It's been over twenty years since the original Bionic Commando first graced home consoles back in the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It's incredibly common for retro revivals to go awry, resulting in a subpar game and a diluted franchise. However, this is not the case with Bionic Commando. Bionic Commando succeeds by focusing on swinging, the mechanic that made the original game great and building upon it to create a fresh new title.
Bionic Commando throws you into the role of Nathan "Rad" Spencer, the protagonist of the 8-bit classic. In the time between Nathan's exploits in the original Bionic Commando, the government has taken a stern stance against bionics, and a screw-up on Nathan's end landed him in a cell on death row. Some time after this a radical pro-bionic organization going by the name of BioReign blows up Ascension City. In the aftermath of the event Nathan is released by Super Joe and sent into the ruins of Ascension City to get to the bottom of the matter. For the most part, the story takes a back seat to the gameplay, although a few twists and turns are thrown into the mix towards the latter half of the game to try and reel the player back into the story.
The start of the game mainly involves you becoming acquainted with the game world and getting a hang of the swinging mechanics. An optional, but extremely useful tutorial is available early on to help speed up the process of getting a hang of the controls and various abilities, such as swinging, grappling, picking up and throwing objects, just to name a few. It's very likely that the mechanics won't "click" with some players, resulting in one spending far more time on the ground than they should, and from there on out having an all around "bad time" with the game. Bionic Commando contains a challenge system that rewards you with trophies/achievements as you complete challenges. These challenges can range from taking out a specific number of enemies with a single grenade launcher blast, to collecting a set number of the games collectibles that are scattered about the world.
Bionic Commando is a strictly linear affair, wherein a series of indicated waypoints are constantly present to guide you in the direction necessary to progress the story further. You'll swing through several different environments on your adventure, such the ruins of Ascension City, lush forest areas, underground caves, an oil rig, and so on and so forth. As you traverse through these environments you'll often come across enemies that many times you will need to dispose of in order to proceed further. In order to do so, you'll use your bionic arm's melee combat abilities, as well as the numerous firearms available. Your primary weapon is a pistol which is, for the most part, weak. It looks weak, it sounds weak, and it does very little damage per shot, however, the pistol is able to fire off shots at the rate at which you can pull the trigger, which can prove to be advantageous at times. The other available weapons include a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a machine gun, a rocket launcher with lock-on capabilities, and a sniper rifle; nothing too exciting for those players who play a lot of third-person shooters these days. Unfortunately, there are very strict ammo constraints on the secondary weapons, thus preventing you from using them for too long.
The presentation of Bionic Commando is done very well. The graphics and environments do an exceptionally good job at setting the tone and creating a heavy atmosphere as you progress through the games seven to eight hour single player campaign. The city is filled with destroyed buildings, craters, fractured terrain and debris. The subterranean caves have fantastic lighting effects and are ornamented with stalactites and waterfalls. The writing and voice work on the other hand could be better. The writing is a bit too campy for its own good, and the majority of the dialogue spoken by Nathan is spoken in a low growl, which can be found irritating to some.
The game is not without some heavy flaws though. Although one would think that they are in a vast, open space, pockets of fatal, glowing blue radiation prevent the player from going too far off course, which can be irritating at times, especially when you're trying to dodge bullets in a firefight, only to be done in by unintentional radiation exposure. Water also poses a major threat to Nathan in his adventure. If you are to fall into a body of water at any time, you must immediately grapple on to something in order to pull yourself out before your oxygen runs out in mere seconds. Many times there is nothing to grapple on to, thus making it so you would have to replay the whole sequence over again.
In addition to the single player campaign, Bionic Commando also features a competent multiplayer mode. Bionic Commando's multiplayer relies heavily on the player's abilities with the bionic arm. The multiplayer consists of three standard game types, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. The action can be hectic at times with up to eight players swinging around on the smaller maps, yet can often be drastically slowed down on some of the larger maps. It definitely won't replace your online shooter of choice, but the multiplayer in Bionic Commando can prove to be a fun little diversion from the main campaign, as well as adding an added value proposition to the price of purchase.
Although some of the game's trappings can be frustrating at times, the fun of swinging around the vast environments and the competent combat controls more than make up for whatever small issues you'll find with it. If you long for the experience of swinging around as in Spiderman 2, or are just looking for something unique or interesting to play, you should definitely check out Bionic Commando.
