Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando = A shoddy, shoddy port.

If you want to know all about the main game and mechanics of Bionic Commando then you should read my review of the console versions. For this review I'm just going to focus on what the PC brings (or doesn't, as the case may be) to the game, hopefully swaying you from making a poor decision and purchasing this shoddy, shoddy port.

I don't know about you, but when I first start up a PC game I always go to the options menu to check out my video choices and set them up for my rig. Well don't get your expectations up with Bionic Commando's video options, as essentially the only choice you can make is what resolution you want the game to run at. PC gamers everywhere are likely to scoff at this, but I was willing to work with it as long as it looked fine and operated well. Unfortunately, on multiple machines here in the office, substantial tearing occurred, making the lack of a v-sync option feel like a gross oversight. Other graphical oddities also occurred, with some parts of levels looking like someone broke them into pixels and then mixed them up on a palette.

A lot of console games get ported from the 360 to the PC, but at least they try to make it seem like they put forth effort into making the PC game something worthwhile. Such is not the case for poor Bionic Commando, which is blatantly taken from the 360 version to such an extent that the tutorials will tell you which 360 button to use but won't even bother telling you which corresponding keyboard key performs the same action. And to add insult to injury, there's a 360 controller button map in the upper-right portion of the screen, taunting and cajoling you into plugging a controller in.

Bionic Commando is a sloppy port of a game I found to be fairly mediocre. With Street Fighter IV on PC I really thought Capcom was shaping up with its PC ports, but Bionic Commando takes several steps backwards from the progress that'd been made.

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