Contra? Is It Really You?

By Tom Hodgson

Hard Corps: Uprising is the next release in the Contra lineage and a prequel to the events found in 1994’s Contra: Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis. Not that anyone is really playing Contra games for their plots, but it helps solidify the fact that this is indeed an official Contra title and not some imitation offering looking to cash in on your childhood attachment.

One thing is for sure: this is the hardest (insert expletive) game I’ve played in a longgg time. Not since Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox have I struggled this rigorously to complete a title, an old school franchise itself which shares the hardcore trial-and-error approach of the 8-bit generation.

As dated an alumni Contra is to the genre, Japanese developer Arc System Works has done a fantastic job bringing a dated game into 2011. Anime character sprites present a unique and modern feel to a game mechanic that has made many tours of duty. The over-emphatic, cheesy, macho heroic one-liners of Uprising’s protagonists sell you on the fun, as the feverish guitar riff soundtrack and the non-stop onslaught never allows even a moment’s rest. Power-ups of new and old help you combat the ceaseless hordes and special abilities like double jump, dash, air-dash, and bullet deflection assuage some of the anguish akin to the unrelenting Contra gameplay.

Aside from Arcade Mode, which presents in typical old school fashion the mind-numbingly daunting task of completing the entire game with a very limited amount of lives and continues, Rising Mode is a fresh, new age approach to the side-scrolling action, implementing a leveling system. Instead of knocking over the Redwood tree in Arcade Mode with one giant push, Rising Mode allows you to chop away at it. Even if you run out of continues, your points carry over upon death and can be used to purchase upgraded weapons and abilities. Fully upgraded, I would imagine that Rising Mode makes a mockery of the franchise’s token difficulty, taking away some of the essence of the game in the process.

Casual gamers need not apply ~ you’ll feel like you’re having an aneurysm. Only the hardcore gamers who spent their childhood basking in the glow of a television screen with a controller in their hand should consider this undertaking, and they themselves might even be taken under. There are moments that simply set you up just to fail. It’s when you somehow make it out of those moments alive that you realize you’re playing a Contra game and having a damn fine time playing it, too.

Rating: 86%