Bionic Commando Hands-on Preview

When Capcom makes next gen games, it seems they’re almost always blockbusters. We’ve had Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5, all mega hits that have used new and existing IP. The publisher’s forthcoming Bionic Commando seems to have been around for ages and is perhaps the first big-budget release from Capcom in years that doesn’t seem to be a guaranteed home run. This is a game that is banking a lot on the strength of its retro heritage and more or less rests on the implementation of the grappling/swinging mechanic. Oh, and it’s not being made by Capcom.

Bearing all that in mind, and with the full game in our possession (albeit one that is going through a fair bit of polishing work leading up to its May release date), we sat down to play through the first few levels and came away very hopeful. You play as Nathan Spencer, a bionically enhanced super solider who has just been released from prison for ‘doing his job’. He killed lots of people and the public didn’t like this new breed of bionic humans, so they took the fall for the bad decisions the US military made. Anyway, a WMD has been detonated in Ascension City, causing widespread devastation and chaos, and Spencer is brought out of forced retirement to end the terrorist threat.

Part of why Spencer’s been chosen for the job is no doubt his ability to swing around, like Spider-man but with a heavy metal arm. His bionic arm is his most useful asset, able to do all manner of platforming and offensive moves. Most of these are gradually unlocked as you play through the game’s first act, but it won’t be too long before you’re grabbing hold of enemies and flying into them feet first, pulling items loose from their perilous positions, throwing heavy objects at enemies, super slamming the floor and punching objects (like forklift trucks) into unsuspecting goons.

All of this works well, with a control scheme that’s initially complex but easy to learn. The most hassle will come from the grappling hook swinging mechanic, which is exceedingly fiddly for the first hour or so with the game. In the 360 build we were playing your grapple is fired off by holding left trigger. You can’t simply grapple onto thin air here, so you really need to make sure you know where you’re going and what structures you’re going to be able to latch on to. Handily you can keep the trigger held down, with it firing off as soon as you come into range of a target, so there’s no need to be spot on with your timing as you’re plummeting through the air.

Once in the air it’s all about momentum and timing your release. There’s an easy to identify on-screen indicator that informs you when it’s the ideal time to release, gaining the most speed through the air and the longest jump possible, and once you’ve got your head around this you’ll be able to link together grapples quite brilliantly. Thankfully Spencer wears special boots that allow him to fall great distances and not die in a heap of flesh and bones, so missing your desired grapple target usually isn’t the end of the world, but beware of water. As the game informs you, that arm is very heavy, so get into the wet stuff without being near a grapple point and it’s game over.

So far (and we should stress that we’re only allowed to talk about a small portion of the game), enemies have been fairly standard, the kind you’d find at evil henchmen school, with the odd more exciting tough enemy thrown in now and again. The two that stand out are the shielded mechs with a glowing orange weak spot, and the cool looking flying drone ships that hover in one position just long enough to get pelted by one of the many cars you’re able to pick up and throw. Hopefully later levels introduce more varied enemies and boss fights, the kind we saw in the game’s very first trailer.

Gameplay variety is also a concern. Travelling through one semi-destroyed city area to another, deactivating air-based mines, and then moving on through an endless tunnel and appearing (after a loading screen) in another semi-destroyed city area is fine for a level or so, but we’re hoping things change dramatically later on. We’re almost certain the environments will become more diverse, simply going on what we’ve seen at trade shows over the last few years and in trailers, but if they’ll offer anything more in terms of gameplay remains to be seen.

Something that adds some instant off-objective action is the challenges system. Throughout the game you’ll be presented with secondary objectives, such as killing ten enemies (this is early in the game remember). Doing this will earn you a reward (improved accuracy for example) and unlock a new challenge. It’s similar in style to the instant challenges seen in the recent 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, except here the rewards seem more beneficial and long-lasting.

While the bionic combat and platforming is solid at this stage, we’re less convinced about the gun-play. You can shoot from the hip by simply pulling the right trigger, or target with more precision (and in turn move a lot slower), but the weapons don’t really feel all that meaty at the moment. This becomes quite troublesome during hectic battles against a room full of enemies, where the indoor setting makes bionic grapple attacks tricky and the awkward up-close aiming a recipe for death. Still, this is a Capcom game, so we expect it to be hard.

We expect a lot from Capcom games in terms of presentation, and so far Bionic Commando hasn’t disappointed. There’s certainly not the instant wow factor we had while playing Lost Planet or the overall level of visual quality we saw in Resident Evil 5, but the levels here are huge and there’s a draw distance to match. There’s a definite sense of travelling through a broken world and the main character looks great – complete with cool bionic arm and stylish dreads. Of the levels we’re allowed the talk about, the fissure section is by far the most impressive, with beautifully lit underground rocks and water cascading down cliff faces.

General presentation in terms of cutscenes and acting quality is typically Capcom, although this seems slightly more TV-movie than B-Movie – Spencer’s voice is verging on terrible, especially when he shouts one of his many one-liners as a reward for doing something cool. The plot really hasn’t got going during the few hours of the game we’ve played so far, but we’re hoping it’ll follow a similarly ridiculous storyline as we saw recently in Resident Evil 5. There’s also some screen tearing and what we hope is a not final depth of field effect, but with a few months of dev time left we’re hopeful the final build will be the visual spectacle it has the potential to be.

Bionic Commando is perhaps the trickiest sell of any of Capcom’s next-gen efforts to date. Not only is it being developed by GRIN, which isn’t a Capcom studio, but it’s based on a tricky gameplay mechanic and is a modern version of one of the hardest retro games of all time. It’s certainly got the next-gen sheen we’ve come to expect from Capcom, and could be the most hardcore pleasing game next to Street Fighter IV. Let’s just hope the final game isn’t a big swing and miss.

Bionic Commando will arrive on Xbox 360 and PS3 on May 22, with a PC version following soon after.