At a recent Games for Windows event in San Francisco, Capcom showed up with a couple of games to display and we were lucky enough to finagle some hands-on time with grappling hook-equipped platformer Bionic Commando. As Console Editor-in-Chief Will Tuttle pointed out in a prior preview, it seems as though Capcom and developer GRIN have already nailed the swinging mechanic and navigating through Bionic Commando's environments is just shy of being completely effortless. The demo was given using an Xbox 360 controller rather than a standard keyboard and mouse, but Capcom is adamant that the traditional PC input devices will be fully supported.
Rad Times
The story of Bionic Commando takes place roughly 20 years after the original NES saga, after protagonist Nathan "Rad" Spencer has demonstrated the supreme efficacy of his bionic implants. The government, emboldened by Rad's success, decided to re-fit all of their soldiers with robotic appendages, but the consequences of this short-sighted idea become apparent as these cybernetic super soldiers slowly succumb to psychotic episodes resulting from their technological transformation. In full stop-loss mode, the government opts to eliminate these soldiers, who quite naturally elect to go rogue rather than be snuffed and subscribe to a philosophy similar to the X-Men's Magneto's: so-called "normal" people are archaic throw-backs made obsolete by the new cyberized humans and must be neutralized.
This is not a new storyline for Capcom, which first entertained the concepts behind a mechanized revolution at the hands of engineered creations in games like Mega Man X, where robots called reploids rebeled against a society that felt threatened by their superiority. Just as in those classic console games, Nathan Spencer must grapple with his misgivings about killing his own kind while still seemingly on the run from a government that probably views him as a useful tool to be disposed of when it's done with its job.
None of this, however, explains the dreadlocks, but a theory put forth by one of Capcom's representatives indicates that showering with a giant mechanical arm could be problematic at best. As such, Nathan can't really bathe and so the dreads are the result of 20 years of never seeing the inside of a shower... which is kind of gross, but also pretty evocative of Nathan's plight.
Grapple Guru
Using Nathan's bionic arm is incredibly intuitive, even in the pre-alpha build of the game. Pressing and holding one button (the left trigger on the 360 controller, or presumably the right button on a mouse) will extend and lock Nathan's grappling hook onto virtually any surface from which he can swing or climb as needed. It's a similar system to the one found in the console version of Spider-Man 2 and takes remarkably little time to get the hang of.
But the bionic arm grappling hook isn't just for swinging and traversing the many gaping chasms peppering Bionic Commando's environments, because he can also use the arm in combat. After affixing the arm to an enemy, Nathan can leap into the air and use the arms motors to retract the line in order to deliver a wicked two-legged kick that sends foes flying off into the distance. A solid uppercut can also be used to juggle enemies up into the air, who can then be punched at targets as human projectiles. With so many offensive options at your disposal, combat seems to be shaping up when compared to previous impressions.
With the mechanics of pendulism apparently well in hand, Bionic Commando still seems skewed towards a console audience (as evidenced by the use of a 360 controller for the demo). Yet, capturing the sense of freedom in flying through the air with the greatest of ease could make Bionic Commando attractive regardless of the intended audience.
