Perhaps you saw what we thought of Capcom's Bionic Commando. We didn't give it a terrible score. It's just that it wasn't anything special to us. It didn't commando our attention, you might say.
In fact, this reboot of the beloved NES title didn't seem to do much for gamers in general. In its opening month, the NPD data shows sales figures of only 27,000 copies sold -- the combined total for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. This is surprising for what looked to be a pretty high-profile game. I thought we wanted a new Bionic Commando, didn't we?
Gamasutra reminds that U.S. retail games sales were down 23 percent in May, so that may have been part of the game's poor performance. But it may serve as a lesson for companies looking to spit out retro reboots. It still needs to be a good game, right?
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
10:00 AM on 06.15.2009
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this is one of the few games that actually may have been better on the Wii than the more powerful systems. Grappling around may have been fun.
Somebody give this man a promotion.
I didn't really have any sort of nostalgia for Bionic Commando, since I never touched the series until playing BC: Rearmed a few weeks ago. I've heard bad things about this new game from pretty much every reliable source I turn to, so I don't think I'll be picking this up at all.
I bought it and have enjoyed running around and tossing people with the arm.
I almost wished they kept the speech bubbles from Rearmed; definitely the humor. I wonder how its sales did compared to BC:Rearmed.
So far off my radar.
I was a Sega boy back in the day.
forgetting two words in that sentence (that sucked)
Who would've thought a Bionic Commando game in 3D with swinging and Mike Patton's voice acting would go wrong? Really disappointing!
Instead of the cool, shades-wearing Rad Spencer we grew up with, we got some white guy with dreads. Instead of an over-the-top action story that doesn't take itself seriously, we got some overly dramatic and poorly voiced plot that screams "trying too hard." Instead of a real hero, we got another angsty, cliche anti-hero who's "been betrayed." PLEASE! Don't even get me started on the hotdog arm...
Was there any way this game wasn't going to fail? Look at Rearmed. That game sold like hotcakes. There are plenty of people that wanted a new Bionic Commando. They just didn't want a game that crapped all over their fond memories of the original. And yeah, it would have helped if the actual gameplay lived up to expectations as well.
TMNTHD, Street Fighter 2 HD, Castle Crashers, Boy and His Blob, NSMB Wii, BC:Rearmed, etc... lets not forget the top-down shooter resurgence that came about when XBLA first came online.
No. No, I would never say that.
Ok, I would.
the core is dead.
ps360 is a haven for casual gaming.
ps360 is killing the core.
M$ and $ony do not cater the core.
It sold less than Viva pinata.
It should be on the Wii.
See what Wii have to put up to.
But hey, VC's sales have since increased, so maybe Bionic Commando will too.
Besides, I think they just banked too much on brand name selling this game. Bionic Commando, hate to say it, really isn't that big of a brand to anybody outside of hardcore gamers that grew up with the NES and happened to play it. Some random dude at Wal-Mart isn't going to look at Bionic Commando and be like "shit, they finally made a new one? I'll take two!"
This is why some say, that these two games play a similar way.
Can't wait to see how they F up Blaster Master and Deadly Towers.
Oh well.
It's an ok game. Gameplay has plenty of potential. Also, worst ending ever.
I really liked this game. Loved it to bits, more then the Nes version or rearmed.
I hope this will be a good lesson for Judd and Capcom.
This for the people that keep saying BUT CAPCOM, blame Grin, Grin is the devil here.
And yea, I'm not shocked at all, Re-armed outside of being an incredible remake was also pretty goofy and over the top with some of Spencer's lines, suddenly we get this and Spencer's some grim and gritty guy with a truckload of angst.
Then there's all the flaws the game...
Big open world!!
But there's invisible radiation everywhere that's hard to spot and you die instantly if you swing to far into it.
CHECKPOINTS!!
But they are spaced VERY poorly and sometimes you need to kill every enemy in the area before they happen.
BUGS AND GLITCHES
The usual assortment, freezing, getting stuck, enemies getting stuck, etc.
Not even gonna get into the atrocious story.
The swinging is the best thing the game had, they did it perfectly but everything else felt really poor, the thing is that people do want an updated Bionic Commando, they just want all the charm the NES, Gameboy and Re-armed game have, not grim-dark hero number eleventy billion and one.