Bionic Commando (2009) - 7/10
I wanted to give this game a shot because sometimes despite how bad the reviews were, I heard some good things about the swinging mechanics and I wanted to give it a shot. It took me about 5 hours to complete so it's rather short.
First, the game play is pretty janky. The story is really generic. The gun play is lame. Even the one liners are corny. I can see why this game wasn't well received.
However, the swinging mechanic is really fun! The levels are really linear but designed in a way for you to swing through them. It's really fun swinging across the map, seeing bullets whizzing by, as you try to race to your next objective. With how lame the gun play is and how fun the swinging is, I'm convinced the developers wanted you to race through the game as much as possible.
Of course, there are sections that force combat and those can get tedious, even frustrating. One part that really sucks is the zip kick is fun to do to basic enemies but is just broken for stronger enemies. The enemies are clearly designed for you to zip kick from behind but most of the time, I'm just left stuck in the air and I can't ungrapple until I take damage. Sometimes you can shoot them in the back while you're stuck in this animation but depending on the enemy, you'll run out of ammo. There were actually times where I had to reload a save because I was just stuck in an animation to zip kick and the enemy would just flail around. I found the best strategy against these stronger enemies to not zip kick at all and try to throw rocks or vehicles. If there were none available, I found myself reloading a save and conserving ammo for the best guns I could get and using those.
The game is really janky, some things just outright broken, but there's a charm here that kept me playing. Is it a great game? No. But it was pretty good and it tried something new. It didn't always work but in an industry of nothing but cookie cutter games that all feel the same, this one dared to be different and had some fun unique mechanics.
Also, it has one of the funniest easter eggs I've ever seen. In one of the boss fights, you get a dialogue where your commander says "you have no choice but to fight that thing," to which you reply "my pleasure." If you die and start the fight over, the voice line changes to "you have no choice but to f*** that thing," and you reply with just an "ummm..." It caught me completely off guard and the voice line for the "ummm" even sounds unscripted by the tone of the voice actor. That alone gives it bonus points in my book!