First of all may I point out the three gleaming guns, or the fact that the laser rifle is being held by a mini combat robot. How about the jean wearing, wraparound sunglasses adorned, arm cannon wielding wolf man. Well yes, you get to play as any one of them, and even partner up with another member for tag team annihilation. Who wouldn't want to be part of this Hard Corps team in this first non-Nintendo iteration of Contra with a lineup like that?
Contra has always been a "man's" game full of nonsensical action, explosions, guns, aliens, and more guns and this is by far no different, but not the slightest bit held back by its reputation. It has the guns, and explosions, and my word, the amounts of explosions... and guns! Each character has their own set of weapons they prefer to choose. Ray (The Ranger Joe Bro Dude) just starts with a laser gun, and upgrades to missiles, the all powerful spread gun, and more missiles. Sheena (the only woman in the game) just loves machine guns, grenade launchers, death ray lasers, and homing shotgun spread lasers. Then that cute little robot named Browny just has a machine laser rifle, boomerang grenades, an energy electrocuting yo-yo, and a shield bubble making missile energy laser rifle thing. Also he can fly. Not forgetting Fang (The Wolf Man) who has bionic arms that transform into fireball machine guns, flame punches, a flamethrower, and energy blasting punches that take out bosses in two hits. You can see why everything ends up exploding in this game already. Seeing that I had a choice between those four I quickly went for the one who forwent guns for flame and punches with nothing but jeans, a bandolier of bombs, and undeniably slick set of sunglasses.
Best decision ever.
True to its franchise name, the game opened up with a van barreling through the streets exploding on its way. Those explosions never once stopped until the credits rolled or a stage clear screen was seen. Shoot first, explode second, no questions taken. The story was the one they are all about. Aliens were here, the last Contra man blew them all up several times over 5 years past, and now another evil doer wants to resurrect the aliens yet again. I guess they just want to be punched to death don't they? Point made short, the story is set in concrete, it's short, simple, and so very sweet for you to take your desired choice of destruction on its path. It creates a line for you to have fun with. It isn't some over dramatized soap opera with intricate stories and emotions galore. 'Here is some bad guys, here is their plan, it involves aliens; let's go kill them.' Seriously, you are briefed by some ex marine commander in four or five lines three times in the entire game taking a grand total of 39 seconds to watch it all. That's all I ever wanted, and the player does exactly that: kill everything, or die; never a second thought. So just as the story does, straight into game play.
Holding down the fire button and bum rushing through the streets I found myself plowing throw a city of soldiers and odd robot contraptions, riding on a jet bike on the highway, running on said highway by foot room a madman in a mech suit with spiked mace balls for arms, fighting my way through a research lab of alien doom, to a junkyard taken straight out of Swat Kats fending off rouge bikers. I even found myself in the amazons literally, so true to every sense of the word, blasting back hundreds - hundreds! - of mutant imp jungle men in a wall of fiery death with my punching flames, before running into a waterfall alien and then being saved by a dinosaur. I soon ran into the man villain after beating the recurring arch nemesis at the entrance to his lair of doom. That villain wore a black cape and fly on a hover disk. So badly I needed to punch him. Then I carried on through a death pit arena of aliens, a runaway train with a robot that tries to stop it, a secret alien breeding center, riding the waves of the sea, taking a space elevator to a space station, hanging from a helicopter fighting skull plane bombers and long-shoting ninjas, to riding rockets to stop a ICBM in mid flight literally - again in every sense - filled with aliens. With all that wonderful excitement of manly brutality, I realized this game had choices you could make at various points that led to one of six endings. Six whole endings making this highly repayable as the endings are customized to the character you played as. At one point I even had the choice to join the villain in his global domination. I even married a monkey.
You didn't think I was exaggerating were you? Also, note explosion.
The mechanics of the game was the same as most Contra games. You had no health, just a number of lives to spare and a continue. The score was hidden off game as to not distract from your intense desire to murder everything on screen. Second player could easily sit down mid play and press start to just jump in and add to the chaos. It did however expand on a few aspects such as the ability to collect all the weapons and switch at your disposal rather than tactically choosing which weapon to replace each time you came across a weapon drop adding to the fun rather than the struggle to find that spread gun item without dying. You still lost the said weapon equipped at the moment of death. Though perhaps the best addition was the slide ability. At any moment you can slide kick into your enemies and avoid utter danger that otherwise you could not come out alive adding the intensity of the game. The actual design of the game shifted away from the level gauntlets of endless enemies and focused more on the massive amount of bosses and sub bosses each very fun to play and all very unique. At one point you are chased by a robot monstrosity in a hall, but soon you find yourself chasing it as it tries to scramble its scrap hulk away.
This game was made in the generation known for the golden age of 2D gaming and this is a prime example. The game is just crammed full of small details you won't notice even after a few play-throughs and just looks amazing, despite being 16 years old; and it continues to age exceptionally well. The controls are superb as well: a shoot button, D-pad, and a jump button; all you need. Except for the extremely surprising feature to switch in mid game between run-and-gun style and shoot-and-aim-while-standing. While holding the fire button down, all you have to do it hit the button next to it and you toggle control style to one where you can aim in a direction without having to move as well; absolutely perfect for all the boss fights. The game is just so well constructed, you question nothing, and do everything it wants you to, and you just like it. It's just good.
With a very very stark contrast from my last review, we have a game here that gives the bare essentials of a story, short and solid. An extremely intense action packed, fun game full of surprises and extremely well made design. Quite the opposite of Kingsley's Adventure, but still amazingly fun. The one similarity both share is their love at what they do. If you love guns and shooting aliens while atop helicopters with not a single tacked on thing such as a romance story or quirky mini games, then this game is your dreams. It does what it was meant to do, nothing more, and all utterly perfect.
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What more can I say about this game? One out of one.
Godspeed Contra.
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