Bionic Commando

makes me wanna enlist

I wanted to give this game a shot because sometimes despite how bad the reviews were, I heard some good things about the swinging mechanics and I wanted to give it a shot. I know Steam shows 0.1 hours but I played this in offline mode. It took me just about 5 hours exactly to complete.

First, the game play is pretty janky. The story is really generic. The gun play is lame. Even the one liners are corny. I can see why this game wasn't well received.

However, the swinging mechanic is really fun! The levels are really linear but designed in a way for you to swing through them. It's really fun swinging across the map, seeing bullets whizzing by, as you try to race to your next objective. With how lame the gun play is and how fun the swinging is, I'm convinced the developers wanted you to race through the game as much as possible.

Of course, there are sections that force combat and those can get tedious, even frustrating. One part that really sucks is the zip kick is fun to do to basic enemies but is just broken for stronger enemies. The enemies are clearly designed for you to zip kick from behind but most of the time, I'm just left stuck in the air and I can't ungrapple until I take damage. Sometimes you can shoot them in the back while you're stuck in this animation but depending on the enemy, you'll run out of ammo. There were actually times where I had to reload a save because I was just stuck in an animation to zip kick and the enemy would just flail around. I found the best strategy against these stronger enemies to not zip kick at all and try to throw rocks or vehicles. If there were none available, I found myself reloading a save and conserving ammo for the best guns I could get and using those.

The game is really janky, some things just outright broken, but there's a charm here that kept me playing. Is it a great game? No. But it was pretty good and it tried something new. It didn't always work but in an industry of nothing but cookie cutter games that all feel the same, this one dared to be different and had some fun unique mechanics.

Also, it has one of the funniest easter eggs I've ever seen. In one of the boss fights, you get a dialogue where your commander says "you have no choice but to fight that thing," to which you reply "my pleasure." If you die and start the fight over, the voice line changes to "you have no choice but to fuck that thing," and you reply with just an "ummm..." It caught me completely off guard and the voice line for the "ummm" even sounds unscripted by the tone of the voice actor. That alone gives it bonus points in my book!

Good Lord what did I allow myself to play. It was an experience for sure. Only one boss even good and the bullet detection was really inconsistent. When. The reticle made it difficult to consitently make headshots. And why the Hell locked exclusively behind challenges? What was capcom thinking? The writing was garbage and I felt nothing for any of the characters because they were less interesting than watching paint dry. And the ending was really freaking weird. It's funny how they thought that they would get a sequel.
I will note the swinging mechanics would have been better if the physics engine had been different. Maybe they should have copied a Spiderman game because those generally have good swinging mechaancis.

Bionic Commando (2009) is the gritty revival of the Bionic Commando series published by Capcom and developed by GRIN, this game takes place ten years after the events of the original game (NES/Rearmed). You play as Nathan "Rad" Spencer, a commando with a bionic left arm who had been betrayed by his own government and falsely imprisoned on death row for treason. Before his execution, an experimental weapon detonates in the fictional Ascension City, unleashing an earthquake along with a radioactive shock wave that leaves the city destroyed and wiping out its populace. The terrorist force known as the "BioReign" claims responsibility, threatening invasion. Spencer is freed to redeem his name and is reunited with the bionic arm of which he was stripped, now working with his old superior Joseph "Super Joe" Gibson and given the task of eliminating the threat in Ascension City by finding information on Project Vulture, a super weapon being sought after by the terrorists.

The Good

Gameplay - A core mechanic of Bionic Commando is the use of the Nathan's bionic arm, which allows you swing around the environment quickly and gain other skills as you progress through the game like a skill that allows you to grab and launch objects such as boulders and cars at enemies. In addition, he is equipped with boots that enable him to survive extremely long falls so fall damage isn't an issue. The game also provides you different types of weapons like a sniper rifle or grenade launcher but gives you limited amount of ammo so you have to be somewhat strategic on you play, with the mix of all three systems, the game creates an incredibly fun and satisfying combat while also being challenging as you progress.

Graphics - In the early years of the PS3 and Xbox 360, it was rather common for games to appear as gritty and rough as a creative style to set the tone, the most popular examples being Gears of War and GTA IV. Thanks to the Diesel Engine, Bionic Commando is able to be gritty, yet beautiful. The graphics really shine with areas that contain a lot of vegetation and sunlight, even for a game released in 2009, the graphics still hold up today.

Soundtrack - The soundtrack for this game is amazing, it uses the classic Bionic Commando music remixed into the sort of score you'd expect from a big-budget action movie, yet creates some tracks that feel desolate and depressing, my particular favorite is the music during a boss battle and the ending of the game.

The Bad

Linearity - As you progress through Ascension City, you're practically surrounded by radiation which is seen as a blue cloud in the air and mines that serves as a barrier to prevent going off the beaten path. I feel like the game could've done a lot better by allowing the player to explore around the environment, rewarding the player with interesting lore in order to be more immersed to the world and secrets like the original game did. The only information given to you is from hacking terminals and the occasional dossier in the menu, which kills the pace a little bit.

The Ugly

Story - The story of this game had a lot of interesting concepts but was poor in execution, I found that it was convoluted and often difficult to follow, characters recalling events with a lack of context and motivations being unclear. The most annoying were certain plot twists that either didn't make much sense or was downright absurd, the story definitely needed more time in the oven and a few rewrites.

Verdict

Bionic Commando (2009) has a unique and engaging core concept, particularly with its swinging mechanics in a 3D space, but it struggles with execution. The gameplay offers fun and high pace combat, yet it is marred by poor linearity and a lackluster story, although it is a shame that we'll most likely never see a sequel to Nathan's story or even a reboot of the franchise.

I tried to enjoy this game. I really did but I just don't understand what's good about it. This is the only game that I've genuinely considered permanently deleting from my Steam library.

You play a solider enhanced with technology making you a super soldier. The story is bad and the way it is told does not immerse you at all. The controls are weird. The level design is bad.

I just don't get it.

This was my first time playing any of the Biomic Commando games, and I quite enjoyed the experience with this one, despite its jankyness. It is a 3rd person shooter with a mechanic that reminded me of the Spider Man games. You can swing around, grab enemies and toss them around, throw cars, etc. It's quite fun rag dolling the various grunts. It has a silly tongue-in-cheek story, and the main character is a "macho man" caricature.

There are some drawbacks. There are too few checkpoints and no way to restart/replay a level if you miss something. There were also some bits with irritating difficulty spikes.

Overall, give this game a try. It's good, wonky fun.

Bionic Commando (2009) is an enigma. It's a game that has elements of really fun grappling mechanics mixed with astonishingly good and bad level design alongside some of the most boring shooting I've ever seen. Amongst that, you have an awful story with terrible dialogue, voice acting and one of the dumbest twist in video game storytelling...

Here's the thing:

I really enjoyed this game, it's a masterpiece of a disaster none of which I've ever seen before. The overall terrible nature of its voice acting and story actually works in the game's favour by being so bad that it makes it good and gives the games somewhat of an unintentional charm to it all.

For something you can buy for dirt cheap, it's a stupid investment worth experiencing. I'm actually kind of sad that this game bombed the way that it did and in many ways, I actually would have liked to have seen where they could have gone especially if it meant for the swinging mechanics to be expanded and improved on.

I genuinely recommend trying this out but be forewarned, the game is not good and clearly only works for people like me who can fathom really dumb stuff in the best way possible.

Excellent shooter with a pretty original game mechanics, which makes it stand out among other similar genre games.
It's been almost 15 years since I played that game for the first time, but it is still playable and can be enjoyed.

the PS2 had spider man 2 in 2004. four year later this came out. they didn't get the swinging physics or detection correct. melee is a slog. it' like they made a well polished game and then added a little bit of jank and slowed the character down to make for artificial dificulty.

Spider-Man but it's actually the Winter Soldier

It has it's ups and downs in terms of pros and cons but I can look past that and enjoy the game for myself. I'm not sure about other people though so. Your experience will be different from mine.