Bionic Commando

Apparently at Capcom, everything old is new again. Recently, we've seen revivals of both the Mega Man and Street Fighter franchises and now Bionic Commando franchise gets a fresh coat of 3D paint.

Honestly, I didn't own an NES when I was a kid so I missed out on the original Bionic Commando and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The new Bionic Commando is supposed to be a direct sequel to the NES game (and it's next gen remake, Bionic Commando: Rearmed) but I don't know how one goes from a read head with a crew cut to a brunette with dreads. (Maybe the jump from 2D to 3D changes both your hair color and style?) In Bionic Commando, you play as Nathan Spencer recently freed from being imprisoned for 10 years to help his government (who imprisoned him in the first place) stop a terrorist organization called BioReign (who destroyed a city by dropping a nuke on it). Why is Spencer the only one the government can turn to? Probably because of his creepy metal arm.

As Spencer, you'll navigate the ruins of Ascension City with your bionic arm and fight BioReign along the way. Usually in that order. While your bionic arm is mainly used from getting from point A to point B in a given area, you can also use it in combat by flinging cars and other objects at the enemies or you can fling yourself at your enemies as well. For those of you looking for combat of the non-bionic kind, there are weapons to be fired, from your regulation pistol to surface-to-air missiles. But while you'd think that your weapon of choice would be the bionic arm (after all, it is in the title), you'd be wrong. The game runs you through a tutorial to get you acquainted with all of the moves that you can pull off with the arm... and then doesn't let you use them. As you progress through the game, you slowly begin to unlock all the moves you just learned until about halfway through the game, you've got the entire arsenal of moves at your disposal.

Maybe you're thinking, "they probably wanted you to use the bionic arm to explore instead of fight for the first half of the game instead!" You'd be wrong there too. For as open a world Ascension City appears to be, there are invisible walls of radiation (makes sense, since someone did just drop a nuke there) that will kill you instantly if you stray too far off your designated path. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if it were clear which were radiation-free zones and which were melt-your-face off zones, but swinging from place to place, it's hard to tell which is which. But when you do find your designated path, there isn't much challenge in the swinging mechanic. As soon as you get accustomed to the swinging mechanic, it's easy enough to target your next swing point.

What aren't easy to target are the enemies. The aforementioned bionic arm combat maneuvers rely on being able to target the correct enemy or object. But your arm has the uncanny ability to target the ground in front of your desired object even though you could swear the targeting reticle is placed squarely on the object. I found myself flinging myself towards the ground instead of the enemy I thought I was targeting on way too many occasions. For a game that is supposed to be built around the bionic arm, the fundamental component of being able to accurately target something is deeply flawed. It actually reminds me a lot of the targeting in Resistance: Retribution. But that was on the PSP that lacks a second analog stick... what's Bionic Commando's excuse?

One of the biggest flaws in Bionic Commando are the load times. On average, you'll encounter a load screen about every 10 to 15 minutes depending on how good you are at the game. It borders on the ridiculous. Just as you're getting into the game, you'll get a load screen that will kill any momentum you had while playing. But at least on the load screens, you can check out the button layout in case you had forgotten how to shoot your gun or jump.

The game does feature multiplayer modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag where you'll face off against other bionic commandos. But most of those matches turn into generic shooters with the bionic arm used primarily as a mode of getting you to or away from the action as quickly as possible.

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