Bionic Commando: Rearmed was released today. The original was one of my favourite NES games, so of course I had to pick this one up.

It’s a remake, but extremely close to the spirit of the original, with the same basic abilities, same overhead map, same level layouts, same mid-transit truck battles… There are various differences though, such as being able to switch weapons on the fly rather than picking one at the start of the level, the minibosses are completely different (they were rather lame in the original), some different obstacle types, you can grab barrels and enemies with the arm and toss them, and new enemy types (I think).

It was a rough start though, since it feels more difficult than the NES version, even on Medium. It seems to be easier to get hit while swinging around, enemies are alerted more easily and move around more, take more hits to kill, and their firing patterns are less predictable. I failed the first area and had to redo the whole thing three times before finally beating the first miniboss, but I think I’m more familiar with the controls and have gone through a few more areas now.