SXSW Interactive: Bionic Commando Multiplayer Impressions

South by Southwest(SXSW)is a week long event held in Austin, Texas every March and is known mainly for its film festival and its even bigger music festival. Gaming is very new for SXSW, and because of this it is also a small part of the very big festival. But it is growing, and I'm glad I got a chance to play some cool things.

So the only big game I saw on the show floor the other day that has not yet been released was Capcom's Bionic Commando set to come out in a couple of months for 360, PS3, and PC. I played a few sessions of the game's multiplayer component and thought I'd share some of my opinions on the game's mechanics.

The first thing that stands out in Bionic Commando (and maybe the only thing) is the use of the bionic arm for environment navigation. Much like my guilty pleasure, the game Spiderman 2, the game succeeds with that same sense of uniquely free, yet controlled, aerial traversal. While Spiderman 2 had a "speed up" button to propel the high flying hero through the air quicker, Bionic Commando relies on precise timing to gain maximum speed while swinging through the air. Because carefully timed button pressing and releasing is required in combination with the aiming of the arm in mid flight, there is a very steep, albeit rewarding, learning curve to this twitch based method of traversing the game world.

And this is what made the multiplayer experience so fucking fun. The game type was set to a generic 4 player deathmatch, but the map itself was pretty awesome. The small, but very vertical, rooftop map lent to exactly what I wanted out of this game; badass swinging pursuits. Getting blown off a roof towards certain death, grabbing on to the side of the building while falling, and then swinging around the side of that building only to pop up and get the surprise flank on the dick who knocked you off is... well... really fucking cool.

My actions weren't this graceful when I first picked up the controller, but I got a hang of the mechanics in subsequent play sessions with the game. But this curve is precisely why I think this game's multiplayer will really stand out. In most shooters, the player with the "better aim" always wins; not so much in Bionic Commando. In the matches that I played, the person with the most "points" would win the round. You can get points by just killing people sure; but if you kill a dude during a swinging pursuit while you are both in the air... then you get way more points. So the person who has the most kills doesn't necessarily win in the type of match where we were playing. The reward system of "killing with style" is giving me the drive to hone my skills at the game much more than I do in most "point and shoot" multiplayer shooters on the market.

So yeah, I'm officially stoked for the game now. I have a feeling that Bionic Commando will be a surprise sleeper multiplayer hit this year. Along with Red Faction 3 of course.


Brad