Bionic Commando

Overall, there's some fun to be had swinging around the ruins of Ascension City, but don't be fooled - it's a flawed experience. The game's campaign is fairly entertaining, but lacks any real depth or originality, falling short of living up to the Bionic Commando name.

The real question here is whether or not Bionic Commando lives up to its beloved predecessor. The short answer is no, but that doesn’t mean that action fans won’t have a good time swinging around the city.

Despite having some flaws, Bionic Commando is a gripping action game which gives you plenty of value for money.

Bionic Commando succeeds in resurrecting a good idea lost to the Capcom archives, and giving it a new lease of life, but it falls foul of a few old standards in the process.

Taken on its own merits it is a solid if unspectacular third-person action game, and about the unkindest thing you could say about it is that it is bland and inoffensive.

Irritations aside, there’s rarely a dull moment and a delightfully ludicrous storyline with high-camp villains frames the action nicely. As such, Bionic Commando at its best is a macho, cheeseball 80s action movie that Arnie or Sly would have been proud of.

Bionic Commando could have been something really big, but it failed to use all of its potential. A fun and interesting game that has a lot to offer, a great action-packed game that does great on both consoles and PC, but it should have fared much better.

Despite its shortcomings, Bionic Commando has become a nice game. Swinging from building to building in a destroyed Ascension City is a nice experience, and the vast amount of cool action make up for most flaws in the game.

After the first, frustrating, hours of apprenticeship, Bionic Commando confirm our first expectations. The game, taking advantage of his illustrious ancestors legacy and introducing some refreshing feature (the arpoon, for example), succeed to outcrop from mediocrity, positioning in the middle-higher level of our personal ranking.

Overall, this is definitely a fun game.

As a playing experience, Bionic Commando is certainly worth some hours of your life.

While the combat is a bit of a letdown, the high bar for difficulty is certainly more addictive than it is frustrating, which compensates for the title's shortcomings and fittingly punctuates a solid piece of work.

An enjoyable yet flawed action game. It takes a while to get going, but once it does the swinging mechanics come into their own and there’s plenty of fun to be had over its six hour runtime. There are just too many roadblocks stopping it from becoming great, and that’s the worst disservice of all.

Bionic Commando is a fun, although somewhat unfinished, action title where the main attraction being the swinging mechanic the series was made famous for. Not only good for swinging, the bionic arm is also a vital part of the combat gameplay as it allows you to toss enemies and rubble alike with ease. Although the straightforward action setup in the game is an homage to the 20 year old original it fails to really motivate the player. A poor excuse for invisible walls, bleak level design and unimpressive firearms does hurt the overall impression of what could have been a really great game.

Bionic Commando is a flawed game that suffers at the hands of engine limitations and tacked-on multiplayer. The game is immensely enjoyable for players who put the effort in to master the swinging and combat, but sometimes the frustrating sections threaten to overwhelm the rest of the experience.

Bionic Commando could have been a great game, if only a little more effort was put into the storyline to actually convince players to keep on going through the levels.

Despite the not-so-bad first impressions, Bionic Commando is a disappointing game. Linearity is not a drawback by itself, it's more about the way it has been pushed into the game, which often delivers loads of frustration... Long and frequent loading times, lousy A.I., and inaccurate controls just confirm that this is not a Capcom game, but more a Grin one. Let's hope Capcom itself will be on the next RAD Spencer incarnation: all it needs is some polish.

It's hard to forget the unresponsive controls, ludicrous story, and questionable combat encounters. The game is uneven and inconsistent enough to scare away even eager fans who have patiently waited 20 years for another swing. [June 2009, p.83]

The overriding impression is of a game that's physically too big for its action. [June 2009, p.88]

Ultimately, what should have been a very entertaining game is spoiled by levels that are too short and too uninspiring. It's like having a really cool motorbike but only a couple of miles to drive it on.

After several hours of increasingly punishing shoot/swing repetition, all the good ideas come at once in the last hour or so. [June 2009, p.108]

Bionic Commando has some enjoyable moments, but consistent fun always seems just out of arm's reach.

Even these best intentions cannot hide the fact the game never consistently hits the epic feeling most will feel it should.

Crappy story and occasional boring moments aside, Bionic Commando is a good game, akin to a summer popcorn flick. It won't stick with you, but it'll certainly entertain you. When the action amps up it feels awesome; it's just too bad that those moments couldn't have comprised the game's entirety.

If you dig the swinging and master the controls, you might find this sequel worthy of its legendary name. Other players, however, will discover a linear game banking on a gimmick.

Bionic Commando is a bag of mixed sensations. It's a fun game with some clever moments, but it's also one with an annoying lack of liberty, a deficient AI and controls that no always respond as well as they should.

If the level design did a better job of integrating exploration, platforming, and environmental puzzles, it could have overcome its deficiencies on the combat front. As it is now, Bionic Commando is only worth a rent or bargain bin purchase.

There's fun (in parts) but this is technically iffy and delivers a limited world.

It does a lot of things right (great looking graphics, fun multiplayer, and quality voice work), but it's constantly held back by unfortunate design decisions that replace satisfaction with frustration.

It's not a horrible game, and it does provide some fun for the 8 or so hours of gameplay, but it's not particularly exciting or noteworthy either.

We regret the developers didn't devote more attention to this game. The gameplay is flawed, though it does have some potential and relatively entertaining combat.

The concepts behind the new Bionic Commando are strong, but the moment-to-moment action just doesn’t deliver on the promise of how awesome it would be to have a grappling hook instead of a hand.

Hugely disappointing retro reboot that fails to offer any of the freedom or fun its premise suggests.