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Bionic Commando (360)
- May 18, 2009 09:41 AM PST
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As a kid, I biked five miles just to rent the original Bionic Commando on the NES and I played it straight through in a single day. Over twenty years later, my enthusiasm for swinging around an urban jungle gym like a half-mechanical Tarzan hasn't waned one bit. Hell, I can feel my pulse climbing before I get the disc into the machine.
The game that made grappling hooks a video-game staple is back with a next-gen overhaul with GRIN's Bionic Commando. With fond memories of the original, I was skeptical of a complete remake of the arcade classic, but Cameron's love for the game's timeless controls and astonishing visuals really make me want to give this reboot a try.
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Swan Diving
Only five years have passed in Nathan Spencer's world, but times are tough. An explosion has turned the once stable concrete and asphalt avenues of Ascension City into a flooded and irradiated mess of teetering architecture and crumbling highway interchanges. After picking off introductory goons, my dreadlocked hero surveys the city from the exposed edge of an office building. I take a deep breath, launch out into open space, and the ground hurtles toward me. My iron boots guarantee that I won't die from any impact, but I've got higher aspirations than mere survival. I hold down the trigger that controls my mechanical arm, and hope for the best.
The balletic swoops and lingering airborne hang times that follow are undoubtedly the greatest joys I found in Bionic Commando. Water, radiation, and mine fields mark the boundaries of each beautiful environment, and discourage my bolder attempts at exploration and collectible gathering, but GRIN has filled even the most arbitrarily cordoned path with opportunities for deeply satisfying superhuman gymnastics. I occasionally became frustrated with some instances of frame-rate slow-down, frugal checkpoint placement, and downright sadistic platforming, but I never once got tired of swinging from ledge to street sign to tree limb with the aid of wonderfully intuitive but unobtrusive visual indicators.
