Bionic Commando and his multi-purpose claw

by Richard Mitchell { Oct 23rd 2007 at 3:00PM }

We loved the original Bionic Commando. For the time, the claw and swinging dynamics were incredibly innovative. Nowadays, swinging has been done to death, and has arguably been perfected by Spider-Man 2 (it's backwards compatible, try it out). Honestly, in the original, all you could do with the claw was swing, grab power-ups, and mildly annoy enemies. So, what does the new Bionic Commando bring to the table? Take a gander at the video embedded above and find out. The new bionic arm can be used to hurl just about anything at enemies, though we're quite partial to random chunks of concrete. If you'd like to get more personal, you can always choke an enemy soldier as you casually blast some other baddies with your stupid normal arm. Or, you can pull something loose from above, letting it fall on hapless villains below.

That's all well and good, but we can't help but feel that Capcom has overlooked a prime gameplay opportunity: long range tickling.

[Via Joystiq]

Tags: bionic-commando, capcom

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kev Flynn @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:05PM

lol, long range tickling

Tony @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:25PM

The game is looking all right so far.

I've never really been big on the original and feel that in some ways it's one of those victims of nostalgia. The claw is fun to use to an extent, but without a jump and other random wonky control issues I just do not find myself ever loving it. Maybe I'm in the minority there, which is fine lol.

Grant @ Oct 23rd 2007 4:11PM

eh, i have a multi-purpose claw.
It's really not all people make it out to be.

James @ Oct 23rd 2007 4:54PM

I felt that lack of a jump button in the original was one of those things that started as an irritation but grew into an interesting challenge. If you want to jump, you have to find a way to lift yourself up with your arm. It created all sorts of puzzles that reaching a rooftop just a bit too far above you could take a dozen platforms of carefully-timed swings. If you look at the game as just getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible, your inability to jump and thus get where you're going faster is a pain. If you look at it as a fun challenge, the missing jump was a feature, not a bug.

Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic ;-)