I rented Bionic Commando recently because I have not had much to play. I was really excited about the next gen (or current gen) Commando. I played the multiplayer demo and did not hate it but did not love it. It needed a tutorial before it put you into matches. Considering most people besides press had not played the game yet. We were not used to the swinging. I played a couple matches and kept dying. I am not one to rage quit but after a couple of matches trying to get used to the controls. I quit. I told myself that I would wait for retail release besides I am not in it for the multiplayer anyway.

I went to the local Blockbuster to find a game to play. I picked up Commando. I got home and put in into my Xbox. When you start up game, a Bionic Commando logo comes up and you hear one of the most beautiful versions of the theme song.



This is the favorite part of the game sadly. The music is great, just like Rearmed the music will blow you out of the water. I was also excited to hear Mike Patton as Rad. I love his music and loved his work in The Darkness (this is great game if any has not played). His work in this game is just so-so. He sounds like any other marine in any game. I was hoping for more. I felt the same way about everyone else in the game.

The gritty story line feels right in the new universe of Bionic Commando. Deadlocked Rad fits the world. The world feels very different from the commando I grew up with. I seemed to work though. I liked the look of the broken city. The world feels abandoned. There are a few minor complaints I have about the world. There are blue radiation areas in the world that kill you. It felt like they started the game as an open world game and realized that they could not make that way and abandoned it halfway through. This is not me saying I wanted an open world game but I think that should have thought of a better way to keep you out of the areas that they did not want you to go. Another problem is there is all this really nice scenery that you will skip by because you are swinging. There is no incentive for me to go to those areas. I am not a collect a thon fan. Some of the areas in the game only last 30 seconds to 1 minute. Anyone who is a fan will want to explore everywhere but not me.

The gameplay mechanics work pretty well. I think that they got the swinging down. I had very few glitches with it. One funny one is when I was trying to get on to a ledge that I was hanging from and I pulled myself up and Rad would not go on the platform instead he humped the bottom. The swinging has a learning curve. It feels like the first time you played the original trying to figure out what is going on. Even after beating the game, I never thought I mastered the swinging. The best and worst thing about the swinging is the auto lock. When you are fighting any enemy that you have to use the arm it will sometimes autolock right next to the enemy. It becomes extremely frustrating. On the other hand when swinging through the city the autolock works great. The combat does not work as well I well as I thought it should. The aim seemed to be off just a little. Where the enemies were crack shots, especially on the highest difficulty. This is a minor complaint though.

Why in the game do I have a pea shooter though the whole game? This really bothered me. When I got one of the better weapons I was excited to try it out. You only get so much ammo for it. It is few and far between for that special ammo. When those weapons are needed they fall out of the sky. They are sent to you by Super Joe but they always seem late. You have to scramble until they fall out of the sky for you.

The enemies are not varied enough. Everyone gave Terminator crap because of not varied enough enemies. Bionic Commando falls into this same problem. There are the standard soliders, example Machine Gun guy and Sniper. The Mechs are not varied either. The ones that can fly or they have a big gun. They are all killed the same way. It gets repetitive after a while. The areas that can skip the enemies and swing through felt more tense top me than fighting them.

SPOILER
I have a problem with the ending of this game. The big spider thing that they are hyping you up for whole game. That fight is a big dud. The only thing I can compare it to is in Metal Gear, you turn of the computer instead of fight the metal gear. So I fight the terrorist leader, I thought this would be the end of the game. It seemed like an epic fight. We know that Super Joe is behind what is going on. I thought this is how they would leave it open for a squeal. So after fighting him, you meet up with Super Joe in an awesome mech suit. After is splattered Meg's brains on the ground. I could not wait to fight him. The ending of the game was a QTE. WHAT?????? I really did not get the chance to fight Super Joe in the suit. That could have been awesome. So I kill him and myself. After the credits, they hint at a sequel.
END SPOILER

Overall the game is pretty good. I have played through much worse in my time. The mulitiplayer is not worth it and the single player is pretty short. If you get frustrated with the controls at the beginning of the game just keep trying them. They get easier. I would recommend to anyone that likes action games and Bionic Commando fans. It is a nice to see where the story went but your money is spent better on Rearmed in my opinion. It is a rental.

If you just skipped to the end without reading the whole article. Buy this instead.