“We tried it without a jump button,” explains Capcom producer Ben Judd as Nathan Spencer, star of the original Bionic Commando, hurdles across rooftops, dreadlocks bouncing in the breeze. “It just wasn’t much fun.”

Fun, after all, is what having a grappling hook surgically grafted to your arm is all about. The new haircut, the jumping: these might seem like sacrilegious changes to an 8bit classic, but there’s more to the new Bionic Commando than unfair Spider-Man-with-guns comparisons suggest.

For starters, some of the original’s legendary difficulty remains – finding a stable lock-on point for your grappling hook takes more than a jump and a squeeze of the shoulder button. Flyovers, girders and buses all provide a decent hook, but anything smaller – a boulder, say, or a family saloon – might topple on to Nathan’s head as soon as he puts his weight on the cable. Cars can be reeled in, but if they plummet off a ledge they’ll drag our hero with them.

Conversely, Nathan can use the same loose interpretation of physics to his benefit – the zipline effect that lets him scale buildings with his hook turns into a vicious dropkick when the other end’s attached to an enemy. Alternatively, the same enemy can be dragged in and used as a human shield, whirled around Nathan’s head like a mace, knocked up into the air and punched towards other enemies, or simply held in place and perforated with the weighty Hiker shotgun.

More advanced tactics will be required for the bosses, designed with input from Capcom’s Japanese studios and typically taking up the same space as a semi-detached house – some will need to have large objects lobbed at them, others must be chased across the game’s sprawling terrain. Cheekily, developer Grin limits exactly which bits of scenery can be grappled by designating certain areas irradiated – and therefore impossible to grab – but the checkpoints and difficulty curve seem forgiving enough to forestall irritation.

And all of this, of course, will be good practice for the just-announced multiplayer mode, where everyone plays as a brightly suited FSA agent rather than squabbling over who gets to be Nathan. Game types are traditional – capture the flag, deathmatch and the like – but arenas are designed like giant jungle gyms. They’re slightly smaller than the game’s regular levels, but far more hazardous – if you’re zip-kicked off a ledge in one of the flooded maps, you’ll have one mid-air shot at saving yourself with your bionic arm before the same attachment drags you to a watery grave.

And there’s one final incentive for fans of the original: having the forthcoming Bionic Commando Rearmed on the hard drive will unlock content, including an orange-haired, flak-jacketed ‘classic’ skin for Nathan. Although he’ll still be able to jump.