In creating a modern-day update of classic '80s game Bionic Commando, the designers wanted to create a faithful follow-up to the original storyline.

Only problem is, the original story was really, really stupid. In the 8-bit game, you played totally dudical, pink-haired, shades-wearing Rad Spencer, who used his trusty bionic grappling arm to defeat evil members of the Badd army, who were trying to revive their fallen leader, Master-D.

To make things more complicated, the chintzy story was actually a bowdlerized version of the original Japanese game, which was titled Top Secret: Return of Hitler. In it, Spencer faced off against swastika-wearing Nazis who were reanimating der Fuhrer himself.

The new Bionic Commando, which will be released Tuesday for Xbox 360 (reviewed), PlayStation 3 and PC, doesn't bring back the Nazis or the swastikas. But neither does it throw away the old story. Instead, it turns a silly situation into a serious one, recasting the one-dimensional, four-color characters as flawed heroes in a world gone wrong.

It's a clever use of these retro heroes, but the gameplay doesn't translate as well to the modern era. In fact, besides the novelty of the story, Bionic Commando is a mostly forgettable experience that doesn't make very good use of the game's central unique feature – that amazing extendable bionic arm.

How do you turn a happy-go-lucky guy with gel in his hair into the battle-hardened antihero that jaded millennial gamers demand? Just throw him into jail for five years for a crime he didn't commit, then drop some nuclear bombs. Emerging into a ruined, irradiated world, Nathan "Rad" Spencer (his original moniker having been retconned into a cutesy nickname) has been beaten down into the sort of dreadlocked, sarcastic, bitter a-hole that America craves.

In any other videogame, this story would be cliche. But when the guy in your earpiece shouting gruff commands at you is "Super Joe" from a 1985 arcade game, the whole thing is just ironic and goofy enough to work.

Bringing Bionic Commando's story in line with contemporary tastes was only one challenge that Swedish development team Grin had to face. Another was re-creating the bionic arm gameplay in a fully 3-D world. The original game's unique appeal was that you could throw your left arm out like a grappling hook, catch hold of high ledges, then swing in the air.

It works well here: Your targeting reticule will light up when you're in range of something you can grapple on to, and as long as you're holding down the L button, Spencer will hook on and his momentum will start him swinging back and forth. Let go at the right moment, and you'll fly through the air, ready to grab another target and swing like Tarzan through the levels.

That's how it works in theory, anyway. In practice, Bionic Commando's levels are nothing more than highly linear, strung-together series of firefights against mundane bad guys, something that doesn't feel substantially different from any other third-person shooter.

You can use your arm in fights to grab and throw enemies, or to throw things at enemies, which is quite a bit more effective than shooting them. These moves also err on the side of perfection: Once I picked up an enemy and threw him, and it auto-locked onto a sniper on a roof about half a mile away, and the two bodies collided perfectly. Who needs guns?

But in most cases, Bionic Commando punishes you for trying to enjoy it. If you're having too much fun swinging around and climbing buildings, you're quite likely to fall into a bottomless death trap, or swing into an area of the city that's full of radiation. Both kill you very quickly. To add insult to injury, you're booted out to a very long loading screen when you die.

The checkpoints are spaced so far apart that you'll quickly learn to be extremely cautious when swinging around. When I finally completed some of the more frustrating objectives, I didn't feel like I'd accomplished something – just relief that I wasn't going to have to play that section of the game again.

(Bionic Commando features an online multiplayer battle mode, but technical issues on Capcom's part kept us from being able to try it. We will update the review when we can play the multiplayer.)

The single-player mode won't take longer than a weekend to complete. Although the story moves along at a fast pace, the final stage is the very definition of anticlimax: a completely predictable plot twist, a frustrating shoot-a-thon of a final level, a boring boss fight and a completely incongruous quick-time event to cap it all off.

I couldn't help but notice, playing Bionic Commando, that its interface design is highly reminiscent of Metroid Prime. Too bad the developer didn't also borrow that game's clever use of open worlds that let you backtrack and explore freely. This is especially disappointing since that's what the original '80s game featured.

The concepts behind the new Bionic Commando are strong, but the moment-to-moment action just doesn't deliver on the promise of how awesome it would be to have a grappling hook instead of a hand.

WIRED Interesting story, great arm-swinging mechanics, appealing music

TIRED Lame levels, ridiculous checkpoints, way too much loading

$60, Capcom

Rating:

Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.

See Also: