What I said was “I’m not going to just do a post to declare what I’m playing now.  I’ll wait until I have something interesting to say about it.”  Well, I’m about to stop playing it, and I don’t think I’ve generated anything interesting yet, so nevermind. I’ve gone far too long without a post (blame childbirth), so interesting be damned: I’m playing the Game Boy version of Bionic Commando.

Playing through the first few stages, you could get the impression that it’s a straightforward port of the NES game.  Starting around stage 6, however, the cruddy NES level design mostly disappears and the stages get vastly more challenging than anything seen there.

Even more improved than the stage design is the responsiveness of the controls.  The capabilities of the wire are basically unchanged, but it’s about twice as fast, without the big delays between actions.

This gives you two main techniques to work with when swinging.  The holdover from the NES is the forward swing.  Release at the far end of a swing, fly to the right, fire the wire at 45 degrees for another swing.

The new technique is the drop swing.  Reel in the wire so you’re just hanging right below the ceiling, hit down to drop, then fire a 45 degree wire to start a swing.  This technique never worked on the NES because Rad wasn’t agile enough for it.  What it opens up is the ability to reach successively higher tiered ceilings, plus changing your range for nearby grapple points.

Traversing stages requires mixing the two techniques.  The main source of difficulty is that you often have only one shot at getting it right.  If you reel in for a drop swing when another forward swing was called for, you might be hosed.  That’s fairly simple, but there’s a decent amount of fun to wring out of that one dynamic, and the stages  exploit it well.

The newfound agility opens up a few minor techniques.  Nothing that’s really demanded to pass stages, but stuff you can do to move faster.  You can drop out of swings early to get short bursts of speed in places where there’s no room for a full swing.  And you can slingshot: start reeling in the wire, then immediately release laterally.  Never required, but often fun.

Thanks are due to Ghegs for recommending it.  The obvious disclaimer is that Umihara Kawase Kanzenban is the much better game, and now that I’m starting to emerge from the newborn haze, it’s time I returned to that.