Bionic Commando (360/PS3)
A minor disappointment for me, not for Capcom I'm sure. This game didn't even recoup its costs and was probably central in the closure of GRIN. And who knows if Capcom will ever take such a risk again? You could argue that Dead Rising 2 is a similar project in that it is being developed by a foreign (Canadian) studio but that's an already established franchise, whereas BC isn't. Not really. You wouldn't call Alex Kidd an established franchise either.
I like this game and I essentially concur with Giant Bomb's own review. The swinging feels fun almost throughout, the game looks nice, the music is great. A couple of things really hurt the experience however. Having to pick up collectibles and do challenges over and over again because you don't reach a checkpoint is an incredibly annoying feature. Maybe it's meant to harken back to its 8-bit ancestry but it's so damn frustrating. Secondly the storyline is completely bonkers, almost in the Metal Gear vein, but missing the mark in terms of its tone. And while I understand the reason for using blue radiation as a boundary in the game world, they could have made it clearer which leaps and jumps would result in insta-death.
It's a bummer in a way that Bionic Commando is not very far from being a very, very good game. Unfortunately that didn't cut it in 2009 and this is probably the last we'll see of our mechanical-armed friend for a long while, barring any portable or downloadable titles.
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