“Whoa! Is that a long health bar or are you just happy to see me?”

Spider-Man with guns is a concept that holds no small amount of promise for the gamer in search of a powerful avatar, and yet that promise is only partially fulfilled in Bionic Commando. Much less an accomplishment than Bionic Commando Rearmed—a remake of the original game that served as an appetizer—this 3D sequel/reboot of the classic NES 2D platformer bets the house on its bionic arm mechanic, with little more than cursory attention given to crucial aspects of solid action-adventure games.

For a while, probably longer than it should, this focus on the arm abilities kind of works. You swing around the ruins of an post-apocalyptic city, all abandoned skyscrapers and crumbling freeways, using your unique tool not only for traversal but also for increasingly creative combat maneuvers. The movement system proves easy to learn but hard to master, and rewarding when done correctly. Regrettably, this introductory segment gives the player a sweet taste of the potential that is never realized. Perhaps the early-game tutorials for abilities that won’t be unlocked until later on should be a tipoff that this baby needed more time in the oven.

After a handful of bite-sized stages, you start to realize that you’re just swinging between generic firefights. That there isn’t much else going on besides the arm stuff, and that the arm stuff isn’t done so well (and isn’t all that unique, twenty years after its introduction) that the game’s shortcomings can be ignored. It can be forgiven its silly storyline in consideration of its goofy source material, even if the content of the story doesn’t match the game’s darker aesthetic and tone. But what about the uninspiring arsenal, mediocre gunplay, lazy level design, overbearing linearity, copy-paste environments, repeated enemies, and quick-time event climax? What about the fact that the game so rarely plays to its single strength, conspiring to keep you from taking joy in navigating the environment?

Ultimately, Swedish developer Grin has done little more than take a single neat concept and build a merely tolerable game around it. It’s partially redeemed by its core mechanic—not to mention a decent orchestral score, a few (but far too few) fun boss battles, and a voice cast committed to the hammy material—but it never delivers the moment-by-moment exhilaration that it seems on the brink of delivering. In hindsight, maybe Grin shouldn’t have taken on contracts to develop not only Bionic Commando Rearmed and Bionic Commando, but also film tie-ins Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator Salvation, within a two-year span. They were stretched too thin and the proof is in the pudding.