Bionic Commando Review

Insanez Score: 7/10

Pic Courtesy of Gamespot

I have just now finished playing Bionic Commando on my PC. Yeah i know its a little late but considering that i played it only for about 1 hour each week after a week of its release, its pretty impressive. So, first of all, the so called game review sites that rate this game below 7 on an average(the score system may be different, but you get my point) are full of crap. Yeah the game has flaws, but its beautiful and whole lots of fun. Here's my take on Capcom's latest Bionic Commando.

For the PC version of Bionic Commando gameplay is where the good news starts and where I can grant Capcom a brief reprieve from the justified insults the needless complex and poorly-told story deserves.

Bionic Commando is essentially a third person shooter just like any other third person shooter from the last few years. You run around 3D virtual spaces, capping baddies and jumping from platform to platform in your constant push towards the next level.

Like most other third person shooters set in demolished cities of recent times it has a romantic subplot where you have to find your missing wife. See Gears of War 2 for details.

There are a few things which set Bionic Commando apart though – mainly the lack of a decent cover system and the addition of the bionic arm ability, which lets you swing through the skies like a robotic spiderman, albeit with a limited range. It’s this bionic ability that much of the game's plot and nuances are based around as you run swing about figuring new ways to use it to your advantage.

The Bionic Arm is an advantage you desperately need too – Nathan has apparently eschewed the idea of power armour in favour of a green vest and dreadlocks and has a handful of vulnerabilities that enemies are all to happy to seize on. Your metal arm makes you especially susceptible to electric attacks for example, though it also allows you to interface with enemy relays and find extra plot info throughout the game. Yay!

Most levels which don’t have a specific ‘find this’ or ‘kill that’ objective generally involve finding these relays and deactivating the electric floating minefields so you can carry on to the next area.

Electric floating minefields. I’d say ‘you couldn’t make this stuff up’, but it honestly only remind me how true I wish that statement were. Unfortunately though, someone did make it up and then managed to convince someone else to make it into a game which I would then be forced to play.

The good news though is that, wheras using your bionic arm on the console versions of the game was a tricky task (and navigating said minefields was impossible), on the PC it works just fine. The range of your bionic arm still feels a little bit short at times, but that just adds an extra level of tension when you jump off a building and try to latch on to a roadsign as you fall.

It’s a fundamental and expected change to the way Bionic Commando controls, but being able to use a mouse and keyboard to target enemies makes a COLLOSAL difference to the game and further goes to prove that yes, PCs are just plain better. Swinging around on the console version was more difficult than trying remove a splinter from your eyeball would be if you had a clunky bionic arm like Nathan’s. On the PC version it feels much more natural and satisfying – like using said bionic arm to punch hippies or rescue kittens.

Granted, the swinging mechanic still has problems. There’s still that strange lack of momentum which means that you always swing at the same speed and to the same height, but at least you aren’t constantly falling to your death. Those low-res blue radiation clouds still fence you in, but now at least you can move past them a lot faster and being able to aim so much quicker even means that you can usually save yourself before you tumble into a pool of water and drown, meaning you don’t get constantly bumped back to the irritating far-apart checkpoints. Yay!

Now for the bad news again; the fact that the improved speed and accuracy allowed by a PC interface is apparently the only real improvement made for the PC version of Bionic Commando. The game is easier to play now, but it’s still the same in every other regard.

One of the things to have stayed the same between the two versions is the graphics, with the PlayStation 3 version of Bionic Commando which I played before looking pretty much identical to the PC version I’ve been playing recently.

That’s not to say that the graphics are all that bad though – when the in-engine cutscenes rolls then the game can look quite good and I impressed that in all our fiddling with Bionic Command the rope-physics didn’t screw up once!

On the other hand though, the environment textures are noticeably poor (did I mention the splodges of blue radiation that grip to most buildings like dirty underpants to a wall?) and though the levels look big they’re actually quite small. The game may want you to think that it’s wide-open and free-roaming, but it’s actually more linear than a game of Pong!, with the only replay value coming from the unlockable extras and collectible items.

Killing enemies from a distance is definitely preferable

On the plus side though, the system requirements for Bionic Commando are far from lofty. The minimum spec is a dual core CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 5200+ 2.6 GHz), 1.5GB of RAM and a DX 9.0 and Shader Model 3.0 compatible graphics card with 512MB of memory – a GeForce 7800, Radeon X1900 or higher.

The recommended spec is a little bit higher than that obviously, but that shouldn’t be a problem for most gamers nowadays. Capcom suggests a quad core CPU (Intel Quad Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Phenom 9500) backed by 2GB of RAM and a DX 10.0 Shader Model 4.0 compatible GPU with 512MB of RAM – that’s a GeForce 9800 GTX+ or Radeon HD 3800 or higher. Both technical spec-sheets say you’ll need 8.0GB of disc space for the install too, which explains why it took so long to install on the PlayStation 3 the first time around…

That sudden jump in graphics card requirement between the two sets of requirements above may be a little intimidating to some gamers, but it’s also not entirely realistic – a quick FRAPS test showed that Bionic Commando's supposed DirectX 10 content made no difference, for example.

To be honest though, I didn’t really need FRAPS to tell me that Bionic Commando on the PC doesn’t have any DirectX 10 content – it’s pretty obvious that the game is really just a straight port from the Xbox 360 version. It’s spelled out quite clearly in the way that the tutorials keep referring to the Xbox 360 gamepad buttons; “Press Y, B, A to do this combo and control your descent either the right thumbstick.” Ugh. Capcom couldn’t have just switched the words around when they I doing the port?

No, apparently they couldn’t. They couldn’t really change the game one iota – Bionic Commando on the PC has the same quote-unquote story, the same boring multiplayer that’s limited to just DM, Team DM and CTF and the same…well, it’s just the same. Let’s leave it at that. Everything is the same and the only thing that’s better is the increased speed and accuracy allowed by a PC interface – something that Capcom can’t take credit for until it at least starts to properly support PC peripherals in the in-game instructions.

Is Bionic Commando a game best played on the PC? Yes, it is and it gets an extra point up from the console version is recognition of it’s increased playability – it’s a game I’d happily recommend to anyone.