[E3 2010] Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 Hands-On
Wait, jumping? Jumping?! What madness is this? We must find out.
Published: June 25, 2010
One of the true tragedies of the closure of Swedish developer GRIN was that they never got a chance to craft a proper follow-up to their incredible update to the original NES Bionic Commando with Bionic Commando Rearmed. Updating things just enough to feel fresh while ladling in heavy doses of absolutely killer remixes to the original tunes and presented with a gorgeous engine, the remake counter-balanced the dev's later efforts that were less than stellar.
Alas, that will never happen, but from the ashes of GRIN rose FatShark, who have plied that core Diesel Engine tech toward a few other purposes (namely Lead & Gold), but they're at least keeping the Swedish tradition alive. Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is, in many ways, a sort of continuation of the efforts GRIN made toward updating the game -- including the possibly sacrilegious decision to let lead protagonist Radd Spencer actually jump.
One might think this completely undermines the game's key mechanic: the ability to use a grappling hook to swing, climb and grab objects, and in a way you'd be right, but the decision to add the ability to get airborne without slinging a hook has meant changes to the sequel's level design too. Now, you'll have to jump, and though the game was obviously early, resulting in a slightly wonky feeling when doing so to make leaps to raised platforms, it opens up a whole new level of depth to actually traversing the environments.
It should be noted that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 was clearly keeping one thing from the original series utterly intact: the difficulty. It was obviously a version of the game whipped up for a trade show and thus offered just a handful of levels and a boss battle, but things were limited to just a single life, and as anyone who has played any of the games in the series will know, that won't get you too far.
Still, we soldiered on, testing out a handful of new moves like being able to slide toward harder objects, combining jumps and swings to reach high-up areas and of course blasting away at baddies hiding foolishly behind barrels that we could grab and huck back at their evil CommieNazi faces (we're not exactly sure the not-Nazis from the revived version of the game will be returning, but we can confirm that the same tongue-in-cheek dialogue and hand-drawn art during boss battles certainly does).
Bionic Command Rearmed 2 is still obviously rather early. The game isn't slated to hit until early next year, and that may well slip given how many other games are hitting around that time. So long as FatShark can punch up some of the sense of weight during the jumps and get the animation up to the same level of smoothness present in the previous game, we're keeping our fingers crossed that the introduction of some new mechanics can keep the side-scrolling goodness relevant in this era of 3D shooters.
Alas, that will never happen, but from the ashes of GRIN rose FatShark, who have plied that core Diesel Engine tech toward a few other purposes (namely Lead & Gold), but they're at least keeping the Swedish tradition alive. Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is, in many ways, a sort of continuation of the efforts GRIN made toward updating the game -- including the possibly sacrilegious decision to let lead protagonist Radd Spencer actually jump.
One might think this completely undermines the game's key mechanic: the ability to use a grappling hook to swing, climb and grab objects, and in a way you'd be right, but the decision to add the ability to get airborne without slinging a hook has meant changes to the sequel's level design too. Now, you'll have to jump, and though the game was obviously early, resulting in a slightly wonky feeling when doing so to make leaps to raised platforms, it opens up a whole new level of depth to actually traversing the environments.
It should be noted that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 was clearly keeping one thing from the original series utterly intact: the difficulty. It was obviously a version of the game whipped up for a trade show and thus offered just a handful of levels and a boss battle, but things were limited to just a single life, and as anyone who has played any of the games in the series will know, that won't get you too far.
Still, we soldiered on, testing out a handful of new moves like being able to slide toward harder objects, combining jumps and swings to reach high-up areas and of course blasting away at baddies hiding foolishly behind barrels that we could grab and huck back at their evil CommieNazi faces (we're not exactly sure the not-Nazis from the revived version of the game will be returning, but we can confirm that the same tongue-in-cheek dialogue and hand-drawn art during boss battles certainly does).
Bionic Command Rearmed 2 is still obviously rather early. The game isn't slated to hit until early next year, and that may well slip given how many other games are hitting around that time. So long as FatShark can punch up some of the sense of weight during the jumps and get the animation up to the same level of smoothness present in the previous game, we're keeping our fingers crossed that the introduction of some new mechanics can keep the side-scrolling goodness relevant in this era of 3D shooters.
