Bionic Commando Rearmed
Originally released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Bionic Commando was critically acclaimed for its innovative gameplay. The implementation of the grappling hook was not only said to be remarkably well-balanced for its time, but made for a welcomed change from the typical action game. If you were a fan of the series twenty years ago, you’ll probably find yourself completely enthralled by this year’s remake of the game: Bionic Commando Rearmed, but if you’re like me, and have never played the original, you might find yourself scratching your head, wondering what the big deal was all about.
In Bionic Commando Rearmed, you play as Nathan “Rad” Spencer, a soldier who has been surgically enhanced with a bionic arm, which enables him to make use of a grappling hook; in fact, a large part of the game is spent making use of the bionic arm, for swinging from platform to platform and ascending onto higher platforms. This leads me to my first issue with the game. Bionic Commando Rearmed (BCR) is a platformer, and as anyone who’s grown up playing platformers over the years, I’ve become accustomed to certain standards; my brain tells me “this is what makes a platformer” and I concur. So when I’m faced with a game like BCR and the inability to jump, that automatically – pardon the pun – jumps out at me. It seems so counter-intuitive. I expect to be able to run, jump and grapple; to develop some form of forward momentum. I understand that on the NES, it would have been complicated to have this particular setup because of the restrictions of the controller. NES controllers have two buttons: the A and B button. In this particular game, one is mapped for the use of the grappling hook, the other, for your gun, so technically speaking, adding in the ability to jump would not have been possible, but with modern consoles, such as the Xbox 360, which have four buttons: A, B, X, and Y, they could have easily added in a jump feature.
“But wait!”, cries out the purist. “The original Bionic Commando didn’t have any jumping! Adding in jumping would only change the formula, and ruin the game!”
And in such lies the biggest issue. When, remaking a classic game such as Bionic Commando, it’s always going to be a difficult task to keep the elements which made the game great, while adding in new features in order to modernize the franchise and attract new players. In the case of jumping, I would have much preferred having the ability added in, but having said that, I also agree that adding in jumping would have completely changed the mechanics of the game, and in the end, whether or not that would have actually improved the gamplay is purely a matter of subjectivity.
The other part of the game I find myself torn about are the hacking minigames. When properly implemented, minigames offer a nice change of pace; they allow the player to take a break from the regular action to try out something different. When done improperly, however, minigames break the flow of the game, and can quickly become repetitive and annoying. In BCR, the minigames are used sparingly and always in appropriate areas. My personal gripe with them lies more with one of the minigames in particular: the hacking minigame. Hacking is always something difficult to visually represent. In most movies, you always see the “hacker” make use of very highly graphical interfaces. In BCR, it’s not any different. In order to hack into the systems, you’re required to successfully navigate a small holographic sphere through a large cube from one end to another. It’s not overly complicated, and not necessarily unpleasant, but it does suffer from being cliché, and like most hacking minigames, completely abstract. But let’s face it, if hacking was to be accurately simulated into a minigame, most people would find that to be ridiculously boring, and sadly, I’d have to agree.
The game also boasts a two player co-op mode, which unfortunately is limited to local co-op. I’m a firm believer that most games benefit from co-operative play, and that co-operative play should always be made available locally and online; now-a-days, there’s no excuse. None. In the case of BCR, online multiplayer would have been preferable, because if you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that the people most likely to purchase this game will be people who played the original, and now, these people have all grown-up. They don’t always have the time to get together with their buddies to play a round of video games, whether it be because of scheduling issues, or geographic ones. Being able to hop onto something like Xbox Live makes things so much easier. But I digress.
In this particular game, co-operative mode has some issues. The game makes use of a shared-screen/split-screen mode, where as the screen is shared by the two players when they are close together, but becomes split when the two are significantly apart. The nice thing with this is that the screen will split differently depending on the situation: sometimes splitting horizontally, other times, vertically. The issue with this, however, is that the point at which the screen splits is too far, which quite often prevents players from seeing where they’re going when they get far apart, and in a game where you’re flying around so much over chasms and spiked-filled crevices, constantly being able to see where you’re going is a must. The simple solution to this problem is, of course, to stick together, but not only does that restrict the players freedom of movement, it also becomes a problem visually. The two “Rad” Spencers are respectively coloured red and green, which makes then hard to tell apart when so close together (never mind if you’re colour blind), and in a game where the timing of your hook shot is crucial to your survival, it quickly becomes very awkward and confusing.
So at this point, you probably think I completely hated this game, but the truth is I did enjoy the single player campaign. The pacing of the levels, between the platforming, the hacking and the boss fights was very good. Navigating the minimap from level to level was also designed in a really interesting way. While moving about the minimap, there’s always a chance you’ll run into some resistance from enemy units. When this occurs, you’re warped to a field where you fight enemies in a top-down view. To return to a point I was making earlier, this is a minigame that not only is interesting, but makes sense.
The most interesting part of all, however, is the writing. The story is driven forward by witty banter between enemy soldiers and their commanding officers, yourself and your team-mates, and also between yourself and the enemy bosses. And who could ignore the fact that, in the end, you get spar-off against Hitler, brought back from the dead… um, I meant “Master D”.
BCR is a good game, even if there are a lot of things about it that I find frustrating. For fans of the series, it’s probably a great game, and I can certainly appreciate the feeling of nostalgia that comes from playing a childhood favorite, but for people new to the series, it may be too late to truly appreciate what this game offers. If anything else, I think it’s great that video game companies are willing to try and update these old franchise, both for old fans of the series and all of those who have yet had the chance to experience them. Personally, I could always use some more “new” retro gaming.
