Relation with the retail Xbox 360 release “Bionic Commando”: Completing certain parts of this game and finding various secrets in it will unlock some things in the retail game also known as Bionic Commando, which should be coming out somewhere around the time you read this review. I don’t have the full details of what is unlocked, but I hope that info is of interest.


Sometimes a modern remake of a classic game gets everything wrong, or it turns out the title wasn’t as fun as we thought it was when we were kids. Fortunately, Bionic Commando Rearmed is not only a solid remake of a good game, it actually improves on the original in many ways. Bionic Commando on the NES was a very unusual game for its time, featuring plenty of 2D platformer action; go from stage to stage shooting enemies, gaining power-ups, and killing bosses. What makes this so different is that your character couldn’t jump; he instead used a bionic claw arm to climb various surfaces and swing around.

The most obvious improvement is the technology; Rearmed obviously looks and sounds better than the NES version, and frankly does well in both of these fields even by modern standards. And with better programming and hardware come better stages; they’re a lot like the old ones, but tweaked in a few ways to make them play better. The controls are also a lot better, making it easier to switch weapons, avoid enemies, and interact with the environment. The difficulty has also been adjusted, making it easier in some places.