Bionic Commando Review

Bionic Commando is sixth game in the Capcom's adventure-platformer series of the same name. The game was developed and published by Capcom in collaboration with Swedish developer GRIN (GRAW, GRAW2, Wanted). The game is a direct sequel to the second game and its remake Bionic Commando Rearmed, released in 1988 for the NES and in 2008 as a downloadable title. If you are not familiar with the previous games though, do not worry – the game is meant to serve as a reboot rather than a continuation of the franchise. That being said, it would certainly be helpful to be familiar with the series so that you may enjoy the various locales and characters from the series. However in my case, I was not aware of the series at all until the reboot was announced, so that’s the perspective from which I am reviewing this title. I did some digging to learn the basic plot details and key characters, but beyond that I played the game without any predictions or expectations. Whether that was a good thing, I am not sure.

The story of Bionic Commando take place 10 years after the original 1988 game’s ending. This means that a whole chunk of the story is told retro-actively, filling in the background as you go. All you know is that you’re in prison, sentenced to death for betraying your government. The fact that you are “bionic” (artificially altered) did not help your cause in court. Society has become aware and then afraid of the bionics, and laws were put in place to restrict their abilities as members of society. But one day, a bomb is dropped on Ascension City by a group called “pro-bionics”. The name says it all, they are a radical group trying to prevent their “kind” from being forced into exile and extinction. At this point, you pick up the role of Nathan "RAD" Spencer, still waiting in a jail cell. But now the government needs your help to actually go to the city and stop the radical group’s soldiers from taking over. Of course, after a long time in jail, Spencer does not wish to help, but his commander offers him information about Spencer’s long-missing wife if he helps. Spencer agrees, as he is still not sure what has happened to her 10 years ago. You are given the bionic arm by the commander to ensure you complete the mission. The story serves its purpose of propelling the action forward, but it’s all fairly cliché and mostly predictable. There are some minor twists in the story, but for the most part everything leads to a big and fun boss fight. Too bad the rest of the game isn’t quite as exciting. I actually had some trouble understanding why the main villain was “evil” or what exactly his back story is. Guess I would have to play previous games to find out, but you’d hope that with a reboot, new potential fans would get some explanations in the game. Bionic Commando is rated Mature, but it’s a very weak rating. There is almost no blood or swearing, and the shooting/grappling of enemies feels light and mostly harmless. I’m pretty baffled why Capcom didn’t choose to cut a few dialog swears (most are in poor taste anyhow) and make this Teen rated for much better profits. The best parts of the game are the last couple of levels, and they feel almost as if done by a different developer. They are exciting, fun, the dialog is suddenly well written and Spencer can actually be cheered for. But alas, the ending only makes the rest of the game pale even more in comparison.

The main draw of Bionic Commando was the “Spider-man like” gameplay. But do not be fooled. The game is actually extremely linear – and half of the game is spent inside caves, tunnels, and buildings so you cannot even practice any breathtaking swings. Most of these indoor levels allow for very limited swings and are mostly packed with enemies just waiting for you to show up and kill them. Once you finally get to some open areas, you will find that they are very restrictive as well. The level is surrounded on all sides by radioactive materials, so any deviation from your path results in an instant death and restart at checkpoint. At times, the blue radioactive waste is hard to notice against a dark background (especially at night), so it’s frustrating to die of radiation for trying to flank a group of enemies and just going too far. A lot of the city is also under water, for whatever reason. Presumably, when the bomb exploded, the waters from the surrounding sea/lake flooded the streets. It’s never explained, for example, why the downtown area is dry while some later levels have such deep water that you are forced to travel by rooftops. There are hidden items on each level, but they are so easily visible, they should rather be called “hard to reach” items because as I said, not much exploration can be done in the game, so most items are simply placed very far above or below. Most enemies you can simply by-pass if you want to, except for the mini-boss fights which always mean you must defeat a robot (or two, or three) that are guarding a doorway.

The main draw of the series is the bionic arm. It acts as your grappling hook, so you can imagine the basic functions. It’s used to swing yourself from any object to the next one, and can be attached to almost any surface and pull you up. It is also used to interact with everything in the game such as grabbing ammo, guns, and objects. Nathan only uses his real hand to fire weapons, and not much else. The arm can also be used to grab enemies and zip-kick them, but it takes two kicks even on the most basic enemies to bring them down, so it is actually much quicker just to shoot them. You know you are in trouble when your game’s main attraction, the arm, is only being used to travel from one building to the next. Sure, it’s also a very good idea to pick up objects such as cars and rocks to toss at enemies (especially robot mini-bosses), but the game provides so many rifles, shotguns and rocket launchers that you seldom have to use your arm as a weapon. In physical terms, Nathan can perform light and heavy punches, and a couple of combos. You also have an aerial attack, which makes you slam the ground and knock down any enemies in the area. It’s not that useful against humans for some reason, so it’s only used during robot battles to knock them down. Your health regenerates, but for a bionic character Nathan can’t take very much damage. Sure only his arm is bionic so it’s understandable, but you’d think it would prevent him from going down from a couple of pistol shots. The arm is also used to interact with the information pods in the game, which basically serve as checkpoints. They all look the same, and you cannot use them until the nearby area is clear of enemies. Once you are attached to the pod, you can read one or two enemy emails which fill in some story bits, but more importantly just by accessing the pods you deactivate a nearby floating mine field, which is usually the only way forward. You travel across quite a few of these mine fields in the game, and even these are linear in nature.

After all the swinging, you finally encounter some enemies. At times, the game almost felt like a low budget third person shooter rather than an action adventure. Most of the game is populated with two or three variations of the basic enemies which are appropriately called “Pro-Bionics grunts” and are dispatched easily with two shots from any rifle. The only variations appear later in the game as rocket-wielding enemies and heavy enemies appear. Rocket guys are not very accurate with their shots, and can often take out members of their own team, and heavies are basically armor-covered machine gun grunts. Dispatching of all human enemies in the game is straightforward and easy, the only challenge is staying alive when taking fire from more than 3 enemies at a time. The other opponents in the game are the robots which cause a lot more problems for you than humans. There are only two varieties, mech-like robots that are mostly ground enemies and airplane-like robots which always attack from a distance and can’t be grappled on to. Both these varieties will be encountered during the more difficult missions, and often they are guarding a doorway which you need to progress through. They must be killed in order for the doorway to open, but every fight plays out similarly. Conventional weapons (except for grenade launcher) do little damage to the mechs, so the idea is to zip-kick their weak spot on the back. It’s brightly lit and visible, but in order to get behind the robot you must first stun them. For ground robots, you need to perform the aerial drop attack which causes them to fall for a few seconds so you can lock on their back and zip-kick. Rinse and repeat until they are dead, and repeat again each time you encounter them in the game. If feeling bored, you have the alternative to toss rocks or other objects at the robots, which is just as effective and less frustrating than trying to lock on their back. The flying type of robots are even easier, you simple shoot them with everything you have (lock on if needed). There are some variations with both these enemy types, but they simply differ in their attack patterns and range. The way to defeat them remains the same.

When playing a free-flowing game such as this, you hope for some good controls. Bionic Commando has some issues in this department. You always have your crosshairs, which jumps to the nearest object that can be grappled when you swing, so precision is not required. Swinging is therefore mostly effortless and can be enjoyed, but not too much – remember the radiation! When it comes to using the arm as a combat tool, the automatic lock-on for your crosshairs becomes random and erratic. Grabbing on to human soldiers works ok for the most part, but when it comes to battling the robots and trying to grapple their back while they are down, it becomes real hit-or-miss. Since your crosshair doesn’t actually point at the center of your screen, instead it jumps around between surfaces that you can grab on to, many times you miss grabbing on to the robot’s back from point-blank range and have to restart the sequence of finding a high surface and doing your drop attack again. The inaccuracy becomes frustrating rather than helpful in combat, but it can result in many deaths during platforming as well if you grab on to a ledge that was too close to the water and watch yourself drown. On the PC, the controls are even more of a problem because all of the prompts are corresponding to an Xbox 360 controller. So, if playing with a keyboard and mouse, you need to constantly jump to the control options and check which key is actually assigned to “B” and “X”. Needless to say, keyboard and mouse controls work as well as always, after you learn the layout and start ignoring controller button prompts. It feels insulting, however, that such a key game interface is left unaltered as a port. Why was the game delayed for PC again? Clearly not for any better optimization.

Multiplayer does not warrant a very long mention. It’s a collection of a few “island” type maps so that all players do not stray from the area. Weapons are scattered throughout, and again the bionic arm is only used to travel around the level rather than attack anyone. It’s just as dull as the single player, and the community is unlikely to pick up. On PC, things are even worse with a poorly designed lobby system and an extremely low amount of players online, most from outside North America.

Graphically, the game looks impressive. Though not very big, the environments are detailed and so are all the major characters. The enemies all look the same though, but it’s pretty forgivable. The water effects look good, which is nice since you see a lot of water in the game. The game runs very smoothly with no framerate issues or slowdowns, even during checkpoint autosaves. The sound is pretty well done, and it includes some remixed versions of the soundtrack from the original games, which is a nice touch. The voice acting is very basic, and only 4 or 5 characters in the game have any kind of lines. All of the grunts yell repetitive “Damn you, Spencer!” lines which get old, and it is odd to hear every enemy calling your name.

I do not think Bionic Commando is a very good reboot to the franchise. It was billed to be an open-world game but failed to deliver, and while it has many touches of the original series, they fail to add any kind of value to newcomers. And isn’t that the point of a reboot, to add new fans to the series. The novelty of swinging around manages to stay just out of the boring zone, but the lackluster of other distinctive arm functions really fail to propel the game above others in the adventure genre. And without the arm, Bionic Commando becomes a below-average third person shooter with a convoluted story and an unlikable lead character. The last part of the game really picks up in fun and story, so I can at least say that the game ends on a high note. I can’t really recommend Bionic Commando to anyone other than fans of the franchise, as the linear gameplay and shallow characters are a bit below today’s standards set by other adventure games.