There's a code Bionic Commando: Rearmed provides you with to turn Nathan Spencer in Bionic Commando 360* into an "updated" Ladd from the NES game. In my Bionic Commando Rearmed review, I said something about how if they released a 360 user image of the "updated" Ladd Spencer I might switch to that. Then I took a second look at the thing realized how ugly it was, and changed my mind. I didn't go into detail in the Rearmed review, and I thought about putting it in the 360 review but ended up cutting it. But that's what I made this section for! Time to nitpick!

The first thing you'll notice is Ladd's left arm. Ladd did not lose his arm in a war and get it replaced with a clunky piece of machinery that probably weighs more than the entire rest of his body and has all its sensitive parts exposed for the bad guys to get shooty with. The truth was, Ladd Spencer did not have a robotic arm. "Bionic" was a misnomer. Even though the shot is much too clean, I think Ladd was actually supposed to be throwing the grappling hook, but the most he had was some launching tool strapped to his arm, which is what Rad used in the Game Boy Bionic Commando. Actually, I could even accept something like in the Worlds of Power novel where Jack Markson got his arm hacked off by ninjas, then got it replaced with a bionic arm that looked just like a normal one.

Let's move on from the arm and look at what else they screwed up. The original's gloves are red. The update's gloves are white. If they didn't want red gloves, I could have accepted another color, just not white. All white gloves do is make a character looks like a cartoon or a Michael Jackson wannabe. And what's up with the updated one's hair? It doesn't look spikey, it looks like he just came out of a wind tunnel. And where did his right jacket sleeve go? And it might just be the poor image quality, why does he have that dopey monkey-like grin in the left image?

And am I the only person who gets creeped out whenever I see that one cable plugged into the any version - Duke Nukem, dreadlocks, or pseudo-Ladd - of Nathan Spencer's spine? Not to mention it would be very easy for somebody grab that cable, or even for it to get accidentally snagged on something, then yanked out of his spinal cord? Yeeesh.

* Let me also take this moment to clarify that I am fully aware it was also released on PS3 and PC, but I played the 360 version so that's how I'm going to differentiate it from the Arcade, NES, and Game Boy games that were also called just "Bionic Commando" because I don't feel like writing "Bionic Commando 360/PS3/PC" over and over.