With Bionic Commando: Rearmed a rousing success, the hype for the full 3D Bionic Commando follow-up coming from the same team could not have been any higher. The result of that hype is a game that doesn’t live up to the excitement and quality of the remake and feels like a missed opportunity to capitalize on what’s really fun about Bionic Commando.

Though the name may not say it, Bionic Commando is a sequel to the original NES game that takes place about 10 years after the events of the original Bionic Commando. Nathan “Rad” Spencer has been in prison since then as a scapegoat by his government, but is finally being released after a terrorist group called BioReign has bombed Ascension City and they need his help to stop the diabolical plan that is forming as you progress through the game. The story feels exactly like an action movie version of Bionic Commando would probably come out to be, which is good in how it’s presented but not so much with the way that it plays out in the end.

The way that Bionic Commando has been presented kind of made it seem like a sandbox game, but it’s fairly linear with the minimap showing the exact spot where you need to go to progress. The swinging takes a while to get used to it, but once you do learn how it works, it’s a lot of fun when the game wants you to focus on swinging. That’s probably the main issue with Bionic Commando, which is that it’s a bit schizophrenic in that there are awesome segments where it features the great areas that let you use your swinging skills to get the best of your enemies while others focus on the decent gunplay that gets tedious quickly. The entire game is a series of valleys and peaks in the way it progresses and the valleys are steep enough to almost turn you off when you’re forced to just use your guns in tight corridors and other small areas.

To go along with the guns that you’re given access, Bionic Commando presents new abilities with your bionic arm by having you remember things you can do with your bionic arm since you haven’t had it for nearly ten years. They spread these abilities out quite a bit, as the last ability isn’t presented until the last hour or so of the game’s campaign. These are where the gameplay gets to be more interesting and fun as you gain the ability to grab enemies, objects, or anything that’s loose to jack up into the air and then toss at another enemy or just into the horizon to see how far you can go before you hit the invisible wall in the distance.

These abilities are necessary for the large mechs that Bionic Commando has you fight throughout the game, which  are fine to fight at first when facing one at a time, but it’s when there are two or three in a group that are thrown at you that it gets much tougher and a bit less fun to take on very quickly. These are just a sign of the inherent difficulty that the game has when it doesn’t hesitate to punch you in the mouth if you can’t stop it, which is further an issue with the extreme lack of checkpoints. Just know that if you hit one of the many tunnels that separate areas or a cutscene, it should save your spot in case you die before the next checkpoint.

There definitely is a multiplayer mode in Bionic Commando that can extend the replay value of the game, but it’s just not fleshed out enough to be something that many people will come back for a long time after beating the single-player campaign. There is just the deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes that feel a bit different than the norm with the way the core BC gameplay differs from other shooters, but it won’t end up as much more than a quick distraction compared to the much better multiplayer experiences out there.

Bionic Commando does look great with the beautiful levels that you’re traversing. There are definitely rough spots in the visuals with the sometimes quirky physics, the clipping that your bionic arm shows when you shoot it out, and the difficulty to keeping Nathan on narrow spaces when he’s not moving at all. The framerate is pretty good for the most part, but there are a few small bits of slows down.

The audio and music feels like the most well-done and consistently excellent part of Bionic Commando. The music primarily consists of great remixed versions of the original Bionic Commando’s soundtrack, including the excellent menu music that features a slower version of the BC theme using just a piano. The voice acting is well done and does a good job of adding to the action movie feel of the story.

Bionic Commando does a great job of capturing the potential fun of swinging around big environments, but it loses that steam when it sticks you in smaller areas to turn into a decent shooter until you can get outside again. These peaks and valleys that make up the single-player campaign are ultimately its downfall since it can quickly change from a fun and exciting experience to one that is tedious and frustrating. With a campaign that is about six hours or so, you’re best bet is to just rent the game and beat it so you can return it to not be tied down by Bionic Command any longer.

Final Score: 7 | Suggestion: Rent It

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About This Author: Chris Selogy

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