Bionic Commando

5.9

Format Xbox 360

Developer

Publisher Capcom

Genre Action, Adventure

16 Comments

If it weren't for all the references to their other games dotted throughout, we reckon you'd have trouble recognising this as a Capcom title. There's no polish, no real style, and barely any fun for the first couple of hours. It feels cruel levelling the blame solely at developers GRIN, but after swinging our way through Bionic Commando we remain largely unconvinced by their talents.

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We managed to get something out of Wanted last issue, in spite of its best efforts to derail the fun via a shoddy game engine, but it's hard to wring much excitement from this ill-judged retro revival. When it was announced, many expected Commando to be set in a free-roaming environment, letting you leap - with hero Nathan Spencer's bionic grappling hook - around the skyline at will. It would be like Spider-Man 3, only good. But, in a fit of madness, they settled on a linear environment instead. The game's setting - Ascension City, a crumbling, empty ruin - is broken into tiny chunks separated by lengthy loading screens, while exploration is inexplicably forbidden at all costs, due to invisible radiation that afflicts when you commit the mortal sin of wandering off-track.

The story makes a stab at mature - it's got swearing and terrorists - but it's barely developed, and practically devoid of characters. After the government decommissions bionic soldiers (and by 'decommissions' we mean kills or throws them in jail) many bionically enhanced warriors take to terrorism to set things right. As Nate 'Rad' Spencer, you're freed from jail, given your bionic arm back, and sent to hunt your former colleagues down.

You do this by swinging across a collapsing city, stopping every so often to shoot soldiers or wrestle with mechs. Weapons sound and feel like spud guns, but your robotic sausage-arm fares better. It takes a while to get the hang of the timing - and Spence loves to make things worse by flailing like a voodoo doll when you collide with a surface - but it's one of the most capable grappling hooks we've come across. The device truly opens up after you 'remember' more abilities - including the brilliant Throw move, which lets you lasso objects such as cars and chuck them into distant enemies.

The robotic biomechs are very well-developed and great fun to fight, as are bosses, when they finally rear their ugly heads. The game gradually transforms into a hectic, old school arcade title - essentially becoming a less frosty version of Lost Planet. This isn't such a bad thing. It means more and stronger enemies, and bigger weapons and abilities to fight them with, obscuring the game's many broken promises, up until that point, beneath a blaze of gunfire. Graphically, though, the game is less successful. GRIN seem to have smeared Vaseline all over Ascension City - then smeared on some more just for good measure. Backgrounds are about as sharp as safety scissors, thanks to a ridiculously shallow depth of field, only popping into focus when you swivel the camera directly in front of you. It seems like a petty complaint, but it really is immersion-snapping.

They may have nailed the swinging mechanics, but GRIN have grappled and lost with the challenge of building an enjoyable world to swing around in. Still, there's some dumb arcade fun to the game's later stages, once you get over the disappointment of what the game could have been.

Buy Bionic Commando: Play / Amazon

Tom Sykes