Bionic Commando: Rearmed (Xbox Live Arcade)

There is a glut of games on Xbox Live Arcade that is basically taking an 80s video game, giving it splashy new graphics, adding a few features, and calling it a remake. Of these, the only good one so far has been Pac-man: Championship Edition, because it does something new and interesting with the game. Otherwise it’s just another retread of a game that, at the core, is only worth playing for about ten minutes at a time. After all, there’s a reason these old games were popular in arcades.

But Bionic Commando: Rearmed goes a little farther into the 80s than Galaga or Missile Command, instead taking an old Nintendo game… and giving it splashy new graphics and adding a few features. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing in this case; Bionic Commando works better because it’s a more complex game than the aforementioned quarter-eaters; it’s an action-adventure title with a non-linear world map! In the mid-80s!

In the game, you play a guy with a bionic arm who can attach it to stuff and swing around (in lieu of jumping). Which can make platforming awkward at times, but they have really made the game a lot smoother than it played originally. There are still some frustrating sections, usually anything involving the spikes of death, but overall it’s a pretty fun experience. That’s pretty much all to say – it’s just your basic Nintendo platformer, except with swinging instead of jumping. The only real bad thing is that the game is ridiculously short – you can easily finish it in 2 or 3 hours, but at the price of $10 (or 800 Microsoft Itchy & Scratchy Dollars), it’s certainly worth the investment.

3 out of 5