Quickie Review: Bionic Commando 360

Bionic Commando is a tricky beast. On one hand….er, on one arm, you have a somewhat entertaining game once you get used to your bionic arm. On the other arm, you encounter so many cheap deaths and so little enemy variety, you wonder if its even worth the headache.

There’s a certain learning curve to the game, mostly involving how to properly use your bionic arm to traverse and go on the offensive. Even after ample practice, you’ll find yourself some how missing a grab and falling to your death. Maybe you’ll even over swing by accident and land in a radiation area, unable to escape fast enough. You could even fall into water and be unable to thrust your arm up to pull yoursel fout and drown. I kid you not, I drowned in what seemed like a pothole filled with water. Seems like level design is a major fault, especially with out of bounds becoming an instant death trap of radiation if you over swing. This is one of the only times I’d advocate obvious invisible zone walls.

You never seem to be able to take enough hits, causing frequent enough deaths from bullets or rockets. Generic foot soldier enemies hold almost no variety at all. In fact, you’ll see more floating mines that shoot electric blasts at you (yes, it gets more absurd) than you’ll see foot soldiers in most areas. Robot enemies are annoying and again, not very varied as well. The graphics, while they look pretty good in some spots, feel a bit lifeless. There’s color in the explosive torn city, but it still feels like there could have been more implimented to the look. To be fair, once you get to the park, even though it’s trees and bushes, the lighting and atmosphere seem to bring more life into the game.

Until you fall into the god forsaken river and drown.

This looks quite spectacular, but looks can be deceiving. Another example of this statement - my ex girlfriend.

It does have its moments though. Swinging around, once you get the hang of it, the proper momentum and enough places to brnch off to, is quite a bit of fun. It feels like a Spider Man game, although the fluidity isn’t as aboundant.The music is actually quite good as well, with some blood pumping bits that seem to come up out of no where, and seem to disappear once you walk past that small area it was playing in. In each stage, you have quite a bit of areas to chart out for collectables and weapons that are shot down for you. Heaving cars, and even enemies into each other, is a lot of fun, and in general, the arm combat is something worthwhile. It’s a shame there’s not enough variety of enemies to unleash your fury apon. While there is a certain degree of weapon variety, ultimately, the game is build to get you an arm up on the enemies.

Even if combat can be fun, boss fights are interesting and pulse pounding, traversing through each stage can be a blast and the music is pretty solid, there’s way too many issues with Bionic Commando that tie its arm behind its back. Especially after that god awful ending, you might ask yourself  “was it even worth the hassle?” I’m asking myself that now, and I really have to say “no”. Best bet is a rental, even though you’ll be using both your real arms to throw your controller against the wall from all the cheap as hell deaths.