Bionic Commando

I think my favorite thing about these games is how much of a gulf there is between how limiting the controls feel when you first pick them up, compared to how agile and in-control you can start to feel just a few levels in. The level design is fantastic at getting you to think of creative ways to use your grappling hook, and it puts a lot of trust in the player to mess around with it, at times even requiring some specific challenging maneuvers for progression which other games would save for secret challenge levels. This kind of rope-based platforming isn't just a gimmick or a slight wrinkle on the jump-based Mario-like systems, it's an entirely new gameplay paradigm. This series could and should have spawned an entire genre of rope-based platformers, but the only really noteworthy entries that I can think of are niche titles like Umihara Kawase or Ninja Five-O. And even then, both of those games have a jump button.

Surprisingly good. More people should play this GB version, it’s really fun.