Impressions: Bionic Commando Demo Fails To Impress Simon

Instead of wooing us with some awesome swinging gameplay in their upcoming title Bionic Commando, Capcom has decided that the multiplayer is SO amazing that it’s a fair representation of the title’s final quality, right?  I hope not.

The first thing I wanted to do in the demo after starting it up was, of course, to swing around the environment with the bionic arm. Wanting something and getting it are two different things though, as Capcom has wisely provided us with a map in which everyone camps at one hit kill weapon spawns and nothing else. Yes, you can grab people using your bionic arm, but hardly anyone seems to use, or even be aware of, this ability. Of course, this isn’t completely the players’ fault, the demo lacks any sort of tutorial on what you can do, nor does it familiarize you with the controls. When you only get to play a game for five minutes at a time, it’s understandable that all those people shooting at you tend to distract you from actually trying out the new gameplay mechanics.

Here’s what left me dumbfounded, though. Why would Capcom create a sixty-level single player game and then try to get gamers interested in it with a demo that only has one multiplayer level? In my opinion, the one level that’s featured in the demo looks like it’s been ported directly from the Wii; it’s that bland and uninspired. What’s more, the multiplayer character design looks like it’s been pulled out of a pile of discarded Master Chief designs.  Lastly, the weapons, oh God, the weapons. Unbalanced would be the name of the game here, considering three of the weapons can kill with one shot, while some of the others can’t kill at all.  It really makes me wonder why I even have a health bar if I die every time I’m shot once.

When you consider the fact that swinging around is a core gameplay mechanic in Bionic Commando, you’d likely think the map would be big enough to actually swing around in – instead, the map is one of the smallest multiplayer maps I’ve ever played on. Sure, it’s pretty vertical, but half the time you can’t get up to the top easily without being shot and falling down again.  It’s right here that I feel the lack of a tutorial really damages the experience; it’s difficult to use a mechanic without first knowing how it works, which leads to frustration. From what I managed to see of the swinging aspect, apart from a few physics glitches – including one where you fall in a straight line as soon as you let go of the rope – I could tell that it’s actually a lot of fun, but instead all I’m left with after the demo is questions. Why didn’t Capcom give us a timed or single-level single player demo? For that matter, why does the demo look so ugly when all the screenshots we’ve been shown looked so good?

I truly hope Capcom delivers us a Bionic Commando single player experience that is superior in every way, as I feel the demo is simply not a good representation of the game’s overall quality.  I just hope that they don’t pull another Resident Evil 5 fiasco and ship the game incomplete; not only would it do gamers a great injustice, but it would likely harm the (hopefully quality) single player experience as well.