I'd heard this was an exceptional Contra-style game, but I'm not usually one for action games. These days, I'll often play through a game like this one time after a lot of frustration and then never pick it up again, which seemed like a pretty good reason to not pick it up at the like $15 it goes for. However, since it's on Game Pass, I figured it would be worth giving a try, and dang was it EVER. I beat it last night, and then played through it maybe four or five times more this morning just because I was having so much fun. I don't think I've ever enjoyed an action game this much, at least since I started writing about games in any capacity. I've spent maybe 5 or 6 total hours with it, but I doubt that this will be the last time I blaze some chrome.

Blazing Chrome is a 2 player co-op Contra-style run'n'gun game that's pretty immediately familiar to anyone who has played 16-bit Contra, especially Contra: Hard Corps. That said, it also takes a fair bit of inspiration from Metal Slug, and I was getting the feeling of at least a dash of Mega Man Zero. The style is VERY much an homage 90's gritty pop, and they do a great job of replicating the Contra aesthetic while still putting their own flair on things. The playable character designs are fun, and I like that half the cast are both female and designed in a way that is more "power" than "sex appeal". It's a nice change from how the casts of games like this have been in the past (and often still are). The music is pumping and fits the game really well, and the game has a great "16-bit if the animations were way better" style to it, kinda like how Shovel Knight looks 8-bit but with far better animation quality. The game knocks it out of the park for presentation for sure, even going as far as to include really low-quality voice samples to make it feel like a REAL 90's game XD

There are different types of weapons you can get and swap between (like Contra), and if you get close enough your character will do a quite powerful melee attack (like Metal Slug). You can even find mechs to stomp around in in some levels, also like Metal Slug. What gives me a bit of Mega Man Zero vibe is just how powerful the melee attack is. The melee attack in Metal Slug is good, but it never seems good enough to warrant using as anything other than a last resort. Your soldiers in Blazing Chrome have both a powerful melee attack (with a quite large arcing range) as well as being nimble enough to dodge around enemies, giving a really big risk-reward to meleeing enemies instead of just shooting them. That was one of my favorite parts of Mega Man Zero, and this is really scratching that same itch.

There are two types of characters in Blazing Chrome, but one set of them you only unlock after beating the game once. The default ones play very much like classic Contra characters, with nimble jumps, hitting the triggers to change between your collected weapons (which you lose if you die with it, except for your default weapon), and the aforementioned auto-melee attack ala Metal Slug. There are also support bots you can pick up which can provide two extra hits before death, be an auto-firing option for you, or make you faster and give you a double jump! You also have an invincible, Smash Bros-style dodge roll you can do by holding down and pressing A, but I really wish that could be rebound. SO many times I died by trying to fire downwards and then trying to jump, or trying to jump down through the platform I was standing on (something this game doesn't have at all).

The other characters you unlock after beating the game once are what the game calls the ninja characters, and they're far more melee-focused and totally change how you play the game. Not only do they not have an auto-melee, they don't even get multiple weapons. What they get instead is VERY powerful though. Their one weapons is a medium-range melee attack that is only manual, but if you charge it, it gets way more powerful and has a screen-wide range. Instead of having the triggers change weapons (which they don't have), it is an air-dodge that they can do which even hurts enemies you pass through. This makes them really good at bosses but struggle a bit with normal enemies (because of the more limited range), which is the opposite of how I felt the default, range-focused characters play. Using the normal dodge rolls, let alone the airborne dodges, takes some getting used to, but you feel like a BOSS when you can actually start dodging enemy attacks properly XD.

Then probably the last thing I really love about Blazing Chrome is the difficulty. The game is as hard as you want it to be, with three modes of easy, normal, and hardcore (which is locked until you beat normal). Easy is normal mode but with 8 lives per continue, and normal has 6 lives per continue and more enemies. Hardcore mode is only 4 lives per continue, but is the ONLY mode with limited continues (4 of them) and has a CRAP ton of enemies (I could never beat it on anything but normal). But even then, levels are split up into several sections, and while dying instantly respawns you Contra-style, using a continue restarts you at that section and not at the start of the whole stage. This makes the game feel far less punishing than an actual 90's game and really helped me stick with it because it's so much easier to practice the bits you're having trouble with. That's by no means to say that Blazing Chrome is an easy game, but I really appreciated just how much it allows the player to engage with it on their own terms in a way that is really not common with games like this (in my experience at least) outside of breaking out a Game Genie.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is definitely one of my favorite games I've played all year, and one of my new favorite action games ever. Blazing Chrome is a love letter to 90's run'n'guns that is faithful, improves on those old games' faults, and manages to stand on its own without feeling like some cheap copy. It is an absolutely stellar game and if you like run'n'guns at all, you are doing yourself a great disservice by holding out on Blazing Chrome.

Eins meiner liebsten Run'n'Guns da draußen und das liegt nicht nur daran, dass ich in den Credits stehe.
Der Artstyle, das Setting, der Soundtrack, alles davon ist erstklassig. In kaum einem Spiel in diesem Genre fühlt sich die Standardwaffe so gut an. Einfach Gegner plätten ist perfekt gelungen. Die anderen Waffen sind leider etwas enttäuschend und auch Jahre später immer noch ein Stück mehr janky als ich es am liebsten hätte.

Dafür sind die Setpieces gut, die Level machen spaß, die Passagen die Abwechslung bringen sollen sind alle ziemlich solide und auch hier, wie auch schon bei Contra Rebirth, ist ein Playthrough auf Leicht relativ breezy und mit genau 40 Minuten auch nie länger als es sein muss.

Goooood stuff~