1. Duke Nukem Forever (2011)

Absurdly long development times are perceived as harbingers of doom nowadays, and 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever serves as the poster boy of such a perception. Development spanned 15 years for Duke Nukem Forever, and it’s still in the Guinness Book of World Records today for that reason. Not releasing an entry in over a decade will no doubt poison a franchise, but the game’s quality also failed to garner optimism for ole’ Duke. For one, Forever’s design was outdated without actually, you know, being good. The pacing tries to ape Duke Nukem 3D, but falls on its face due to the lack of viscerality the former had and the incredibly repetitive level design. Duke Nukem Forever soured players with its cringy humor too, yet I believe it could’ve been charming if some creativity was put into it. Remember how cool it was to run into a corpse of Luke Skywalker in Duke Nukem 3D? Or the unique visual aesthetics of levels like the “Escape From LA” stage to the 2001 Monolith on the moon? Duke Nukem Forever failed to use its raunchy referential charm in creative and fun ways, leading to a boring time embarrassingly cringing at the screen for many players.

2. Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Another 4th game in the respective series with a troubled dev cycle was Dragon Age: The Veilguard. While The Veilguard didn’t bomb quite as hard as Duke Nukem Forever, its tone is similarly to blame for its meager performance. Unlike the gritty (and very bloody in the case of Origins) realistic medieval tone of the previous Dragon Age games, The Veilguard is lit up in bright purples and sanitized almost like an ‘E for everyone’ title at times. Even the enemy designs lean in the cartoony direction with dragons that hardly instill any sense of fear or urgency. But it’s the awkward writing and dialogue that really disappointed a lot of fans. Instead of working you way through an origin story through blood, sweet, and tears, your character is just instantly accepted as ‘the hero’ of the narrative. Teammates rarely argue with you and often feel more like cheerleader social workers than elite warriors. At least the combat feels satisfying, but many have lamented the series distancing away from RPG mechanics since Inquisition, and The Veilguard is the series at its most streamlined and RPG-lite.

3. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

Unlike Duke Nukem Forever or The Veilguard, Mirror’s Edge fans don’t mind a return to the series in the style of Catalyst. The main reason Mirror’s Edge has been dormant since 2016 is because DICE and EA have been focusing almost exclusively on reviving the Battlefield franchise. And thanks to recent gaming trends of big companies not giving small series’ a chance, it’s unlikely we’ll see another Mirror’s Edge title. But Catalyst didn’t exactly do everything right. The story was incredibly bog-standard, with characters that fell flat for a majority of players. The main reason to play the game was the excellent parkour movement, and that’s something Catalyst opened up substantially thanks to its more open structure. However, many locations felt copy-pasted, adding a sense of bloat that didn’t exist in the first game. Catalyst is still recommended by fans of the short-lived series, but its bump in quality from the first game, as well as DICE being busy elsewhere, doesn’t leave a lot of room for a series return.

4. Bionic Commando (2009 reboot)

Bionic Commando’s gritty 2009 reboot effectively killed the franchise due to a paltry 27,000 US units sold in its first month. Capcom’s top brass criticized the outsourced dev team for being difficult to work with, affirming their hesitancy to outsource overseas that would reverberate throughout the company for years. We previously cited Bionic Commando as an example of nonsensical story twists in games, and for good reason. This reboot is laughably campy despite its attempt at high stakes grit. The dude’s arm is his wife for crying out loud. But it wasn’t just story that players couldn’t take seriously, it’s also the janky movement with the arm rope slinging and the average shooting and combat mechanics. I’m glad the Bionic Commando reboot exists, if for the memes and campy ‘B-movie’ quality alone, but it also helped convince Capcom to shelf the series, and that’s a shame considering how iconic the original 2D titles were.

5. Saints Row (2022)

It’s been three years and I still haven’t encountered anybody who likes the Saints Row reboot. On paper, the ingredients for a decent Saints Row experience are there. But the exucation is severely half-baked. The open world design is uninspired with a plethora of repetitive side missions. Even the humor is disappointing, something the series always differentiated itself with. Saints Row was always known as the more goofy GTA, with well-written gags and scenarios that managed to get a chuckle out of gamers. But the reboot is anything but that, going for a more serious tone in-between jokes that fall flat on their face. Seeing how poor sales were and the terrible critical reception, it’s very unlikely we’ll see a new Saints Row anytime soon.

6. Lost Planet 3

Lost Planet 3 is undoubtedly the black sheep of the series. It’s the only entry developed by an outsourced western team, it didn’t heavily feature mechs in combat, and was panned by critics and the fandom alike. If relegating mechs to a minor role wasn’t enough of blow to fans, the repetitive side missions, bland level design, and less fluid combat sealed the deal. At least you’re still fighting Akrids in a snowy environment, but besides that, the game is hardly recognizable from the past two entries.

7. Crackdown 3

I’m not going to pretend that the Crackdown series was a household name worthy of GOTY discussions or anything, but the first two titles showed a lot of promise for the arcady GTA/Saints Row alternative. Crackdown 2 in particular was just a ton of fun to let loose and enjoy the bonkers open-world mayhem in. And the third game had a lot of hype leading to release, with none other than Terry Crews starring as the main city-destroying protagonist. But even longtime fans couldn’t find much to enjoy with Crackdown 3. The world map lacked variety, basically feeling like the same three nighttime city blocks copy/pasted throughout. The missions and gameplay don’t do much to make up for level design either, forming a repetitive loop of basic tasks over and over again. There’s not even anything fun to collect; with ability orbs comprising the majority of world secrets. I don’t even think Crackdown 3 would be appealing if it released decades ago; it’ll be a miracle if we see another entry any time in the near future.

8. The Order: 1886

Everyone talked about the life-like graphical fidelity of The Order at the time of the PS4’s launch. It was the defacto tech demo game for the console for good reason, showcasing impressive lighting and texture details. But hardly anything noteworthy could be said about any other aspect of the game. I can’t in good conscious call The Order a bad game; it’s just that it wasn’t much of a game to begin with at the asking price. The campaign takes around six hours to complete with little more than some collectibles to warrant further play sessions. It’s not just that it’s brief though, the content is somewhat superficial with its many quick-time events and bog-standard cover shooting. It’s one of those games that’s fine to rent for the story and setting, but you’ll forget about in a couple weeks. While The Order never developed into a series, it was initially planned to be one, with a sequel on the docket until the studio, Ready At Dawn, shuttered in 2024.

9. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Finally, we have the controversial cult classic, Kane & Lynch 2. This game was bound to have mixed reviews from its inception. Despite how it appears, Kane & Lynch 2 is a highly unconventional art piece of a game. The camerawork is intentionally amateurish and, at times, nauseating, in an effort to simulate cop cams or body cams. Plenty critics called out the camera as terrible and superficial, but it’s also the element that appealed to its fans the most. It’s really the five hour campaign and repetitive cover shooting that resulted in the general poor reviews and lackluster sales. And with IO Interactive moving on with their enormously successful Hitman games and upcoming James Bond title, it’s unlikely Kane & Lynch will get another opportunity to gain a following beyond that small cult classic crowd.

ENSLAVED: ODYSSEY TO THE WEST

Ever the masters of narrative-driven single-player experiences, back in 2010, Ninja Theory delivered Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, a game that many consider one of the studio’s best works ever to this day. Sadly, the game ended up a commercial failure. Though acclaimed by many for its storytelling, characters, performances, and its take on the classic Chinese tale of Journey to the West, for whatever reason, it failed to attract a sizeable audience.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – Prosthetic Tool

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice starts off pretty simple with the protagonist Wolf being tasked to rescue his master from the clutches of Genichiro Ashina, but that fight leaves our wolf handicapped with one severed arm. Thanks to the help of the titular Sculptor, you get a prosthetic tool in replacement which not only allows you to get back into the fight but also increases your versatility in combat. You can attach different weapons to this tool which helps you give an edge over certain enemies. For instance, the loaded axe can be used to break down enemy shields while the firecrackers can be used to distract enemies or you could use the flame vent to dish out some fire damage instead. On top of these capabilities, this prosthetic arm also allows you to close huge gaps through the use of an attached grappling hook – making it the most important part of your arsenal.

Lair (2007)

The PlayStation 3’s Six-Axis controller might not have been the most ergonomic when compared to its competitor the Xbox 360 controller, but it was certainly ambitious – sporting a fully-featured motion control setup. Factor 5’s dragon warfare game Lair was made to utilize the motion control functionality, and a big-budget and marketing coalesced to form huge hype and of course, expectations for the game. After a year-long delay, Lair would finally release in 2007 – to middling critical reception. Reviews at the time criticized the game’s motion controls as being cumbersome and unintuitive among a number of things, and the game quickly became one of the biggest disappointments of the year.

Despite that, where do we see the franchise at now? It’s more-or-less in relative obscurity at this point. I’m sure there are people out there who know what Bionic Commando is and are loosely familiar with it, but obviously it’s nothing compared to what it used to be at least in terms of its popularity. But why did this happen? Why would a franchisee that was so popular that justified several sequels and even a remake now find itself relegated to the ashbin of gaming history as it is? What the hell happened to Bionic Commando?

It would be 4 years before the next Bionic Commando game would surface in the form of a remake on Nintendo’s portable Game Boy. Outside of a few cosmetic changes and changing the city of the original game to be a more futuristic one, the game play remained pretty much intact relying on the swinging, the shooting, and the jumping that fans of the original game would be expecting. Despite being a fairly faithful remake of the original game’s ideas this version of Bionic Commando would not sell very well at all despite being on a very popular handheld console. While the ideas of Bionic Commando were definitely still interesting to those who did enjoy that type of thing, as a franchise, it was starting to show some cracks in terms of its longevity and audience penetration capabilities. In light of that, the series would sit on ice for a while, before re-emerging in the year 2000.

The New Millennium would be known for bringing us lots of interesting things. Another  round of powerful home consoles to game on and a litany of interesting games to play on them would stand out quite a bit, but the year 2000 also brought us Bionic Commando: Elite Forces for the Gameboy Color. Again, while the basic mechanics of a Bionic Commando game were certainly present with the swinging, the grappling, the shooting, and the side-scrolling, here we saw pretty much everything else thrown out. Instead of the main character that we had grown used to from the previous games we now have two unnamed Commandos of either gender. The plot was more or less non-existent, and the art direction was fairly boilerplate for the time, especially considering what was coming out on more powerful systems of the era.

Despite all of this, the gameplay was okay, and it basically felt like a Bionic Commando game. It had all of the things that you would expect it to have along with a few sections that mixed things up a little bit by letting you use a sniper rifle. As a result, it would be reviewed fairly well and people who played It generally didn’t have a lot to complain about with it. Unfortunately being stuck on the Gameboy Color in 2000 pretty much guaranteed that it wouldn’t have a whole lot of market penetration and wouldn’t do a whole lot of favors to the franchise that was already struggling to find its footing with modern audiences. This would be a trend for the series that unfortunately would continue well into the next several entries.

Another many years would pass before Bionic Commando rearmed would officially launch on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade as a digital only experience. This game would add 3D polygons resulting in a jump up in production value overall while retaining the same facets of the original games that made them what they were and made them fun. Fortunately,  this game was not just a rehash of the previous games’ ideas, but instead would iterate on them in interesting ways with different camera angles, some new abilities, and a really striking art style that made the foreground characters pop off of the background in a way that many games seem to be unable to achieve these days.

The addition of a multiplayer mode was also nice to see although the real star of the show here was the main campaign. The game would, as a result of the fresh ideas and respect for the source material, review pretty well with mainstream gaming critics. Unfortunately while its sales were pretty good for the time given that it was a digital only release it did have a bit of a ceiling that it couldn’t quite overcome much like how several of the previous games were limited to the constraints portable consoles and outdated technology.

The following year, in 2009, Bionic Commando would be released. don’t let that name fool you though because this wasn’t an actual reboot as much as it was a forward-thinking sequel looking to revitalize the franchise. I always find it annoying when sequels don’t name themselves like a sequel and we’re forced to sort it out years later with a bunch of confusing titles, but nevertheless Bionic Commando 2009 was the series is biggest push yet to appeal to modern audiences with a AAA looking polished third person action adventure presentation  that still held onto a lot of the basic tenets of the original games with lots of swinging, shooting, and platforming. This game had pretty good graphics and overall production value for the time, as well as a much meatier story that thankfully doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay like a lot of action adventure games of the time did.

Unfortunately, despite the solid attempt at a real modern take on the franchise that it actually deserves, the game would suffer from mediocre gameplay and fairly linear style that, while fine for other games of the era, never quite felt right for this one. Couple that with the fairly janky frame-rate and a handful of flawed level designs and you have a game that is ultimately alright, but also destined for the bargain bin, as many other, much better games were coming out in 2009 like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands. Bionic Commando 2009 was fine in its own right, but it just couldn’t stand up to that stiff competition. It was perhaps a bit out of its league in that regard.

In 2011, Bionic Commando would take one more stab at success with Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, a sequel to a reimagining remake from 2008, that was arguably the best game in the series so far. Much like Bionic Commando rearmed the presentation and the graphics and the gameplay we’re all fairly solid and did justice to the ideas of the original games. Despite finally adding the ability to jump the game fails to really innovate in any major way. While the overall aesthetic of Bionic Commando rearmed definitely returns in this one for some reason it just looks darker and less interesting than its predecessor. One thing it did nail is the ability to go back and replay sections with newly acquired abilities that made those levels feel fresh and that’s something that the older games also had in their corners.

Despite this, the conservative nature of the game and its inability to really innovate in any major way caused it to review perhaps worse than any other game before it cumulatively.  As if the series hadn’t struggled to find its footing enough before this, Rearmed 2 would serve as the final nail in Bionic Commando’s coffin, at least for the time being. That said the series does seem to have a pattern of going silent for about 10 years and then showing up with a new game. If that pattern holds then where I guess we’re due for another one anytime now. I, for one, am totally fine with Bionic Commando getting as many chances as it needs. However, I’m not so sure that Capcom agrees.

NOTE: Obviously, there are spoilers in this feature for every game mentioned. If you see us beginning to discuss a game you don’t want spoiled skip ahead to the next entry.

HEAVY RAIN

Heavy Rain was a legitimately great game, and a great showcase for choice and consequence mechanics and narrative-driven gameplay in Quantic Dream titles- but it wasn’t perfect, of course. The entire game revolved around the mystery of who the Origami Killer who, but it was eventually revealed that it had been Scott Shelby all along. Except that doesn’t make any sense, because we’d been playing as Scott Shelby for a huge chunk of the game, and were privy to his thoughts and inner monologues and what have you. It just came across as a poorly executed reveal.

Hugo Strange – Batman: Arkham City

The story for Batman: Arkham City starts simply enough – Bruce Wayne is against the creation of this massive city as an asylum. Hugo Strange captures him and knows about him being Batman. From there, Batman escapes into the city while Strange goes ahead with his plans for Protocol 10. Why doesn’t Strange try killing Batman or Wayne sooner? Granted, he sends an assassin or something but all those military forces and you still don’t make him a priority? Why even kidnap him in the first place then?

A new video for Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 has been released, showing a boss battle with a huge chopper-like machine thingie named MegaCopter. It looks a lot like Contra, and even sounds like it, and that’s why it looks so good. This definitely looks like it will be worth playing.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 releases early next year for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

When the player will start off with the game the protagonist will be without his bionic arm. During the initial stages the player will have his semi automatic gun. After the player progresses through the story the player will finally get hold of the bionic arm. Now the developers have been pretty smart in making that piece of euqipment pretty unique. Obviously you will be able to swing around with it. The bionic arm can just about attach itself to any surface. On more than one occasions the player has to use his bionic arms to get across certain difficult portions of the game. The bionic arm is often used for turn by turn swinging which requires proper timing of the trigger buttons. Enough said about swinging. The unique thing about bionic arm is that you can just lift any heavy objects with it. You will be able to get hold of you enemies so that you bring them to you instead of you going to them. You will be able to get hold of the weapons and ammunition that are laid around while fighting just by using your arm even if they are pretty far. There are two special moves associated with the euqipment. The first which enables Spencer to kick an object, jump and apply force to it and take out chunk of enemies together. The other is where the Spencer uses his bionic arm to get hold of objects, elevate them in the air and throw them in the desired direction. These moves are most helpful when you have to take down a group of enemies or the flying bionics. Spencer will be having a pretty decent amount of arms and ammunition at his disposal. The player will be able to carry three weapons, primary is the one which i described above in my review. The secondary weapons vary from sniper rifles, cannons, missile launchers and shotguns. The third one are the grenades which again can be used to take out a number of enemies together. The variety of enemies found in the game are limited but their AI is just about right. You will be facing the standard Bio reign soliders which you can take care of by using your primary weapon, but later on flying bionics will make things a bit tougher. Having said that Bionic Commando is a pretty easy game and players should be able to finish this game in about 10-12 hours. The controls are pretty neat but sometimes they behave akwardly specially when i am scaling buildings and towers. There are few boss fights. There is nothing spectucular about them but they are just there to add more gameplay value. Capcom have pretty much nailed with their gameplay here as is expected with them.

Bionic Commando is a beautiful game to look right from the onset. The Ascension City is shown to be totally destroyed by radioactive earth quake and the developers have done a great job of representing it in that way. The sense of scale is huge in the game. And that is kind of expected from a free swinging game. Having said that, eventhough bionic commando might look as its a open sandbox game, but it isn’t. You will be able to climb huge towers and literally go anywhere but the design of the levels is in such a way that you will always reach your waypoint. The cut in scenes are in game and hava nice touch to them. This really looks like a well polished game. Spencer will be going to different location in Ascension City as you progress through the game and the aamount of details and lighting effects are pretty top notch. Character animations are very good for most part, however lip sync isnt that great always. If the visuals are something that shoukd drop your jaws, the sound in the game, sadly is not up to the standards. The music though is sometimes every arcade-ish, doesnt match the ambience very well. During the boss fights where music is epexcted to be a bit intense the music turns relaxing. The music is one of the area where the game fells behind. Voice acting is superb to be honest. Nathan Spencer is voiced by Mike Patton who had his first major success as lead singer in the Rock band Faith No More. Other characters including Mag and Super Joe are voiced pretty well.

Bionic Commando is perhaps a game that will draw many comparisions with popular platforming games like Prince of Persia. No its isn’t like that game. Bionic Coammando is pretty unqiue in its ownself. With its enaging storyline and its somewhat funny but a serious protagonist Capcom has just nailed it again with its new game. With a great sense of scale and with a great equipment in the bionic arm, there’s plenty of fun to be had with Bionic Commando.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.