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Is it just me, or did anyone else feel cheated by the last half of Bionic Commando? Because despite the blue screen of death imposed by radiation and the water traps, at least the first game gave me a sense of flexibility, control, and maneuverability that was lost in the second half. Sure, you do some really awesome things that invoke Starscream’s F-22 Raptor hopscotch in 2007’s Transformers movie, but it’s buried under what seems to have become a Capcom staple: the quicktime event.
Potential spoiler warning – I’ve tried to be vague regarding plot but wait until you finish the game if you would like to have your experience unaltered by these afterthoughts.
But before I continue lambasting the game, I would like to point out I did enjoy some of the boss battles and set pieces the game sets you up for. One is the Buraq convoy sequence – that was fun, if a little pointless with the cutscene at the end (I guess Capcom expects us to assume those boots Nathan wears are REALLY good at stopping your fall – that, or Altair the Monocled Sniper had a couple of phoenix downs on hand). It was one of those little touches that would’ve been nice to see used for the FSA building. As for bosses, the giant drilling machine battle was fun enough. And while I didn’t generally use the ammo (plenty of cars) provided, I liked having some to pick up for the next zone. The shootout in the library archives was also fairly well done. Moments like that and Gottfried’s spider mech platform were appropriate places to "challenge" players to survive – too bad the rest of the game followed suit, minus the ready supply of ammo (and why can’t you pick up enemies’ weapons? But I digress).
I’ve already criticized the games’ unbalanced ammunition distribution and weapon selection, and it becomes more evident in the second half. Sure, we’re given tons of ammunition in certain areas, but they’re either screened by swarms of goons or for weapons that really aren’t the ones I wanted to use, and part of me wonders if this is because the "good" weapons would’ve simply broken the level design in that area (sniper rifles on Gottfried’s Spider Mech, for example). Once inside the vault, I mostly resorted to simply tossing objects at the hallways of enemies without much difficulty, and so the sudden smorgasbord of gear was lost on me – especially since the coveted rockets and grenades were almost always in shortest supply. Even more disappointing is that the game never really develops a voice for the action outside of the well polished swinging mechanics – melee combat has a shallow pool of techniques to utilize, but more often then not it wasn’t worth the risk to jump into a swarm of enemies to try and pull most of them off. Combined with the passable gunplay, it left me wishing for more… which means either the story or atmosphere could help make up for the flaws in game mechanics.
Overall, the art and atmosphere of Ascension City is passable – while I particularly enjoyed Ascension Park, the rest of the environments’ are generally unmemorable or repetitive. But in the park I found one character I enjoyed immensely: the Aryan terrorist Gottfried Groeder. Groeder joins us from the original Bionic Commando, and I found his heavily accented rants over the PA systems fun to listen to. But outside of Groeder’s delightful insanity, the characterization and voice acting is somewhere in the vicinity of remedial high school theatre. It isn’t that the world Capcom has created is completely mediocre (Joe’s monologue about bionics presents some interesting ideas), its that they have filled it with a raspy voiced dullard for a hero and one dimensional characters that simply exist for him to snarl at. At no point did I care about Magdalene or the Assassin’s Creed Cosplay Sniper who tries oh so hard to be mysterious. The ‘plot twists’ are laughable – especially considering the much better executed ones we find at the end of KOTOR or Bioshock. If I had to pick a spot,it would be the second half of the oil rig that game as a whole jumps the shark (or the nukes the fridge, if you prefer). You should know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t just that made me stop and go WTF?, but the sudden need to take a fleet of aircraft out onto an oil rig that apparently has a tunnel near the shores of Ascension City to another platform out in the middle of nowhere is evidence of how the plot and progression begins to rapidly break down. Add to that a quest for a missing wife on the level of Dom’s from Gears of War 2… and, well… you get the idea.
In the end, Bionic Commando reminds me of both the recent Terminator Salvation (the movie not the game) and Resident Evil 5. All three were part of an effort to revive a dormant franchise, and while they all start off with great promise, each falters somewhere in the middle of the story. For Bionic Commando it culminates with a failure to involve the player more directly in the end of the game (similar to Resident Evil 5), instead relegating us to a series of quicktime events against flat and ultimately forgettable villains. But like Terminator, I hope those involved in the Bionic Commando revival learn from their mistakes and make the awesome game we should’ve had this time in the inevitable sequel.
This article finishes the review I began here for Bionic Commando.
