First off, let me just say that Bionic Commando was one of my favorite games on the NES. When I learned that it was being remade with new graphics I had to get it. Now that my brother and I have played through most of it, I have to wonder just how sadistically difficult NES games were back in the day because Bionic Commando Rearmed may be the least forviging game I’ve ever played in recent times. The last game I can remember being this unforgiving was Battletoads on the NES.
Of course, we were playing the game on Hard difficulty, but I don’t see it being that much more different than on the NES. The gameplay revolves around the use of a bionic arm – there’s no jump button, so you need to use your bionic arm to grapple onto platforms and swing where you need to go. Of course, one error in the swing and you’ll fall to your death in the spikes below. The game is brutally unforgiving, giving you only 3 men per stage and when you die, even at the boss of the stage, you have to play through the entire stage again. (This was considered normal back in the days of the NES though.)
We gave up on the final “stage” of the game, which composed of five lengthy and challenging areas and then the boss. If you died at any point en route to the boss, you would have to play through all of the five areas again and hope you can even get to the boss with some life left. This final stage (and I guess a lot of the game) was almost like a sidescrolling “bullet hell” game, where you’re a ship shooting from top down and dodging bullets all over the place with limited lives. In the case with Bionic Commando Rearmed, you’re swinging and killing enemies, hoping not to get hit by bullets as well. And there’s even one more difficulty that gets unlocked after you beat it on Hard mode!
I must not be the only one complaining about the extreme difficulty in the game, because Capcom released a patch a couple months ago allowing for infinite spawning on Easy and Normal difficulties. Think about how games have changed in this day and age. Since when did we still have “men” or lives remaining? These days it’s all about checkpoints and save spots, not a total of 3 men to try to clear through an entire stage. Thankfully, at least Easy and Normal will now allow me to beat the game.
Those of you that start the game now post-patch, I highly recommend just playing it on Normal. The game is quite imaginative and feels very classic if you don’t have to replay the same stage over and over if you die (which still remains for the Hard difficulty setting). The bosses are quite imaginative and provide for some innovative encounters, and I even thought it was nice how their difficulty was balanced more for co-op play (with 2 players, the bosses would often require both players to be in sync in order to do damage to the boss, and each player only did half the damage that one player playing solo would). If you felt Shadow Conspiracy was too easy, I dare you to try Bionic Commando Rearmed…
