To Be Continued...
I love that the new Bionic Commando continues the story of the original... at least to a degree. The original placed you in control of a bionic soldier named Ladd, who was trying to stop an evil organization and rescue Super Joe, the hero from the NES game Commando. The new game takes place 10 years after the events of the original, placing you in control of a new character who's been stripped of his bionics and thrown into prison for five years after the public turned against such things. He's freed only to combat a bionically aided terrorist group that has something to do with a woman he once loved. It sounds cheesy and cliche, and in a lot of ways it is, but it actually has all the makings for a great cheeseball action plot. I'd like to see the way they develop the thread about his love, and about fighting other bionically enhanced humans whom he might have been friends with in a past life.
Swing Away
People have talked about it a lot in various venues, but after getting my first chance to go hands-on with the bionic arm myself I can safely say it's a lot of fun. Sure, swinging from spot to spot takes a little bit of getting used to, but it works well to get around the carefully designed environments. Despite the fact that you start in a city that's been leveled by a nuclear weapon, you realize very quickly that somehow this nuke has decided to leave just enough signs and light posts intact to allow you to swing around the neighborhood like Spider-Man. The design of the city -- insofar as it's made to interact with your arm -- doesn't feel forced, and allows you to mostly avoid the tediousness of running on foot.
Running, Man
So far I've found the sections of the game that you spend indoors to be comparatively dull. Not only is your ability to grapple mostly disabled, but all the awesome melee combat skills that involve you bouncing around with your hook are decidedly difficult to use. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate changes in pacing as much as the next guy, but when you essentially neuter the game's main draw it kind of turns Bionic Commando into a second-rate third-person shooter.
Deaths are Everywhere
So far I've been playing through on Normal, and I have to say I'm surprised at how much I've been dying. Deaths from falls and general failure to use my bionic arm appropriately aside, my character gets killed a lot in ways that are pretty frustrating. Numerous times I ran out of ammo for my weapon and then got myself killed in hand-to-hand combat. You can tell me I just suck, and that's fair, but what bothered me about it was how easily my character died in hand-to-hand compared to his ability to absorb a hail of gunfire. Then throw in how easy it is to die by falling into water, or by falling into "irradiated zones" -- essentially areas the game makes inaccessible by killing you when you get too close -- and I spent a lot of time seeing a Game Over screen. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a challenge, but I often felt the hand-to-hand deaths and environmental deaths came so quickly that they just felt kind of cheap.
So far Bionic Commando is a lot fun during the best times and pretty frustrating at the worst. But hell, it's only been a couple of hours, so anything could still happen. If nothing else, my time with the beginning has engaged me enough to make me look forward to seeing how the experience comes together as a whole.
