the grunter

One of the high points of my early gaming years was on my cousin’s Famicom (FC), or NES for you North Americans.

I love action games, I played Super Mario Bros and thought that it’s cool, yet a little bit “vanilla”. Now “Double Dragon” and “Contra”, they involved people getting punched or shot in the face point blank, and better refined my definition of what a decent side scroller should be.

And then along came Capcom’s “Bionic Commando”, with a way cooler title name for the Japanese release – ヒットラーの復活 トップシークレット, translates to “The Resurrection of Hitler: Top Secret”. There’s no debate that this title won’t fly in the Americas and Europe, so all instances of the Nazi/Swastikas/Hitler are gone in the US version. So if you wish to blow Adolf’s face open (literally), get this version:

(Whoa)

US game box art:

(Meh..)

Comparison between JP/US version of the original Bionic Commado (Pic from Wikipedia):

As a small child, that was a lot of new concepts to grasp: Assassination, resurrection, infiltration – and that totally got my blood pumping. Needless to say the game did not disappoint, maybe I can review that at a later time.

So fast forward to 2009, Capcom decided to bring this title back to life and revamp it into a next gen experience, naturally I had to take a spin, so here goes.

The Good

• Story answers a lot of questions and provide much background information for the original game, such as the origins of main character’s mechanical arm (back in 1987 I guess I never bothered to ask why the dude has a metallic snake-like hook for an arm, I miss my ability to imagine)
• Faithful upgrade – I try not to use the word “upgrade” again in this review, because Capcom did put forth the effort to build this one from ground – that did not kill the spirit in the original
• Some very nice level design that allows full experience with the mechanical arm. Towards the end of the game you find yourself swinging around, clinging from one flying missile to another in extreme altitude, I thought that was hardcore
• It is pretty much an industry standard now, but decent physics displayed when chucking things around in the game

The Bad

• I’m cool with having to restart from a check point after dying, even if that means back tracking a little. However I’m not cool with having to obtain in-game collectibles again each time I start from checkpoints
• Having a skills learning system is sweet, but it should be designed in a way that skills complement each other, not dominate. To put things in context, skills that are learned in the early stages in the game should still come in use in later stages, but not forgotten/rendered useless as you progress
• The game uses a harsh way to keep the player within its boundaries. For example I was roaming around in abandoned streets, and I accidentally slinged myself to an off-limit area. I was surrounded by strange blue gas, I saw a warning sign on the screen about “high radio activity” for about one second, before my guy keeled down and died. One second, really?

The ???

• F-bombs dropped in a Capcom game – Yeaashh
• Beating the final boss is nowhere near as cool and satisfying as splitting Hitler open in the original
• I will be the first to admit that in more than one instances, I thought I was playing a Spiderman game.. and I was controlling Doctor Octopus
• “Super Joe” = Best name ever
• Consistent with other Capcom games, the bad voice and physical acting are spot-on, can’t get cheesier than that

Lastly

It’s all about the mechanical arm. It is what made the original a classic, Nazi killing involved or not, and the feeling is maintained in this game even though a lot of the other original elements such as the radio intel/map travelling/infiltration elements are mostly gone.

This is in my book a decent action game, yes it suffers from camera issues as in any other 3rd person face-paced action game, but only in close quarters area. Swinging your way across an outdoor area actually feels very good (given you are comfortable with the controls).

I appreciate the team trying to build and evolve from the original, in hopes of making this one a new classic original title rather than swapping everything with 3D models and call it a new game – Wait, they already did that. Twice.

(Review 6 of 52, 2011)