Demo Review: Bionic Commando Rearmed

Few of you may know that at first, I didn’t like the concept of hard drives in consoles. To me it meant that companies can release games with a “We’ll patch it later” mentality. However, I slowly shifted pro-hard drive. When GH3 announced downloadable songs I said that the Wii needed a hard drive and that as consoles moved to online integration, a hard drive was a necessity.

Had I known stuff like this would happen, I would have jumped ship sooner. (Not to the PS3 but to Pro-Hard Drive) What I downloaded about a week ago was Bionic Commando: Rearmed. What it is, is a strict upgrade of the original Bionic Commando that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System some 20 years ago.

Again, like Logan’s Shadow, I can’t remember the story offhand. But this isn’t meant to be a big game release. It’s merely an online-only purchase. The graphics and sound all get a nice upgrade. I really dug the music that played when selecting to play the game on the PS3′s main menu. And it gave me a bit of nostalgia which I really enjoy. To see a upgrade to old games I used to play is only what almost every gamer wishes for.

A glimpse of Bionic Commando in the 8-bit days.

The biggest update, obviously, are the graphics. Capcom has redone the graphics for this game much like Konami remade CastleVania: Dracula X Chronicles. One thing I’ve learned from having a PS3 is that you seem to be punished if you don’t have access to a big-screen TV. Granted, the PS3 is a high definition gaming system but people who don’t have access to a HDTV will feel a little screwed. The place that we’re at now while my son is at the hospital has an old generic television. It’s not widescreen or High definition. So when I saw the in-game shots on the Internet, I was shocked to see so much detail. I’ll have to remember to play these games again when I get back to my big-screen television. (I’ll also comment now on saying that to prove my point about non-HDTV’s … Condemned 2′s text are incredibly hard to read on our TV showing that it was designed for big widescreen televisions. You’d figure that it’d detect the screen size and adjust, but I guess not.)

The first level was all you got to play. And that’s only up until the first boss. Before the boss starts up its attack mode it says that an error occurred because it was in demo mode – so it couldn’t start. They made other mentions to the fact that they were playing a demo. One interaction involved a captain saying that in the real game, numerous soldiers undoubtedly will give up their lives without fear of death. Another soldier asked if he was going to be one of their soldier with the captain saying, “Of course!” It was a neat little form of humor put in there.

The game’s big difference from other games is that there’s no jumping. It’s all done with a mechanical arm strapped onto you. You can use it to jump to a ledge above you, swing around, grab items and deflect bullets. It takes awhile to get used to but is pretty neat when you do get used to it. Not all ledges are easily accessible though. Various objects can block you from climbing up to the new ledge so I’m guessing that’ll add additional challenge in the later levels.

There seem to be a ton of addons – databases, medals, multiplayer and a challenge mode that I know of. There is regular multiplayer where you pit yourself against three other players or there is a co-op mode. Playing it smart, if both players are in the same area it’s one screen but when one player takes an alternate path, then the game splits the screen until the two are united. The multiplayer is offline only, so there is no option to play online with your friends. I would argue that there’s no reason for this but I think we’ll know why when I mention the price.

From what I’ve read, the difficulty is standard for Nintendo games. I’m not sure about any of you, but I am often shocked at how easy those games are now than they were back then. So, it didn’t come as a surprise when I read that you could clear the game in a couple of hours if you just wanted to breeze through it. But, with multiplayer, neat extras, challenge modes and 20ish levels to clear, someone who wanted to complete the game 100% will definitely take more than just a few hours.

And for the price – it’s not bad at all. The full game is downloaded after you pay $10. When you think about all the work that went into this as well as the extras that they threw in – $10 is not a bad price at all. Taking the price into consideration, it’s understandable why there’s no online play. Paying dues for offering online server space would probably prevent from any profit. In fact, offline multiplayer was added on as the game was in development. So originally, multiplayer wasn’t even going to be an option.

So, would I buy this game? Taking into consideration its a remake of a game that I used to play with new challenges, updated graphics and sound, I not only would, but am buying this game later on today. Would I recommend this game to others? Well, if you remembered playing this game and liked it, then purchasing the game is a no-brainer. The extras in addition to the updated graphics and sound make $10 a very cheap price for a full game. If you never played the game before, download the demo. Despite it being $10, you don’t want to pay $10 for a game that you may not like.