we finally get a current-gen version of the game. So, this is indeed a fine year for loyal Bionic Commando fans. Or is it?

In this game, you play as Nathan Spencer, the Bionic Commando. Back in the old days, Nathan fought against the Imperials and eventually destroyed their secret weapon, the Albatross - those were the events from Bionic Commando Rearmed. After that Spencer and his friend Joseph "Super Joe" Gibson became heroes. However, when Spencer was tasked with killing two rogue bionic prototypes, he refused to execute the order, which led to the deaths of several TASC agents (TASC is, by the way, a powerful military organization that supplied Spencer with his Bionic Arm). Spencer got court-martialed, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death. Five years later, a weapon of mass destruction obliterates Ascension City and Spencer is called upon to fight once more.

The plot can be summarized as utter shit. It wasn't much of a surprise, since we honestly didn't expect anything extraordinary in that department. To put it another way, Bionic Commando doesn't get any points for an immersive backstory. Even the character voiceovers are week and laughable at times (the main character's voice sounds like he smokes 556 cigarettes a day - okay, I know the guy's been on death row for five years, but...).

There are several things that are surely going to bother you about this game, regardless of whether you're a fan of the old BC game or not. Players can move around the area, most of which is quite confined, with the help of the main character's Bionic Arm. Spider-Man is the first game that's bound to leap to mind the moment you start swinging between buildings and over massive chasms. The swinging takes some practice. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. Still, once enemies start shooting at you from all sides, you'll be looking for a safe place to land rather hastily, since it's almost impossible to combat opponents while swinging.

It's not that swinging isn't fun. It can be. However, as soon as the action starts, so does the frustration. Players will soon find themselves desperately seeking an adequate ledge or branch to swing from, while swarms of foes keep firing at Spencer like crazy. Now, there are a number of really cool combos to employ in battle, allowing you to use both the Bionic Arm and a range of weapons. Most of your arsenal usually seems obsolete when you find yourself facing incredible odds. Despite all of Spencer's Bionic-flavored skills, he dies too easily and too often. Which means a substantial amount of trial and error.

The game isn't difficult. Instead it appears to suffer from disappointingly inconsistent gameplay. Usually you face swarms of soldiers (accurate fuckers they were too), in addition to two, sometimes three flying Biomech units (very resilient, very deadly). In a situation like this, the player doesn't have time to swing, shoot and pull off combos simultaneously. It's just impossible. Also, I don't worship the idea of plunging to an embarrassingly clumsy death when handling foes skillfully. Let me give you an example: in one particular situation, I confronted about 7-8 soldiers and 3 powerful Biomechs. It was a long and arduous battle and I just started to have fun. Nearly finished everyone off, when suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, this pitiful BioReign Grunt managed to kill me with a single melee attack (WTF?). My character wasn't even near death at the time.

Shooting has a strong reminiscence of Capcom's Lost Planet, which is fine in our book, except it doesn't represent the main facet of the game. The whole ride is centered on the swinging mechanics. There's one positive thing about Spencer's arm. It gives him a chance to hurl a variety of objects at his enemies and thanks to that ability, Bionic Commando provides some very entertaining moments.