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Early Look At the New Bionic Commando
G4 had a chance to try out the upcoming Bionic Commando title due out in May. The game is a sequel to the NES version from 1988. Their impression is mostly positive: "The gameplay is fast and exciting, but a little light on combat, at least during the first level. There are also challenges that unlock upgrades for Nathan. These could be as simple as doing five zip kicks or as complex as killing a specific enemy with a specific move. It's a great way to add depth to the game and encourage the player to use all of the moves available to them." However, they do criticize the game's linearity, where movement is often restricted by arbitrarily placed radiation clouds. Capcom recently announced that a demo for the game will be available in the coming weeks.
Come on, this game is begging to be Wii only. Use the wiimote to control the bionic arm. Their lack of vision here disappoints me.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Also, just because it might work well with the Wii controller, why should that make it Wii only? Why not as many different platforms as possible? Saying it should be limited to one platform only is just elitist nonsense.
If you can only notice how the game looks, the game isn't fun enough.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
A remake...of a 21-year-old game? Come on. Get some new ideas, for chrissake. The current crop of game-playing kids wasn't even born then, how could there be any demand for a remake? Oh, but I know - there are no new ideas, and instead it's all rewarmed crap from an earlier era. What's next, Bionic Commando: Electric Boogaloo?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You see, I don't play games to droll at pretty pictures. I play games to have fun. Have good gameplay mechanics, a good control scheme, and an interesting idea and you can have atari 2600 level graphic for all I care. I've been gaming for 20 years, and I've had more fun with my wii than I have on any platform since the super nintendo. For that matter I can find a lot of little flash games with sprite graphics that are more fun than most AAA games that come out these days- developers have almost killed gaming by putting flashy graphics over fun.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
When I hear the phrase "Bionic Commando" I get a weird mental image of a half-robot person without any underwear.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Sprites vs renderings is like art drawings vs photos.
You must appreciate the details and all the work put into making it look cute/nice/impressive vs OMG, WE NEED AN IMAGE OF THIS and then put it up right there.
I do wonder, lots of titles fail, obviously, since there is so much crap released, some dominates and then there are some titles in between. If your title fail or become one of the later ones isn't it much better if it's somewhat more simple in technology and for things like the DS instead of huge complex PC titles?
Sure the return in $ may not be as good, but in % vs the investment and also when it comes to the risk taking I would assume the simper titles will be better.
But then a simple title need to offer something else than pretty graphics, such as a good experience, so eventually they delivers more on that, or it's total crap which should never had been released in the first place and which makes me feel sad for the people who actually buy it.
Generally it depends on what you're doing. Lots of characters with little animation, go with sprites. A few characters with tons of animations (e.g. a fighting game) 3d models may be easier. Customization doesn't play nice with sprite animation at all. The ease of rendering them lets you throw a few hundred at the screen even on a last gen system without slowdown.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
(from the "yay for car analogies" department):
Graphics is to games what new car smell is to cars. Sure, the customer loves it, but it wears off fast. And after that, he only cares how it steers and how much he likes actually driving it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Judging from the comments there seems to be a little confusion. This is NOT the remake of Bionic Commando, the remake was released last year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_Commando:_Rearmed and was great IMHO.
This article is about an sequel to Bionic_Commando; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_Commando_(2009_video_game)
Classic "old timer" gamer syndrome. Currently, there seems to be this backlash attitude that games can only be "good looking" or "fun to play"... that those lines can never cross. I would argue that both visuals AND gameplay are necessary to make a good experience.
I think a perfect example of requiring state of the art visuals to make a better product would be the upcoming Ghostbusters game. The entire point of the game is immersion, this is a sequel to the movies so it needs to look as close to a movie as possible. This is where the Wii/ps2 version seems to fail... it's a cartoon, not the movie. If you want to truly create an interactive experience that makes the player feel like a "ghostbuster" you have to make the game as photorealistic as possible. If they look likcartoon characters, the best feeling you'll get from the graphics is an episode of the Real Ghostbusters.
Is there room for a full length, cartoon style ghostbusters game. Absolutely, but it won't have the same impact that hyperrealism will. You can't truly experience a game tied to a movie franchise if it looks nothing like it.
This notion that games can only be fun or good looking is really grating to me. I might agree that there is some degree of "overboard" with developers and detailed visuals... but it depends on the game. Each game is different and the visuals are not separate. Mirrors Edge wouldn't look good as a blocky Doom style game. The new Giana Sisters game wouldn't be better if it had been done with lens flares and 3d. Visuals are part of the games package... if visuals are too sloppy or too poor, it takes away from the whole experience. Sometimes that means you need to make a full 3D world with HDR lighting, bumpmapping and 40k polygon characters... and sometimes you can make a great game with some good 2d artists.
...the arbitrarily placed borders blocking you from exploring further places combined with the targeting system looks a lot like Enter the Matrix.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The money seems to be even more in games that do simple things well with little technical effort and a topic that people can instantly appreciate. Those are the games that cost pocket change to develop and then go on to sell millions of copies, making an insane return on the investment. Flashy games also cost flashy amounts of money to make and while some of them do sell big they still won't reach the insane investment-profit ratios of games like Nintendogs.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I've played both the NES version and the C64 port of the coin-op and I have to say the NES version, while being good enough fun, has too much back-and-forth in that very 80s console platform adventure way. The coin-op was a classic platform run-and-gun with a quite simple but very flexible control system. If you want retro, go back to the source!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I assume that since Capcom's responsible for this game key features which are included on the game disk will only be unlocked after I pay them extra for it.
I have nothing compelling to say
I have to agree... like Resident Evil 5, I wish the target platform was Wii. These games were meant to be played with that controller.
Twinstiq, game news
People like you always forget that the games of yesteryear *had* cutting edge graphics for the time they were made! It's *always* been about pushing the envelope of what is graphically possible!
Almost killed gaming by putting flashy graphics over fun? Are you fucking serious? Name *one* game that sold well that had "flashy" graphics and zero fun.
> There are also challenges that unlock upgrades for Nathan. These could be as simple as
> doing five zip kicks or as complex as killing a specific enemy with a specific move.
> It's a great way to add depth to the game and encourage the player to use all of
> the moves available to them.
No it isn't. Good game design is a great way to get people to use all the available movies: Because they are fun and spectacular to do, and don't feel gimped.
"Rewards" is a piss-poor way to encourage the player to use all the available moves. I am reminded of "combos" from, among many other games, the City of Heroes new melee class of dual blade wielding. You get combo rewards of additional effects or damage for using what are, in reality, very pathetic moves you'd never otherwise use.
This forces you to make combos the game designers want you to do, which is the exact opposite of a free-form combat character, which is exactly what the CoH Scrapper class is. No more clever "attack chains" -- some doof who knows less about the fun of a scrapper has pre-designed some for you, so you can play your own style, and be gimped, or play their style, and be fun-gimped.
*Sigh* Who puts people in charge of these game designs?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Not really. Those huge-budget games need to sell at least a million copies to break even. Anything less and it's a big money loss. Take Mirror's Edge for example.
Meanwhile, Carnival Games takes a minimal amount of development costs, sells millions, and makes the developer and publisher a ton of money. But have the publishers caught on to this? No, instead they raise the average game price by $10, spend more than ever on big budget nonsense, and piss and moan about the used market killing their profits. Hopefully one day they'll get it.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Almost killed gaming by putting flashy graphics over fun? Are you fucking serious? Name *one* game that sold well that had "flashy" graphics and zero fun.
Final Fantasy. Over and over and over again.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Not exactly. It's more like how the car looks. Some people can look past an ugly car and enjoy driving it because of how it steers. Others dread getting into their car because of its boxy look and terrible interior in spite of the fact that it drives well. Then there's a third group who would rather have both.
Some of the best unintended video game translation comedy this side of All You Base came from this game. Also the fact that Nintendo censored the Nazi element of the game, yet forgot to eliminate the image of Hitler from it.
Aw, man, I hope he can jump in this one. That was one frustratingly arbitrary limitation.
Even on the 2600, many games had better graphics than Adventure.. yet Adventure is considered a classic and people still play it.
I thought it was Mattel Baseball for the 2600, but I can't find info about it on wikipedia, that I liked as one of the best baseball games I've played -- because it's so simple.. and you're basically dots IIRC.. (Maybe very crude stickmen.) IIRC there were other more sophisticated baseball games for the 2600, but the simpler one was more fun. (I even brought it to college in the early 90s to play with my roommate.)