As most people do, I tend to have a mixture of a summary and a hook in my review introductions, usually in one entity. Today's is the simple fact that I'm going to explain that Konami can indeed count and have a very solid reason for releasing this version of Contra as "
Contra 4"
in the states, despite being the eleventh released.
With Contra 4, developer Wayforward Technologies has decided to forgo every "
advance"
in the series since the iconic
Contra III: The Alien Wars or, as Europeans know it,
Super Probotector: Alien Rebels. This includes the good (the multiple endings and unique characters of
Hard Corps), the bad (the crappy free-roaming levels of the two terrible PSX installments) and the ambiguous (
Shattered Soldier's non-linear progression and three weapon system). The result is a game that plays just like
Contra III, only better.
With the exception of people who find it too hard and people who hate action games, everyone who has played
Contra III for more than a few seconds has fallen madly in love with it. The level design is imaginative, the difficulty curve is perfect and the bosses are some of the best in the series. That's the good part of Contra's deevolution. In fact, I'll say right now that playing through
Contra 4's first seven levels was one of the most fun experiences I had on my purple, outdated DS.
That being said, I loved some of the new ideas in
Shattered Soldier (not so much
Neo Contra) such as the Hit Rate rankings that gave you a great motivation to keep playing the thing until the disk shrunk so much it was Gamecube compatible. The lack of non-linear progression such as in
Hard Corps is also inexcusable.
There's even one point where
III and even
Super C/Super Contra is superior to
4, the "
special"
stages. For the uninitiated (such as Bobpie) every pre-bile stage Contra had a new kind of stage that would appear every 1-3 side scrolling stages to break things up.
Contra had boring behind the back "
base"
stages,
Super C/Super Contra had genuinely fun rip-offs of SNK's
Ikari Warriors,
Contra III had absolutely awesome Mode 7 powered stages and
Hard Corps made variety the rule rather than the exception.
4's back to the base stages. Are these more fun and better designed than the original? Yes. Do they present bosses in ways that would be impossible if you were just staring at Bill's side? Yes again. Would I rather be hunting down nodes in 2.5D or looking for the openings I need in an overhead level? Yet another yes. I understand this is supposed to a 20th anniversary cart but take the BEST parts of the series rather than the OLDEST.
But for every bad thing I can say about this little card there are at least a dozen great things to balance it out. The three weapon system of
Shattered Soldier pales in comparison to
III's two slot system, the cop out smart bomb is gone, the level design may be the best the series has ever seen (and even takes advantage of both screens, more on this later) with a perfect balance of
Shattered Soldier's intense and imaginative bosses and
III's difficult yet insanely entertaining platforming making for what may be the greatest game in the entire series. There's also hours and hours of genuinely interesting and entertaining unlockables (though sadly nothing as weirdly entertaining as
Shattered Soldier's
all 100% pre integrated sound ending).
I've spent all this time comparing
4 to past games in the series, but what if you've never played a Contra game before (or only played the PS1 games)? Essentially you play as a single character (usually either Bill Rizer or his partner Lance Bean) with or without someone next to you playing another character as you try and shoot everything without taking a bullet yourself which means instant death in your quest to get to the right side of the screen where you fight one of many of the most brilliant bosses in gaming. You collect powerups and weapons that immediately take effect. Over time you gained the ability to choose which hand you were using at any given time effectively allowing you to store two guns at once (one doing nothing the other shooting whatever happens to be in front of you). In
4 and the arcade version of
Super Contra weapons only realize their full power on any difficulty but easy by picking up the weapon while using the same type of weapon. In addition you have a grappling hook that can immediately put you on an easily recognizable rail to travel hand over hand. This puts a large focus on vertical gameplay, often allowing you to choose a path. In
Hard Corp this was always chosen by a menu but in
4 it's simply whether you drop down/grapple up or not. What's important about this is that enemies on the other path still attack you, just as you can attack them. So do the bullets just seem to appear out of nowhere? This is where the DS's design comes in to play, each path is generally on one of the screens with the other on the other. Bullets can travel from one screen to the other, you now have two screens to keep track of. This idea is also used to make a few impressively designed vertical-centric sections including an homage to the iconic Waterfall level.
And what about the previously mentioned unlockables? Beating the game on any difficulty (including the Easy Mode which cuts you off from the last two levels) unlocks Challenge Mode. If you're hunting for a frame of reference, thing
Ninja Gaiden Black's Mission Mode or Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance's VR Missions. A handful of minigames set in
Contra 4's levels that really test your skills, patience masochism to the limit. You'll hunt down rabid wolves in the Mutt Hunt levels, attempt ultra-hard variations of snippets of the Arcade Mode's levels, take out bosses in Revenge, try out experimental weaponry not in the main game in Gunplay and get through stripped down snippets without the use of even your weak peashooter.
It's not that hours and hours of gameplay isn't a great unlockable, but it got its own paragraph because it's the main vehicle of the truckload of unlockables in the game. You get everything from old standbys like concept art to promotional comic books to, and this is the big one, fully playable and complete ports of the NES versions of
Contra and
Super C. Well, almost fully playable, select 2 Player and you'll control both Bill and Lance at once with one DS. Well you can't have everything.
Most people end their reviews by restating the summary as that is how they were taught to write. I gipped you all out of a summary so I'll say it here:
Contra 4 embodies everything everyone loves about Contra. It is the most "
Contra"
Contra since
Contra and every shooter fan with a DS owes it to themselves to shell out $30 for it.
I give
Contra 4 for the Super Nin...er...Nintendo DS a
.
____________________________
Director of the Department of Orderly Disruptions
[Last edited by Snacko at 01-28-2008 04:53 AM]
