Bionic Commando (2009)

After wrapping up Raising Hell, I had a little time to kill before turning in for the night. So I put an hour, maybe hour-and-a-half into Bionic Commando. Saved and quit to main menu, and now the game is telling me that I'm 26% done, already. Eesh.

The intro cinematic is pretty good, up until it gets to the game's characters. And there's a wealth of dossier information in the pause menu about those characters, and settings and gadgets - but English was clearly not the copy editor's first language. A tutorial early in the game shows you how to do moves that you won't unlock until later on (I still don't have most of them!).

The real fun of the game is in swinging around, and man, it is actually fun. After a few awkward minutes of learning the controls (HOLD the L trigger!), you'll be able to swing your bionic commando around the ruins of Ascension City with ease. Combat can even be fairly entertaining, as you can jump into dudes and then shoot them as you fly away.

But there are a lot of little problems - poorly placed environmental hazards, a stupid ammo system, absolutely retarded voiced catchphrases - that bring the experience down to earth. And between the copious-but-irrelevant background info, the humongous cityscape that you don't see most of, and the checkpoint-to-checkpoint story, it's evident that most of what Grin wanted to accomplish with Bionic Commando was left on the cutting room floor.

Kudos to them for nailing the swinging mechanic, but it is a lonely victory in an otherwise shallow game. At least so far.

Progress: 26%