Contra: Shattered Soldier

"Staw away from me! Get back! No! Not again!"

Nothing, then black, then red. Oh....blood.

What have I done?

It's on the walls.

Slow movement in the fattening splashes, everything else is still.

Sound fading back.

Corpses.

My brother's leg shouldn't be that way. White jagged...is that bone?

Fuzzy...I was...I was...

A moaning, over there. Under the burning tables.

The sputtering of fat.

Quiet again.

A rage so large it went black - I was...

Sirens!

What was I doing?

Rage!

I was...oh! I was playing Contra: Shattered Soldier.

What did you think? Of course I was. And it made me angry. It made me damage things. I put a dent in my forehead with my own pad - ''Jesus'' I wailed, ''Jesus Christ!'' and I really meant it. It should be called that: Contra: Jesus Christ! It's hard, you see. Very hard, very to the power of ten. But it's good. Hard, but good. I hate it. Give me another go.


Contra: Shattered Soldier is a PS2 update of an ancient arcade classic, and it's hard to see it gaining wide acceptance. It harks relentlessly and unapologetically back to the days when games were not only nails as a matter of course, but to the days when each go required another coin to be spent. This presumably explains the ethos behind much of the game, as battles many of Contra's terrifyingly prolific enemies require foreknowledge that can only come from having died under them in a previous encounter. Only luck gets you through the first time, but even a troupe of horseshoe-wearing black cats clanking in front of a gypsy selling lucky heather couldn't fluke their way through all of this. Not even through one level.

This in itself wouldn't be totally disheartening if the saves weren't so meager. Bill Rizer (that's you) might be the archetype of the hardened action hero - that's right, you're saving the world - but the clearly believes the best form of defense is attack. Because that's all he's got.
One hit sends Bill to the floor, and you've only got two chances as the third one kills you. After that you get a continue, but there are only three continues before it's game over. Apply advanced principles of trigonometry to that and you'll find that you can take a total of eight hits in the entire level. To put this in perspective, it's possible to complete levels in the Medal of Honor games having taken 150 hits, and those aren't really considered as overly easy games. Die near the end of a level (you will) and you're asked if you'd like to start again at the middle, or go straight back to the start and do the whole thing again. How old fashioned and cute. Fortunately the difficulty level is adjustable, although it doesn't affect what actually happens. It just gives you more chances, so on 'Easy' you get nine hits per life and 99 continues. You'll need them.

Or perhaps I've just been playing 3D games for too long, becoming way too used to their vague, wobbly, 'near enough' 3D control instead of the pixel-precise movements needed to steer a small and flat cartoon man through a constantly moving field of bullets. About once a level the camera will swoop around you, gently reminding you that you're playing something on PS2, but for the most part Shattered Soldier looks and plays like something out of 1994, only with better explosions. It's just what we've been waiting for, no?

But while it's insanely hard, it's anything but complicated. Contra's old-school controls are as simple as its concept. One button for shoot, one button for jump, one button to charge your weapon and one button to switch between the three devices you're given. Rizer carries the maximum three weapons from the beginning, and there's no need to find ammo at any point. It's unlimited. There's a flamethrower for up-close and personal attacking, a standard machine gun for willy-nilly spraying and a grenade launcher for rolling small lumps of explosive matter down between gaps and along the floor, and each weapon has a cunning alternate fire. The machine gun launches a spinning, bullet-spitting ball into the air, for instance. But as with with all the more powerful attacks, it takes some time to power up. This leaves you more open to attack, so it needs a bit of care. Using the right mode of the right gun is absolutely key to beating Contra: Shattered Soldier. You've got to give it some thought. It won't help you if you hurl the pad through the TV screen and out the other side, you know. No it won't. I tried.

What you get at the end of all this - apart from the almost absurdly serene sense of achievements - is a rating. Yes, the rewards are as minimalist as the rest of the game, although you also unlock the final levels and see the game's predictably daft ending. The rating goes from C (rubbish) to S (unhealthily good), and relies on all kinds of troublesome things, such as how many continues you needed, how many times you died and the state of your Hit Rate. In addition to how many bullets your enemies took, this percentage takes into account the amount of scenery you destroyed. Basically you must kill or break everything possible without wasting shots, which encourages you to leave the machine gun alone straight away. A reason not to use one of the most effective weapons...great. As if it wasn't hard enough.

So this really is appealing to old-school, hardcore gamers. Animations and movements seem deliberately retro, while the visuals are decent rather than amazing and the sound is raucous and even plain nasty at times. It's just enough to get the job done, and that job is to throw as much chaos at you as your twitching, flickering eyes can handle. Learn the patterns, hone your reactions and you'll have a blast. Once you've got the dying out of your system anyway.

It's either a classic, a retro essential - at times, it seems designed to swallow another coin, which will make it a little too retro for some - or just an old rehash of some ancient old thing, depending on your viewpoint. My viewpoint? I had fun, I got extremely angry, I wanted to play it more to see what happened next. I got emotional and sweaty - surely the sign of a good game? But whatever you think of the game, unless you're the reincarnation of Mother Theresa, surround yourself with joss sticks and regularly meditate yourself into a state of calm, as this is going to make you irate. Very, very angry indeed. Blackout angry. It's all the rage, you know.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/03, Updated 03/20/03