![]() Looking not unlike Metal Gear's VR training missions, they take the form of timed obstacle courses. It's the Challenge Rooms, unlocked during the single player game, and they're pretty much a whole extra game, for free. Look closer though and you'll see that there's another game mode on the menu. Boss fights require shooting and dodging skills, but also shrewd arm use to hit otherwise unreachable weak points. A reasonable excuse, but it doesn't really compensate for the fact that this would be enormous fun online. The bad news: it's all offline only, apparently because it was added late in development. Multiplayer is the most immediately obvious addition, with co-operative play as well as deathmatch arenas where you and three friends can swing around like gun-toting chimps and try to do each other in. ![]() However, there are new elements to Bionic Commando Rearmed, and these more than smooth over the rough edges left by doggedly following a slightly creaky twenty-year-old gameplay design. Whatever the reason, I feel sure that a few more concessions to today's more flexible control options would have made this a more successful update without betraying the core concept. Other traditional elements have been changed to cater for modern expectations - you now have a health bar, rather than the one-hit-kills of old - but perhaps they just don't want to overshadow the full 3D remake currently in development. So while Rearmed does a fine job of honouring its past - and poking a little fun at itself along the way - it's a shame that some of the core mechanics haven't been overhauled to really make the most of their new technological home. ![]() It's certainly not enough to spoil the fun, but for all but the most dedicated franchise fan, it's bound to cause some annoyance. ![]() Instead you find yourself doing the old pixel-shuffle backwards and forwards to get in position to hit an anchor point in just the right spot. The right stick isn't particularly busy, so it would have been nice to assign arm-aiming to that. Much like the lack of jump, it's utterly faithful to the original but the sort of thing you'd hope would be improved for modern gamers. Left, right, straight up and diagonally at fixed angles. The bionic arm can only be shot out in increments of 45 degrees. The swinging mechanic also remains unchanged. The same is true of shooting, with your field of attack reduced to simple horizontal left or right streams of bullets.
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