Tuesday 07 Jul 2009

After a few years in development, the first fully 3D remake of Capcom’s 1988 Bionic Commando has been released (not to be confused with Bionic Commando: Rearmed), bringing with it not only the series’ unique brand of level traversal - in the form of a ‘grappling hook’ arm used to zip-line from ledge to ledge, or overhang to overhang – but an entire fleshed out 3D world and third-person perspective along with it.

The move to the third dimension, though, brings with it its own set of problems, and the solutions provided by developers GRIN and Capcom are hit-and-miss in nature, as though they misheard the question but attempted to answer it anyway with incoherent waffle. Frustratingly archaic restrictions and, in particular, the game’s main grapple and swing mechanic, both strike as muffled, incomplete attempts at solving inescapable problems met while taking on the mammoth task of converting (what nostalgic gamers call) a classic to the modern world of gaming.

You begin Bionic Commando as reluctant hero Nathan Spencer, who, after being wrongly placed in jail for years, has been asked to defuse a supposed terrorist hostage situation, with the hostage being an entire city (Ascension City) left in ruins by the detonation of an experimental weapon, leaving the affected area coated in radioactive fallout. Spencer is called in (and simultaneously saved from a death sentence for crimes against humanity) after several attempts by the government to wrestle control of Ascension from the terrorists fall flat, leaving it to Spencer and his special left arm to take care of business.

What’s so special about Spencer’s special left arm? For a start, it’s enormous and mechanical, with the ability to shoot out a grappling hook to attach to out-of-reach areas and rappel up (or down) to quickly reach ledges, building tops and other areas you would usually be forced to physically climb to. You can also use this ability to attach to objects and swing from place to place, detaching from one object and reattaching to another in order to continue swinging, making environment traversal a less time consuming affair.

The arm’s abilities have further applications that come in handy while trying to fight off groups of enemy soldiers and all manner of creatively designed mechanised foes, as you’re able to grapple onto nearby objects and fling them at attackers, attach onto larger enemies and perform a super kick, or simply inflict damage by giving them an old-fashioned punch, which, given the size and heft of the arm, must surely hurt quite a bit.

You’ll also be required to solve simple environmental puzzles by using your arm to destroy obstructions, or heave them out of the way to clear the path forward. Environments themselves are usually pretty open to take advantage of your increased range of movement, and diverse enough throughout the game to make it feel as though you’re really progressing through an adventure, effectively transporting you to a different, interesting world, which is a hallmark of games associated with Capcom.

You arm isn’t the only star of the show, however, as you’ll gain access to an assortment of weapons ranging from your basic handgun, to a super powerful shotgun and explosive-based weaponry such as rocket and grenade launchers, with special weapon drops occurring as the situation demands it. The range of weapons scales up as the pace and challenge of the game increases, but you’re usually (frustratingly) restricted to only your handgun, a special weapon and a grenade type weapon, with only the special weapon (shotguns, automatic, explosive etc.) able to be swapped out for different ones.

Ammunition for your weapons, too, is hard to come by, forcing you to default back to your handgun (which is also limited, ammunition-wise). Something else that is a little odd (and could strike one as a little archaic) is the inability to pick up weapons dropped by enemies, instead having to be satisfied with an occasional ammo drop here and there, which is seemingly random is nature – there probably is a pattern, but it isn’t too apparent.

An interesting feature in Bionic Commando is its weapons upgrade system, which rewards you for completing certain actions or assignments throughout the game, tasking you with killing a specified number of enemies to receive upgrades for weapon accuracy, power or clip size, for example. This system ensures players always have a few secondary objectives to complete, with the added reward of building up your combat prowess to make taking down the increasingly more challenging enemies a little bit easier.

The assignments you’re given, though, are normally things you would be doing anyway (e.g. killing all of the enemies in an area), and the specific upgrades aren’t really chosen by players, which leads to these rewards feeling a little less important than if you were given something out of the way to do, or if you were working towards a chosen goal, but the system does succeed in keeping players engaged and on the lookout for peripheral actions other than making their way from A to B.

With all of these neat features and abilities, however, problems are sure to arise with certain aspects of the developer’s implementation of said features and abilities, and unfortunately this is true of Bionic Commando. It starts with the overwrought story and melodramatic voice acting, and continues through to the environments that, while detailed and impressive, are restricted in terms of your ability to explore them, with radioactive fallout from the terrorists’ experimental weapon detonation able to kill you without a moment’s notice, and water acting as a death trap - apparently your special arm is too heavy to swim with, but perfectly weightless enough to run around with and swing at hapless enemies.

It’s slightly disappointed that the beginning, sprawling urban settings are reduced to, essentially, a linear location hop, with very little opportunity to approach dangerous situations from different angles.

The swinging mechanic, too, enabling you to swiftly swing from place to place rather than run, presents a unique problem in that the developers have basically ignored what an average player’s sense of momentum may be, instead providing their own strictly managed take on, you know… physics. For example, when swinging back and forth in an effort to build up enough momentum to reach the next ledge or point to swing from, the apex of each swing (backwards and forwards) is preceded by a strange, unnatural, split-second acceleration, which represents the point at which the game is telling you that you need to detach from your current point of contact and carry your momentum forward.

If you miss this opportunity (accompanied by an on-screen indicator), most of your momentum is somehow ‘cancelled’ and you simply fall down well short of your intended destination.

This may sound like a strange and unnecessary nitpick (and maybe even a personal one), but when developers intentionally try to ‘make’ you swing ‘properly,’ forcing you to ignore your own reflexes and natural instincts as far as physics and momentum is concerned, there are going to be problems. Even once you think you’ve got the swing of it (…), there will be times when you ‘succumb’ to your own instincts and start missing targets (usually falling into deadly water), injecting tension into particularly tricky swinging areas where there shouldn’t be any. This (the grapple and swing mechanic) being the featured hook of Bionic Commando means that most of the potency behind the idea is rendered much less so, removing some of the sheen behind the concept and the game itself.

Add in situations where you’ll need to complete swings under duress (enemy attack choppers raining bullets down on you, or multiple rockets homing in on your position) and the bizarre implementation of this mechanic is highlighted more and more strongly as the game goes on. If you treat this feature as a nicety, (one that ‘just so happens’ to be included in Bionic Commando) and relegate it to a special case action that needs to be performed every now and then as a level dictates, it will go some way to minimising frustration, but when it ‘just so happens’ to be the game’s main feature, it is, once again, disappointing.

Bionic Commando is a game that could have been pretty stellar, and goes a long way to being an incredibly solid third-person action adventure, with a cool world, creative enemies, interesting upgrade system, satisfying combat (especially as you upgrade) and a good escalation in pace, but is hampered by the linear and restricted level traversal, bogged down by the story and made more difficult than it should have been due to the swinging mechanic. Should you choose to play Bionic Commando, you’ll be rewarded with what is certainly a good game, but one that falls short of successfully bringing a classic into the third-dimension.

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Contributor:	Oliver

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