Bionic Commando Rearmed

Having trained ourselves to effortlessly navigate 3D worlds and target small piles of pixels across the map in online shooters, you’d think we’d be more than able to handle an old-school NES remake like Bionic Commando.

Whether we were more patient, stubborn, or skilled back in the NES era is debatable, but as of today, Bionic’s return as a still-unique platformer (with drop-dead-gorgeous visuals, we might add) has its fun frequently interrupted by its maddening difficulty.

Playing in the mid-21st century as macho special-ops soldier Nathan Spencer — whose left arm has been replaced with a grappling hook — your goal across 13 missions is to rescue Super Joe, a fellow badass who’s been captured by the “The Leader” and his army of assorted freaky machinery and flesh-and-blood bad guys.

Though it starts off fun enough — aside from the steep learning curve that accompanies the grappling-arm controls — Rearmed quickly wears out its welcome and devolves into a series of frustrations. Precision platforming is required for almost everything, and failure often leads to death. The latter half of the game is especially unforgiving, although ironically, the end-level bosses aren’t nearly as bad as the path you took to get to them. We recommend bringing a friend along in the excellent new co-op mode.

Adding to the annoyance are unavoidable encounters that hinder your travel as you try to make your way between different areas, triggering top-down sequences that are all virtually the same and are — aside from the occasional 1-up — boring. However, Rearmed does offer a slew of secrets to discover and challenges to undertake, and if you’ve got the old-school bug, you’ll revel in it. So yes, we recognize and appreciate that this is an exact remake of a classic game, but the bottom line is, many of you will decide that its unforgiving nature saps too much fun out of what is otherwise a lovingly reassembled classic.

ON XBOX LIVE ARCADE

7.0

Old-school swing mechanic is still unique.
Gorgeous look, especially for a Live Arcade game.
Anything less than perfect platforming = death.
Who thought up the 3D-cube hacking mini-game thingy?

COMMENTS:

Sun, 08/24/2008 - 22:35
Posted by ill sue y4

theres a big difference between a challenge and being kicked in the balls 8-bit style. classify this game for yourself.

*cough* (8-bit kick) *cough*

Tue, 08/19/2008 - 16:29
Posted by Mitch OXM

It's got more issues than being hard. Split screen on the top down levels is busted to all hell, for one.

Sun, 08/17/2008 - 07:20
Posted by jorid

lowering the score because its too hard? what happened to working hard to get good at something, instead of just giving up because you cant do it? too many good games are hurt by the n00b mentality.

Sat, 08/16/2008 - 13:28
Posted by Eviltattoo

I agree with EVERYTHING Ryan said about this, except maybe the score. This game is SUPER HARD...to the point of frustration. I do however, believe the score deserves an 8, if only because so much effort went into this remake, rather than just rehashing an old game...like Frogger, or any other "classic" found on XBLA.
I think the developers really went out of their way with this remake, and then released it for only $10 bones.
I just wish they had updated the difficulty curve, as Ryan mentioned.
All in all though, definitely worth 800 MS points.

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 19:44
Posted by Mitch OXM

You guys are taking this too seriously. Ryan gave it his honest critique -- he obviously enjoyed it, hence the 7.0 (which is "Good" in OXM's criteria) but it *is* frustrating to the point of insanity. It's incredibly demanding, which makes it less fun. It's aggravating in that regard, but overall he liked it...

Why the spiteful angry hate?

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 18:56
Posted by ethanjude

Wow, Ryan did you eat Cranky-O's when you reviewed this game? *WINK*
I love this game, and think that every part of it is brillant. The look, the arm, the challenges, everything. It all works.
Sorry that you got so frustrated over it. For your own good, sleep on it and give it another go, maybe on Easy.

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 18:38
Posted by squishydog2

I cant comment on the full game but from what I played on the demo I pretty much agree with this review. The learning curve is pretty steep and it was frustrating at some points but overall it was pretty good.

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 14:07
Posted by chuckratm

Ryan, you poor, poor baby, maybe they can make all games easy enough for you and all the other wimps who can't handle it. This game is fantastic with value way beyond its $10 price tag.

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 04:03
Posted by Spork

As I understand it, the boss battles are actually significantly different from the original game's... though from what I remember, this might not be a bad thing.

Thu, 08/14/2008 - 03:01
Posted by Daze Of War

I already downloaded the full game this morning. I loved the original so I wasn't to worried about this. I'll find out how my rating compares to yours later. Hell with Target selling 1600 point cards for $15 I have plenty of points for anything. So all you out there who didn't know head down to Target before Sunday cause it's 1 week only.