Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando

The creative team behind the upcoming Terminator Salvation videogame show their love for one of the oldest swingers in town.

Bringing back old videogame heroes runs the risk of being a bit like Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Your loved one is brought back from the dead… only they’re never quite the same! Game developer GRIN’s efforts to reanimate Bionic Commando are bold and taken to extremes, and difficult not to admire. Given the original Bionic Commando’s basic premise – and the 1987 coin-op was certainly basic – GRIN shows a lot of love in revamping the concept for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Now here comes the long ‘but’.

Your Bionic Commando’s tool of choice is an extendable robotic arm that packs a mean punch in addition to allowing hero Nathan Spencer to make like Spider-Man and swing speedily (if you’re good at it, but we’ll get to that in a sec) through near future war zones. He’s also equipped with futuristic weaponry and a bionic eye that lets him target distant enemies. He can’t swim though, the arm is too heavy. Never mind though because swimming is routinely boring in most videogames.

The swing thing is central to whole Bionic Commando experience. If you can’t get along with it, you’ll find yourself cursing the game each time you play. In fact until you master how to pinpoint targets while maintaining momentum you’re going nowhere buddy. And because, certainly compared to the Spider-Man games, the swing thing in Bionic Commando is so fiddly it kind of lets the whole thing down. This is a great shame since it’s clear that GRIN has built a hugely impressive game world around the concept that’s technically brilliant but all the same defeats all but the most dedicated learners or long-in-the-tooth gamers.

Were the rewards worth swinging for in Bionic Commando we might not be feeling so glum. But when you’re hurtling through the ruins of a bombed-to-hell city or brushing through trees, the process of dangling from miniature hot air balloons or lampposts and branches just feels forced and a pain in the bum. And at the end of each flight you’ll find yourself taking pot shots at mostly small and not very bright enemy soldiers, or occasionally trying to jump on the heads of robots.

Nathan Spencer’s powers are more entertaining when you get to whipping up heavy objects and jump-kicking them at foes. This is especially fun from distance, where a carefully aimed block of concrete can take down several soldiers at once – and you can hear faint screams as their energy drains. Also the likes of grenade launchers, rocket launchers, shot-guns and sniper rifles help vary the process of eliminating every last rival before you’re allowed to access the save beacon where you arrived many minutes ago – a tedious gameplay mechanic but never mind that either.

You’ll undoubtedly be impressed by the presentation of Bionic Commando, the character design and overall artistic direction is top notch. Less so the poorly scripted dialogue but that’s par for the course in most videogames, and you’ll probably just skip the talky scenes after a while anyway. The ideal of the concept, that is the potential, is still brilliant and there will still be many players who persevere, perhaps leading to Bionic Commando becoming something of a cult favourite. But the reality of GRIN getting this all to work smoothly and for players to really feel in control and genuinely enjoy the experience seems this time to have fallen out of reach of Bionic Commando.

We're slowly becoming fans of GRIN however. Like a new favourite rock band.

3 out of 5