'Bionic Commando' lacks gripping gameplay

• By JOSHUA WASCOM
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Jun 8, 2009

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The latest “Bionic Commando” is a sequel to a 21-year-old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game. As in the first “Bionic Commando,” you control Nathan Spencer and his huge, grappling-hook-equipped robotic arm. As the sole government operative in the besieged Ascension City, you have to shoot, slam and crush enemy after enemy as you attempt to wrest control of the city from a mysterious terrorist organization.

The original gameplay revolved around the grappling-hook abilities of your bionic arm. That focus is retained here, and by itself works very well. After just a few minutes, swinging around is both easy and exhilarating, giving you a sense of skill and freedom that appears to be setting you up for a great experience.

Then you find out about the “radiation.”

Radiation is a simple mechanic designed to allow the illusion of wide-open spaces without having to resort to invisible walls. It is represented as areas of hazy blue fog that bound each level on the top and sides, and it “interferes with your bionic arm,” which translates to “It kills you.”

The biggest problem is that the areas of radiation are very much imperfectly marked, so any rapid swinging or incautious momentum can quickly lead to an unexpected death.

This is a seemingly small problem, but it follows you from level to level, constantly punishing your attempts at exploration and creative strategy. Fights with flying enemies that should be glorious aerial ballets of destruction instead become slow, repetitive attempts to herd your opponent to an area that seems safe in which to grapple. However, just when you grab onto a craft to land a death blow, it happens to lift up enough to bring you into the invisible field of death.

The rest of the game isn’t nearly good enough to make up for the failure of this core mechanic. Even when your arm works, combat has very little variety and is rarely as interesting or varied as just swinging around. This story is really on the action movie level. Unfortunately, no single character has clear motivations for the crazy things they do. There are also a couple of nonsensical twists that are really at odds with how seriously the game seems to take itself.

The game has moments of fun -- there are indoor and underground levels at which radiation is absent and swinging is closer to the joy it should be -- but you have to slog through too many mundane firefights to get to them. The multiplayer can give you another hour or two, but overall, there’s just nothing in “Bionic Commando” that’s worth the price of admission.