Bionic Commando Multiplayer Demo -First Look

I'm not much of a demo person, or a multiplayer person for that matter, but I am interested in the updated mechanics in the new Bionic Commando game - so I thought that I'd check it out. Much to my surprise I enjoyed the few rounds I played. I think a large part of that involved the fact that chat was not enabled and there fore I couldn't get annoyed at the constant stream of inane chatter. I hope it stays this way in the final release!

The demo pops you into a 5 minute deathmatch against 7 other players (so 8 people including you), with only one map at the time being. There is no tutorial on how to traverse the world, just trial and error. While the game is loading there is an innovative method of conveying the control layout. A 3-D render of the 360 controller floats in space and you can hit buttons to see what they do. Unfortunately the load time is not that long and it took me multiple rounds before I was able to push every button to see what it does.

The matches themselves are pretty fast and furious, and favor those who really have the swing mechanic down pat. Around the map are points where gun or armor are located. the glow brightly and tend to be focus points for the action as players converge on the spot. A handy feature is the ability to grab the guns or armor with the bionic arm and pull it back to you. Several times I was able to use cover, grab a gun, and then head around a corner and blow some dude away who was camping there to try and mow people down.

You are also brightly colored on a fairly drab background, so it's not an option to hide through camouflage. the catch is that there is some vertical layering to the levels, and you can grapple your way up and then reign terror down on your opponents.

There are melee attacks, but weapon use was so prevalent that I never had a chance to get close enough to an opponent to take them down by that method.

A leveling up system seemed to be present, but did not persist from match to match in the demo.

Initially after the release of the 360 demo there were some reports that people had problems finding and connecting to matches, by Saturday afternoon when I was playing this was not an issue. A minute was about the longest I waited to be matched with the maximum amount of other players.

I am going to continue to play the demo and see how it holds up as I learn the map and controls better, and may be picking the retail release up as well.