Contra III: The Alien Wars

"110% adrenaline"

Exactly how good can video game that has all the ingredients necessary for a new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie be? Play Contra 3 and you will have the answer. I just loved this game from the first moment I played it, years back.
Let’s cut the crap and head straight for the ratings shall we?

Story 3/10: I doubt Contra 3: the Alien Wars/Super Probotector: Alien Rebels was ever meant to have a good story. It’s just an excuse to make an awesome action packed game with lots and lots of shooting. Aliens are in war with humans, two mercenaries have to take one the whole enemy army by themselves, what more needs to be said? How much sense does the story of a snes side scroller have to make really? Could have been worse however.

Gameplay 10/10: Jump, dodge, jump and remember, never ever let go of the trigger. Now this is were this rocks. Simple controls, and fast side scrolling action. You’ll have to keep your thumbs in good form in order to beat this game. Still I’ve never found the game so hard that I wanted to pull it out of the console and throw it right out of the window. Probably one of the best games in this category ever. Nice variation with two levels with different perspective to make things more interesting.

Graphics 8/10: Contra 3 has some good graphics, far from awesome, but they gets the job done. An early sequence with a bomb plane felt impressive back then.

Sound 7/10: I guess there’s nothing to complain about in this section either, just helps the game come along nicely without doing any miracles. Fitting music.

Multiplayer 10/10: This is good. The 2player mode is exactly like the one player, only now there are two good guys on the screen. If one dies he can steal lifes from the living one if he got in stock. Cool to cover each others back and stuff like that. This is definitely what makes this games such a classic.

Note: When Contra 3 was released in Europe they decided to change the game a little, I think it might have been some kind of censor. Anyway, exactly the same game as Contra 3 was released in Europe with the name Super Probotector, the only difference is that instead of those two muscular guys there were now two robots with the exact same functions in the game. This bothers me as I still have problems to decide which version is the cooler…

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/02, Updated 08/16/02