Run ‘n Gun-a-thon — Part 2

Contra III starts off with a bang. As soon as the music starts, your instinct is to move right and blast everything in sight. Within 60 seconds, you’re jumping into a tank and annihilating fortification posts. Then a combat plane swoops in and sets the entire street ablaze, forcing you to grab steel beams to navigate the conflagration. After that, a gargantuan alien turtle bursts through a wall, eager to murder our ripped heroes.

All of this happens within the first level, making you think the rest of the game will be similarly energetic and fun. You are greeted with the map of level 2 and realize it’s a top-down level. Okay, no big deal. The top-down levels from Super C and Operation C were tolerable. Then you start playing it and realize you have to control the camera to aim because some nutjob at Konami thought making your head spin during a shooter was a brilliant idea. I rarely get motion-sick, and yet I found these levels to be borderline nauseating. My heart goes out to those who played this on original hardware and needed to vomit after playing. I found out in level 5 that you can hold L to lock your aim in place to counter the quicksand that spins you around. This is nice, but good luck beating the boss without dying.

The other levels are hit-or-miss. Level 3 has some cool setpieces and was just as fun to play as 1. 4 on the other hand is very dull until you’re hopping between missiles in the sky. 6 was also underwhelming with how similar it was to the original game’s alien lair.

So much of the experience is style over substance. In that sense, it has some parallels with Super Castlevania IV. Both titles were technical showcases for the SNES, but I had much more fun hanging out with Simon Belmont. Its atmosphere has yet to be equaled by any 2D platformer and it retained a healthy degree of challenge despite some mechanical tweaks that favored the player. The only reason I would replay Contra III is the first and third levels.

Didn’t like this as much as the first. Enemies felt more restrictive in how you could approach them and a lot cheaper in how they attacked. Take the jet pack goons, for example. You have to wait until they’re at a specific altitude to air-kick them and even then the attack could miss for no discernible reason. Other enemies, including but not limited to knife-wielding punks, motorcycle riders, agile ninjas, the skull miniboss in level 3, and the boxer in level 5, encourage a passive playstyle where you wait for them to approach and then strike back. It gets especially tedious in the second half where they throw multiple enemies with giant healthbars at you.

The bosses were the biggest letdown. In the first game, they had distinct fighting styles that, with only a couple exceptions, could be learned and beaten without taking damage. Not so here. Either the fighting style is ripped straight from the original, or they constantly jump around in unpredictable patterns to land charge or grab attacks. There’s nothing as creative as the ninja twins, the chubby pyromaniac, or even the boomerang-wielding giant in the first level.

On a more positive note, the audiovisuals are excellent. The graphics and sound effects are a huge upgrade over the original and the music, while not super memorable to me, has great audio samples for a 16-bit game. The characters feel even more distinct. Max and Skate in particular feel powerful and agile, respectively. Each enemy having a unique name and visible healthbar are also nice touches.

Maybe I just haven’t found the right beat ‘em up for me. This was still more enjoyable than the entire Golden Axe trilogy. Maybe the third or fourth entries will be up my alley.

Run ‘n Gun-a-thon — Part 1

I love platformers and action games, so it’s weird that I haven’t actually played many entries in the genre that combines the two. Time to fix that. To kick off this marathon, I will be starting with the game that started it all: the original Contra.

The Contra series, and run ‘n guns in general, are notorious for their difficulty. Even easy run ‘n guns tend to be hard to get into. That’s why I recommend playing something like Cuphead before playing Contra. In the latter, you die in one hit and only get three continues of three lives to conquer eight progressively difficult levels. Extra lives can be earned at specific score targets, but they won’t be earned so easily. Without save states or the Konami code, you can only afford to die 12-15 times before it’s game over.

Contra doesn’t beat you to the ground when you lose, it kicks you down a well. Oh, you got hit? Die and lose your upgrades! Used a continue? Better start from the beginning of the level! Lost all of your continues? Start the whole game over! However, the level design is fair. Enemy attack patterns are so simple you can deduce them in a second. This is important since there’s a lot of on-the-fly decision-making as to where to jump and what weapon is best for the occasion. You are also rewarded for handicapping yourself in the current situation if you know an upcoming scenario will be much easier as a result. The laser gun, for example, initially seems like a worse option than the default rifle because most enemies die so quickly anyway, but it makes short work of bosses and security walls if utilized properly. You can plan a strategy prior to a level since weapons always drop in the same locations, but be ready to improvise when something inevitably goes wrong.

If I had to criticize anything about Contra, it would be the two security base levels employing a pseudo-3D perspective. They didn’t bother me too much, but the lack of platforming and less-than-stellar depth perception made them less fun than the side-scroller levels. I also think the spiked walls in level 7 are a throwaway mechanic. They’re only good for catching first-time players, after which they will never pose a serious threat and will slow the player down by a few seconds. It’s a jarring pace-breaker for a game so eager to throw you in the action.

Other than those nitpicks, Contra is a good time. When you know what you’re doing, the game can be demolished in an hour. Understandable considering it was originally an arcade release and I’d rather have that than something that greatly overstays its welcome.