Fix Bionic Commando (PC) 2009 crashes, unlock content & troubleshoot video issues

Bionic Commando has finally arrived for the PC. Note that this is not the previously released platform game 'BC : Rearmed’ we are talking about. This article is about the FPS that was released on the 17th of July. I’ve just installed the game, played it for a few mins and it doesn’t look bad at all. However if you are thinking of playing this with a Mouse+Keyboard setup be prepared to go through hell until you get used to the controls – everything seems to be optimized for the XBOX360 controller. That being said this article as usual discusses troubleshooting information for various audio, video and other technical issues you might encounter with Bionic Commando 2009 (and how to unlock content, of course).

Note that this article is a work in progress. More troubleshooting information will be added as we get information.

How do I unlock bonus content, additional skins and other unlockables in Bionic Commando 2009

It appears that Bionic Commando 2009 (PC) has at least three unlockable items; Prototype weapon, the purple matrix and retro skin. Right now we can tell you how to unlock the retro skin.

The retro skin is automatically unlocked if you beat previously released Bionic Commando Rearmed. However not all of us have the time to do that so let’s try a registry hack to make the game think you completed it :)

1. Launch the Windows Registry editor (in Start-->Run type regedit and press enter)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Grin\Shared\
3. Once in the ‘Shared’ directory, right click on empty white space on the right hand panel and select New->String Value
4. Type db_retro_skin as the name and press enter. Right click db_retro_skin and select modify.  Enter e03ae879d5441029e52f31b33a4181de in the value field and press ok.
5. Close registry editor and start Bionic Commando

The classic skin should now be unlocked.

How do I enable Anti Aliasing (AA) in Bionic Commando 2009?

If you were wondering whether you can enable AA from the in game menu, well you can’t. The only hope is to force AA through your video card’s control panel. However I wouldn’t recommend this as the game uses the Diesel engine which does not like driver forced settings.

How do i disable the intro movie and splash screen from being shown every time BC loads?

Intro movie is very cool the first time you see it. But when it plays every time you launch the game it becomes a pain in the ass. Luckily you can disable both the splash screen and the intro through a command line parameter.

Create a shortcut for Bionic Commando exe on your desktop. Right click the desktop shortcut, go to properties and append the following at the end of ‘Target’ field.

• -nointro 
• -s

-nointro disables intro movie while –s disables splash. To disable both use –nointro –s

Bionic Commando crashes to desktop, hangs at loading screen or does not load at all.

This seems to be quite a common issue among many gamers but the actual cause in most cases seem to be related to not having the proper software required to run the game. Make sure you have the following installed before you run the game. You can also check this thread on official support forums which is started by a user with similar problems.

1. NVIDIA PhysX – Bionic Commando requires NVIDIA PhysX installed in order to run. If your display driver did not install PhysX automatically (some driver versions do not), you can manually download and install the PhysX system software from here.
2. Updated version of DirectX – If you are using Windows XP, please update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime. This will get rid of all the ‘missing dll file’ errors and will reduce the possibility of in game crashes. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
3. Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.
   ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
   NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
   For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/. If you are having video issues with official drivers, do not hesistate to give beta drivers a go. They are not always evil as the sound like.
4. Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP – This program will automatically detect your hardware (video card, sound card and motherboard) and find available driver updates.

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