Contra

"OMG I got onto teh l3v3l two!!"

Well, what is Contra? It's a fast-paced shooter action game for the old NES and it's one of the best 2D side-scroller shooters ever. It shows off the power of the NES very well with its great graphics, quick snap-judgement action and its overall fun factor. Your basic aim in Contra is to move throughout many levels, and using a weapon to thwart your foes, you must also avoid attacks from enemy projectiles by ducking and jumping. It's a really addictive shooter, and the fun is a whole lot better if you have a buddy to cooperate with you in your mission to banish the invading aliens from Earth.

Gameplay - 8/10

Contra has very easy controls at your disposal - simply hit the B Button to fire your weapon of use, and A will make your character jump up, with the D-Pad making them move. Nothing could be simpler, really. The controls are easy to know and understand but then again you can have versatile fighters if you can manoeuvre them with skill and practise. You have infinite ammo for your weapon so while this makes it much simpler in terms of the battling system, the main point is that you can take out your enemies with skill and evade incoming shots, which is where the real fun of the game lies. Kind of like climbing a tree. The fun's in falling and hitting the ground =P.

The basic layouts of each of the stages you advance through are simple enough. You can run around in many directions and travel on platforms or in the water at the bottom and your route as your progress is all up to the imagination. It's fun since you can have fun shooting away in all directions and improving your strategy and skill at the game. You're given some decent power-ups and you have unlimited lives and ammo to make the game a lot simpler. At the end of each stage is a boss to overcome before you can move on to the next stage, so you have to devise a plan for taking them all out. It has a lot of challenge, but it can be simple if you get to understand the functions and how to take them out.

The challenge of Contra, however, is rather phenomenal. You have to be precise with your fighting strategy, since you can be taken out if you get hit just once. This'll make it very hard, yet the system you play Contra on is indeed very addictive. In terms of an action game, Contra offers some of the most fun gameplay to experience from an 8-bit console. There's also some bonus stages to play, which makes it that much better.

The 2-player mode will make the game a whole lot better. Both players can go through the levels simultaneously, and with your buddy helping you out stomp out the alien squad, not only is it a lot more fun, but your teamwork and tactics can make you progress very far in the game if you and your friend can have some good strategy. While Contra's gist is very basic and all you do is run, jump and shoot, it's pure fun and the gameplay is very great, even if the game is near impossible to beat.

Which raises another point. A very bad thing about Contra is that it's a very hard game. If you're hit once you're dead. I'd have been happier if you died in four or five hits to give you at least a bit of a chance. Sometimes it can be crazy to try to reach your opponents if they're hiding in a turret or something, you need to get close in order to hit them, and then they suddenly blow your brains out. Grrr.

Story - 5/10

The basic storyline of Contra is that you play as a trooper and your mission is to prevent the aliens from invading the earth. Well, as I'd say there's a billion films and other the games that share this storyline so I'm not in the least surprised. But as usual I'd back this up by saying - it's what builds up to the game that counts, and this story does it perfectly. So fair's fair.

Audio/Video - 7/10

First of all, I'll talk about the music and sound effects of the game. Contra has a lot of great sound to experience in a very ranging soundtrack for different levels, and this is one of the better things about the music of the game. What I didn't find so good though was that most of the music sounds rather dull and it could have had some higher pitch in it, if you know what I mean. All the stages' music sounds suited rather decently to it and I compliment Konami for a good effort at this.

The sound effects of Contra are also pretty good. The sound of the bullet firing from the barrel of the big gun your man carries actually sounds rather good, instead of a "blip!" which is what you'd usually expect from a NES game, since back in the early nineties video games' sound effect were not really that developed until the PlayStation came along. Many sound effects are well suited to what they represent in the game.

And now I will talk about the graphics of the game. Contra does not fail to impress. The game is somewhat colourful in many areas like round one, in which you have the basic layout of the jungle, green grass, brown trees, blue water, etc. I think the character models look pretty decent but they could have looked better if there had been a little more work on it since I've seen some better ones from a 1990 NES game (one example would be Super Mario Bros. 3), yet the game does display some terrific graphics in general. Weapon fire like flames or plain bullets look reasonably recognisable and well done.

The game also has some animation to its name. The second round of the game is a 3D-frame shooter round, which is pretty fun. For a NES game this looks very well done. When you clear one of the areas out, you'd get your man to move forward into the next room and it looks like real 3D movement, but the frames go instantly from one to the next while you move forward, like separate camera shots. There is a good amount of detail gone into many of these levels, characters and enemies you'll find throughout the game, as well as the weapons, powerups and bosses. I do agree that Contra does show off some of the NES's better graphical power in this game, and overall it's pretty impressive.

Replayability - 6/10

One of the biggest flaw of Contra is that the game is too damn hard. This game is extremely challenging, seeing as you are killed by one bullet, and in the first level you're already surrounded and you must be using your tactics. Once you've got game over it's round one all over again, and progressing through the game is very difficult, even for experts. There is a lot of fun with the action of the game, but you will eventually get tired of playing if you cannot progress past one part of this extremely frustratingly hard game. Trust me, I've experienced it. With friends to play with you will be extra fun, and by yourself it will be very addictive for a while, but after you experience the near-physically-impossible-to-beat-the-game factor this game possesses, you could give up on it.

Overall - 8/10

If this game had been a lot easier than what it already is, I could be satisfied enough with Contra and give it a 10/10, but with a few flaws that Konami could easily have fixed, this game came a few yards short from being claimed the greatest shooter of them all. The playing system of the game is great, the graphics are smooth, it shows of a lot of the NES's power, and it's one of the better shooters you could get for your NES. When you think of the best titles Konami have made, you'd think of the Metal Gear games, Silent Hill, and so on, but this game sometimes never appears. Now the game is not very well known, but it definitely is one of Konami's best pieces of work. It's worth a purchase, if you can live up to the challenge.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/23/04