GameSpy's Take

If you could climb buildings and the rest of your surrounding environment with ease it would essentially turn the world around you into a giant playground. Show me any kid who wouldn't appreciate that and I'll call you a liar. This world-as-giant-playground design is exactly what makes Bionic Commando so much fun.

This 3D reimagining follows up on the classic NES side-scroller (itself remade as Bionic Commando: Rearmed last year). You -- as Nathan "Rad" Spencer, the titular commando -- navigate myriad hostile environments using your trademark bionic arm to swing, Spider-Man-like, across the area at hand.

Just don't play it for the story -- I beat it, and I still don't completely understand exactly what the hell happened. The important part: You're a badass who does badass things, and you have a chip on your shoulder (think Snake Plisskin from "Escape from L.A" but with a crazy robot arm and you're on the right track). Bionic Commando certainly deserves no awards for its writing but if it's a bizarro story you want, it's a bizarro story you'll get.


That said, you should think about picking up Bionic Commando to enjoy its carefully crafted environments. The game takes place in a city devastated by a massive bomb, but the rubble is arranged in ways that conveniently complement your bionic arm, in terms of both exploration and combat. It feels empowering to swing into a fight, grapple one enemy, and shoot a few more as you quickly disappear. Your arm enables you to move in ways that totally differentiate this game from a typical dude-with-big-guns shooter. You feel the power as you use the bionic arm to throw cars, lunge across environments, or fall from staggering heights into the center of a group of enemies. Unfortunately, it eventually gets stagnant. The first time you swing across a chasm, hang from deactivated air mines, or get the drop on a patrol of mechanized troops, it's fun. But the 30th time it's business as usual.

Same goes for multiplayer. A lot of games throw in these modes as afterthoughts, but you can tell that's not the case with Bionic Commando. A lot of obvious care went into these levels (which pit players against each other over great swinging points or weapons), and full eight-player matches are usually pretty intense. It's definitely fun for a spell but it isn't quite balanced for lasting appeal. The starting guns are, for the most part, better than the biggest weapons, and it's easy to exploit certain maps if you can make a run that keeps the best items in your hands. Still, at least it's fun for a while, and that's a lot more than I can say for other games with tacked-on multiplayer.

Crappy story and occasional boring moments aside, Bionic Commando is a good game, akin to a summer popcorn flick. It won't stick with you, but it'll certainly entertain you. When the action amps up it feels awesome; it's just too bad that those moments couldn't have comprised the game's entirety.

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