Bionic Commando Mustached 2
2008s Bionic Commando: Rearmed was a pleasant surprise. A high quality remake of the original NES game, with 2.5D visuals, packed with humor and 4th wall breaking. Unfortunately, after next years “Bionic Commando” for Xbox/PS3/PC was met with heavily mixed reviews and low sales, the developer GRIN shut down. Since then some individuals from GRIN (Grin-dividuals) came together to form Fatshark. A few years later and here we are! Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2! Who’da thought we would ever see another one?
BC: Rearmed 2 does exactly what a good sequel should do; take all the best aspects of the previous title and refine, add, and tweak them all just enough to please old fans while still bringing something new to the table to appease newcomers. A few notable additions include three equipment slots in the pause screen: one for standard weapons, one for passive upgrades, and one for active abilities. A lot of these abilities aren’t very useful though, and you’ll most likely just use the one or two that work well and stick with them throughout the whole game. The swing mechanic has been changed to be simpler and smarter, press the B button to extend your arm, press B again to let go. Sounds simple and obvious enough, but it is very different and much easier than the first BC: Rearmed. Oh yeah, you can jump! I know right!?
Talking about improving aspects from the previous game, both the music and art style are just as good if not better than before. I have kind of a mixed feeling about the music. On the one hand it's still that combination of chiptune and techno that sounds great! However it's the EXACT SAME MUSIC form the first game just copied and pasted into the sequel. The art design has received a nice upgrade though. This time around they really take advantage of the 2.5D graphics by having cool things happen in the background. Satellites explode, boats come crashing down and barrels go flying everywhere. The tone is set perfectly throughout the whole experience.
BC: Rearmed 2 includes the standard fare of offline co-op and challenge rooms. After you beat the game you can go through again on classic mode, which disables jumping. Prestige equipment challenges where you have to play through the game without using any passive or active abilities. There are even a few levels where you take control of a helicopter and mow down everything in sight!
Things start to fall apart when you start looking at the level design. The first few levels are great; the layout is nice and open enough to where you can go through multiple times and still wind up not seeing everything. After that the game becomes a standard grind of going from A to B to C then finishing the level. The bosses are just tedious. Not in a “I can’t beat this” way, but in a “this is boring and is taking forever” way. Thankfully it’s not a situation where each level ends in a boss. Each boss has its own stage that you select from the level select menu: but for some reason they make you fight the same boring tedious bosses twice!
The bosses are an annoying but ultimately small part of this game and they can be easily looked over. Fortunately the core mechanics of the game are simple and fun. Swinging is something that will take you thirty minutes or so to get used to, but once you (brace for pun) get into the swing of things you can really finesse your way around these levels, only touching the ground when you either need or want to. However here arrives the main problem with BC: Rearmed, your first time through each level you are always going to have to either take it slow and not have as much fun or swing fast and die often.
The best way I can think to describe Bionic Commando is by comparing it to Mirror's Edge. When you’re moving fast, running, jumping, and making every move perfectly this game feels like magic. It’s such a satisfying feeling that is difficult to describe. Just like Mirror’s Edge, if you go back and play levels that you remember, then you can rush your way through with ease and style. Every time you miss a ledge with your bionic arm or have to pause and switch to an ability that will let you blow up this certain kind of block or fight a boss, it just feels like you’re running into a wall that stops the gameplay dead in its tracks.
BC:Re2 has its flaws, but this is still a fun package with lots of replayability and tons of levels and challenge rooms to keep you busy for a good long while. Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2 has deeply satisfying gameplay mixed with poor level design and tiresome boss battles. If you can look past the games shortcomings and resist the urge to buy more mustache combs, then you’ll find this game to be well worth the price.
