The one-armed man

Whether through stomping on enemies in colorful worlds, redlining your favorite sports car or blasting the crap out of everything that moves, gamers are ever in search of that holy grail of a pure gaming experience, always sought but rarely found.

But every once in a while a game like Bionic Commando comes around. This could have been just another action game with a cool premise, but fortunately for us, Grin has crafted something that will stick with you, despite being a little rough around the edges.

As fans of last year’s Bionic Commando: Rearmed already know, the name of the game is swinging.  Rearmed didn’t have a jump button—you just used your extendable bionic arm to grapple onto surfaces and swing through levels in fantastically realized old school gameplay.

Things have moved to the third dimension for this 20-years-in-the-making sequel. Hell, Nathan “RAD” Spencer, the protagonist from the first game, can even jump now. But the focus is still on the bionic arm. And that’s where it should be.

Simply put, Bionic Commando‘s swinging mechanic is beautifully exacting, and feels as natural as walking or riding a bike. You can tell that Grin (who also handled development duties on Rearmed) really poured its heart and soul into it.

Both the physics and Spencer’s animations are extremely well detailed, with a noticeable amount of natural variance as Spencer falls or vaults forward with the momentum of a swing. The geometry is subtle enough that it feels natural, but no less astounding.

What really makes Bionic Commando sing is that rush of feeling transfers directly to you. Leaping from rooftops and soaring through the air propelled by your bionic arm gives a feeling of exhilaration I haven’t come across since Mirror’s Edge, though Spencer’s thrills are unique to the game. Swinging around becomes an addiction you’ll crave for its purity and simplicity.

The idea wasn’t lost on Grin—the game generally has you swinging first and shooting later. They took the idea so far in fact, that you usually run out of the sparsely scattered ammo for the few available guns. But who needs guns when you can simply use that arm to pick up a soldier, a large rock or a car and hurl it at your foes?

This can lead to some hairy combat situations if you’re not careful, since throwables aren’t scattered around everywhere. But with a little prudence you’ll be able to get through whatever Grin throws at you, and in truth, tossing vehicles at soldiers never really gets old.

And once the score rouses you to action you’ll know that Grin really made Bionic Commando into something special.

The one area where the game falters a little is in its segmentation. A game like Bionic Commando demands streaming load times a la Prince of Persia, with the ability to swing through vast landscapes sans interruption.

Unfortunately, the reality is that levels are often pretty small. As soon as you really start getting into it, you’ve probably already hit the next tunnel leading to a new part of the city—you can’t even revisit areas that you’ve been to before.

Nevertheless, the pure rush of the game’s bionics help to make up for such shortcomings (like Spencer’s hair—Dreads? Really?). Bionic Commando may be billed as an action game where Spencer has to take down some terrorists, but it’s really more of a swinging simulator with some action thrown in for good measure.

Set pieces and boss battles are almost as sparse as ammo, often leaving you with the solitary pleasures of simply swinging over wide chasms or through the ruined skyline of the city. Some of the levels are really set pieces in their own right and if you want, you can even practice your shooting skills while honing your swinging prowess against players online.

Occasionally you run into some minor graphical issues at the city’s seams, and there’s a bug every now and then. But it does little to distract from the joy you get using Spencer’s bionic arm. From start to finish (which is unexpectedly great, by the way), Bionic Commando is just flat-out fun to play.