Sometime around 2011 or 2012, I was browsing Screwattack, as I used to do frequently, and I was watching one of their official top 10 videos. I think it was something like “top 10 protagonists” because one of the announcer’s picks was Rad Spencer from Bionic Commando, specifically the one from the NES game who couldn’t jump “unlike that new one who jumps.” (the announcer said something to that effect) This was my introduction to the Bionic Commando franchise, and per their recommendation, I beat the NES game within a couple years.

Cut to 2013: I was browsing Screwattack again (either that, or my brother was, as I was visiting him at the time), and we saw a blog post talking about a Steam sale on Capcom games, and one of them was Bionic Commando: Rearmed at 75% off. I remembered enjoying the NES game, so I decided to buy Rearmed. My brother and I played a bit of the 2-player versus mode, and not long afterward we found out we could beat the entire main campaign in co-op as well, so we did (we also went back and got all the secrets after we beat the game). It was around this point where I found out that Rearmed was, in fact, not a new game, but instead a remake of the NES game. The level design is the same and the music consists of remixed versions of the NES game’s soundtrack, but in its defense, the game added more weapons, new bosses (although some of them get reused later in the game), an extra level at the end, and even secrets hidden in the rehashed levels. If you haven’t played the NES game, I’d recommend Rearmed, but even if you have beaten the NES game, there are still a few things to look forward to with this one, and it may be worth picking up on sale. Honestly, my biggest complaint with Rearmed (aside from it recycling its bosses…and recycling the levels from the NES game) is that they turned this somewhat intense track into this…markedly less intense track; it’s not a bad remix, but it doesn’t match the mood of the original song at all (through I at least respect the effort put into that remix since it isn’t literally the same song with minor distortion effects added). Oh, there was also a secret near the beginning of the game that required you to throw a grenade through the floor so it ended up in the room below you to blow up that room’s floor, then you had to backtrack to go up the new opening and get the secret; that was really annoying and unintuitive, but like I said, I’d still recommend the game.

More importantly to this post, I noticed something else while playing Rearmed: the player can’t jump in that game, either! So what the heck was that Screwattack video referencing? Well, not long after by brother and I beat Rearmed (at least, I don’t think much time had passed), I did a bit of research and found out that there was a sequel to Rearmed, presumably with original levels (there’s still a chance it reuses levels from the arcade or Game Boy game; I haven’t played those yet) and other fancy stuff, but it was never released for PC; only PS3 and Xbox 360, two consoles I didn’t own. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed since I would’ve been more than happy to buy it if it had ever been ported to PC.

Cut to today, and the wait is finally over! After waiting so long to play this game, I was pretty hyped to play it (the first game I’ve been hyped to play for a while), so how was it?

• Bionic Commando Rearmed 2
  

  5 hours playtime

  5 of 12 achievements

This is an action platformer. You have your standard left and right movement as well as a jump button, but you can only jump about one unit high, á la the original Donkey Kong (and Donkey Kong 1994, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong). Because of this, your main method of getting across platforms is by using your bionic limb: when you push the button, the protagonist stretches it up and forward diagonally, and if it latches onto something, you can swing from it to get more distance or pull yourself up to get more height (and if the ceiling is only one unit tall, you can climb over it). If you push the grapple button while ducking, the protagonist will extend his bionic limb in front of him, and you can use this technique to pull yourself under small openings or pick up and throw barrels. As for weapons, you start with a standard pea shooter that kills enemies in around eight hits on hard mode, but as you progress, you’ll get more guns (but these have limited ammo), secondary weapons that use weapon energy (which refills by itself), and passive upgrades (and if you find the same upgrade again in another level, it boosts its effect when you equip it); you can only have one of each (one gun, one secondary weapon, and one passive upgrade) equipped at a time. My only issue with this setup is that even though you can switch guns with L1/R1, you can’t switch secondary weapons with L2/R2 (R2 is used for a scanning ability that tells you little details about various objects and enemies in the game), so if you want to switch secondary weapons, you have to push select to bring up the weapons menu, then go down to your secondary weapon slot, select it, scroll to the weapon you want to equip, then back out.

When you first start the game, a cut-scene will play out explaining the game’s story up to that point, and when you begin playing, the game lets you know about that R2 scanning feature; in fact, the first stretch of the first level is just a bunch of ATMs that will tell you the game’s various controls when you scan them.

EDIT: Also, this game lets you do a move called “Death from Above”; while in midair, you can hold down and the jump button either to attack or to break certain blocks, and the level designers tried to design the early levels so that if you already know a certain move, you can use it to bypass the room with its respective ATM (as there are a few more after the first level). However, the grenade (which can be found in the first level) can also break those blocks, so it’s possible for the player to bypass this specific ATM and not realize the move is possible (this almost happened to me).

Once you get past those ATMs, you’ll encounter your first enemy: a generic foot soldier hiding behind a barrel just in front of a drop and another platform. This is where the game explains that you can block enemy bullets with your bionic arm (and you’ll need to do this if you want that “beat all levels without jumping” achievement); the enemy will pop out of cover, fire a few shots, then duck back behind the barrel, and what you have to do is grapple onto the platform, block the shots, grapple or jump across the pit, and then you can take out the enemy. If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll know that I usually go into great detail describing why a game is bad and why you shouldn’t buy it, so it an attempt to contrast that, I’m going to explain how this game shows a deep understanding of what makes platformers fun just with how this enemy is introduced. It’s easy to point at various enemy AIs in early platformers and make fun of how simplistic they are (e.g. Goombas), but the enemy AI isn’t what makes platformers fun; it’s how the enemies are placed within the level and how they work together with the level design that makes the games fun. There are a bunch of “platformers” out there that make somewhat complex enemy AI, but then minimize the platforming and even go so far as to force the player to halt progression every few screens until the group of enemies are defeated. That isn’t a platformer; that’s a beat-em-up. I’m not saying these games are objectively bad, but I’ve never been a fan of beat-em-ups, and whenever I get one of these when I think I’m buying a traditional platformer, I feel cheated. Apotheon is probably the worst example of the “pretends-to-be-a-platformer-but-isn’t” genre, but I know that Dust: An Elysian Tail and Abyss Odyssey also fit the mold (though I seem to remember at least Dust has some actual platforming around hazards every now and then), and to whichever game started or popularized this whole trend of beat-em-ups re-branding themselves as platformers: you have my eternal ire.

Aaaanyway, as for the game I’m actually supposed to be typing about: the beginning is fairly dull. On top of the generic soldiers taking eight hits to kill on hard mode without any upgrades, I lost count of how many times in the first few levels I’d encounter an enemy behind a barrel on a long, flat platform, with no other hazards to deal with. However, the game does start to pick up in difficulty as the game progresses, delivering on the promise shown by the first enemy encounter.

The first time the game started to give me trouble was during the Megacopter boss: what it does for its first attack is it shoots flames downward that cover the floor, and you have to find where it isn’t shooting flames and grapple up there. However, the first place it doesn’t shoot flames is on its right side, but you enter the arena on the left side, so you’ll probably take a lot of damage (and maybe even die a couple times) before you realize what the game wants you to do. It would’ve been better to have the left side be where it doesn’t shoot flames at first since the player’s eyes will be on the left side of the screen naturally. Aside from that, this boss isn’t really noteworthy: you have to shoot its engines way too much to make them overheat so you can climb the copter and reveal/shoot its weak point, then repeat that two more times with no variation.

The next boss, the G.O.R.I.L.L.A., is a bit more noteworthy since it was the first time I had to give up on trying to get the “beat all levels without jumping” achievement: you see, this boss has an attack where it sweeps its hand across the floor, and I couldn’t figure out a way to avoid this attack without jumping over it. Maybe one of the items you can unlock later on will counter it, but I’ve never enjoyed playing through the same content I already beat just to get a bonus. Aside from this, it’s another reveal/shoot-the-weak-point-three-times-with-no-AI-variation boss. Speaking of playing through the same content, the G.O.R.I.L.L.A. boss gets reused later in the game, only this time, its AI is slightly different! Hooray! Basically, the first time you fight it, it has a chopping attack where it will hit specific points on the ground and damage you if you’re standing there, but this time, it will do it twice in a row, hitting different points the second time, except the second attack happens too quickly after the first for you to see and react to it on your first try! I can’t help but think that these issues could’ve been ironed out if a bit more time was spent on the game: for the first fight, when the boss is damaged for the first time, it could change its chopping pattern to the twice-in-a-row one, but be slow so the player can react to it, then get faster when its damaged again, so by the time the player makes it to the second version of the boss, the quick attacks on different locations doesn’t come as such a surprise.

A similar issue happens with another boss later on: at one point during this fight, you can see electric sparks move along wires below the ground before the ground gets electrified, but at this point in the battle, the boss has rammed into you at super speed and just climbed up to the ceiling, so your eyes are going to be up there and the electrified ground will come as a surprise; this could’ve been fixed by merely making the wires come in from the ceiling instead of below the ground so when the player sees the boss moving up, the player also sees the sparks coming down.

However, the most disappointing part of the game by far is the semi-final boss: a recycled Megacopter. Not only does it have the same pattern as before, but the only addition to said pattern is that it fires easily-dodge-able missiles when you overheat the engines, so the only change to your motions from last time will be to duck for one second. Also, you enter this arena from the bottom-right, and since it still starts with the right side of the copter not-shooting flames, this arguably makes the second fight easier and is just another reason why the left side of the boss should’ve been the one to start with the safe area.

The final boss is a bit underwhelming as well. It shoots a bunch of missiles that fly in crazy directions which make it hard to tell when a missile is coming at you from an angle instead of from head on. Also, it’s one of those bosses where you have to avoid a bunch of projectiles before the boss throws you something you can use against it: the boss is standing on a tower, and when it throws a bomb at you, you have to pick it up and throw it at the tower, but you have to be at just the right spot (one unit to the left of where it lands) before you throw it; too far away and it explodes on the ground, and too close and it will explode on the side (the bomb has to hit the base of the tower to damage the boss). Plus, when you destroy the tower, the ground starts to fall from left to right, but even though they fall slow, they fall in quick succession, and as soon as the tile you’re standing on starts to fall, you fall and die. The speeds should’ve been reversed: quick to fall in actuality, but slower to fall in succession. Aside from those points, this boss isn’t much harder than some of the game’s other bosses.

Although I have issues with the above bosses, the game is still rather well designed as a whole. As the game goes on, it introduces a few new enemies and is able to come up with challenging implementations of the enemies. The secrets also add an extra layer of challenge to the game; they may not be too difficult to find most of the time (though I admit I didn’t get all of the secrets), but they usually come with their own set of obstacles that need to be overcome. There are also two helicopter levels that…exist. You get into a helicopter that has infinite rapid-fire ammo, and you have to kill enemies before they can shoot your chopper down. The first chopper level introduces quite a few of the game’s diverse enemies, but the rocket-launcher guy only shows up during the helicopter parts (even though your R2 scanner talks about using the protagonist’s bionic limb to take out said rockets). Also, the very first two bosses you fight in the game get used as regular enemies in the late game; you don’t have to fight them again like with the Megacopter or the G.O.R.I.L.L.A. since they merely add to the levels’ challenge (well, okay, there are a couple points where the game kinda makes you fight them again, but they’re use in late-game is fairly well thought out for the most part). The final level (before the final boss) is especially challenging, requiring some skilled use of the bionic arm to get past (although the level before the final level (right before the second Megacopter) is rather annoying since you have to climb up, but if you fall to where a previous checkpoint was and die, you’ll restart from said previous checkpoint).

Overall, I would absolutely recommend this game to all platformer fans. Obviously, it isn’t perfect, but aside from some issues with the bosses and a dull beginning, it manages to get all of the important parts right, and that’s a nice change of pace from all of the mediocre games I’ve been playing in a row. Plus, if you have a PS3, the game is 60% off at the time of this writing; that may not be its lowest historical price, but it’s definitely worth that much in my opinion.

P.S. Some other pet peeves I had is that the difficulty only affects how much damage you take when attacked as opposed to changing up the level design to make the game harder in a fair, non-lazy way. I also wasn’t a fan of how there are certain secrets where you obviously can’t get them until you unlock another weapon later in the game and play the level again. EDIT: Plus, cut-scene text will go away automatically after a couple seconds, so unless you read it as it appears, you might miss some of the game’s terrible attempts at humor, but like I said, I can forgive these issues (plus, there are a couple funny lines, mostly in the R2 scanning text).