C: The Contra Adventure

"Grab your nearest bottle of hard liquor as we mourn the death of Contra. For the incarnation of crap has arrived, and its only on the PSX."

We gather here today to mourn the death of our beloved Contra. Contra was a simple game that only liked side scrolling adventures and plenty of button pressing mayhem. This was until Konami decided to create something bearing the name of Contra, that was said to resemble a game, but was actually more closely resembling of a flaming bag of freshly acquired camel crap straight from the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Contra Adventures (or whatever its called) is a terrible game. It is actually so terrible that it was what eventually turned shneepshnop into a full-blown alcoholic. Why would they do this to shneepshnop? Who knows? Maybe so someone somewhere can sit in their little office building and laugh at how they murdered one of my favorite series. Contra sadly sits up in heaven with Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Sonic the Hedgehog whom are all victims, that had their promising futures ruined or whored out by their companies. Pass the bottle. We’ll need it to comprehend this debacle.

Gameplay - -12/30 Yes, that is a negative sign by the score. You don’t need your vision corrected.
I saw this game sitting in Circuit City for only $10. I thought “O, what the hell. Its only $10 I might as well buy it.” So I did. I slowly drove home, laughing at the bums on the corner, and I eventually arrived at my house. I went into my room and put Contra Adventure into my PS2 (which still played PSX games at this time) and off I went.

The first level is reminiscent of old school Contra. Nice side scrolling action. Plenty of bullets flying, enemies running every which way. All that good stuff. I thought well it isn’t great but its good enough for me. As I played through the level I noticed how instead of instant death you now had a life bar, where getting hit did not guarantee death. It only docked a portion of your life away. I didn’t like this idea at first. Contra to me is about making quick decisions, as you pull of Matrix like moves, knowing that 1 mistake meant instant death. But the game seemed decent so I kept my opinions to myself. I also noticed this game was difficult but that is how Contra games should be.

After I beat the first level I was plopped into the worst 3D environment I had ever seen. Everything was a blur. I couldn’t see where I was going. My guy moved with the mobility of a quadriplegic, and the game was just flat out difficult to play. I found that if I held down the attack button I could kill just about anything without any effort, since the game auto aims for you. I just held down the attack button as I painstakedly trudged through the poorly detailed and most linear 3d level I had ever seen. I decided after about 11 1/2 seconds of playing that this sucked, and I was ready to finish this level so I could get back to the normal side scrolling Contra adventure like the first level. After about 20 minutes of boring gameplay and repetitive attempts to doze off I finished the level. I grew excited. “Yes! Now I can play the good level”. Usually in Contra games they alternate levels with 1 that is side scrolling or 1 that is 3d/overhead and continue to switch off after every level. Well the third level began and my Rambo clone of a player plopped down into another poorly detailed and boring 3d environment. God. So off I rushed through this level hoping to make it to the next side scrolling one. I did this through about 5 levels before reality tapped me on the shoulder and then proceeded to kick me in the balls. There are no more 2D levels. The first was the last of its kind. I am forever stuck in 3d as long as I continued to play this game.

What we have here is a crappy game with the name Contra sprawled across the cover. A name that would better relate to this game would be “The Worst Piece of Crap That Ever Manifested Itself Onto a Video Game”. My god. This game sucks.

Funfactor - 3/20 Almost as uninteresting as a Feverpitch concert. Almost…
The word fun needs not to be used to describe Contra Adventure. This game is lame. This game is boring. This game hurts your eyes. This game sucks. This game sucks. And boy, does this game suck. It is not fun. The first level was fun. The rest are not. They are boring, linear, repetitive, uninteresting, uninspired, and bring nothing new into the realm of 3D gaming.

Control – 4/15 Ick.
The control here is insanely confusing in the 3D levels. L1 and L2 make your guy look up or down. R1 makes him strafe. He jumps 30 feet in the air by pressing X. He shoots by pressing square. The other buttons do the usual stuff like switch weapons, use bombs, etc. The response to your button input is sluggish at its best. And the view in the 3D levels is too close to your guy, thus making it difficult to see.

Graphics – 2/15 It burns, it burns. Take it off the screen, take it off.
All jokes aside here the graphics in Contra Adventure are worse than they were on the SNES. Everything is dull and dimly colored. Everything else is so pixelized they look like clumps of waded up newspaper thrown together to resemble a shape. The graphics here actually hurt my eyes, and I had to go re-strengthen my contact lenses.

Music/Sound - 4/15 Mmm, static, wonderful…
Some of the same tunes return from previous Contra games, but low and behold, they sound worse. They sound like they were recorded in the back of an alley by a trashcan surrounded by garbage and bums. They are overwhelmed by static and poor recording quality. The sounds are, um, well since you hold down the attack button the whole game it kind of drowns out all remaining sounds.

Story - 1/5 Put away the “Story of the Year Awards” they wont be used on this game.
Ha what a joke. But if you must know here it goes. There are some aliens. They attack earth. So one man alone must fend them off.

Replayability – B 1/5 Once again…
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. In order to have replayability one must first have playability. Contra Adventure has no playability so how can replayability present?

Conclusion - 3/100

Pros
- There is nothing good, fun, or redeeming about this game.

Cons
- They replaced the side scrolling format with a 3D format
- The 3D levels suck
- The controls are awful
- The graphics are so wretched I cannot see what I am doing
- The music sounds like someone blowing their nose
- The sound effects are garbage
- They have 2 pictures of side scrolling levels on the back cover of the case to fool you into thinking this game has a lot of classic Contra action. Unfortunately they are 2 screenshots from the same level.
- Anything else negative you want to make up can more than likely be applied to this game.

This game ruined all credibility that could be given to the Contra series. This game is garbage. Pure garbage. Do not ever buy it. Do not ever look at it. Do not ever talk about it. If you follow this guideline your life will be better. Now pass that bottle…

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/04