Contra III: The Alien Wars

"Bloody hard, non-stop, ass kicking action."

The Contra series is a very beloved one, and this Contra III: The Alien Wars, is the most beloved of all. In its transition to the Super Nintendo, Contra offers more of the same, that is: big guns, big explosions, big enemies, two badass soldiers... and really big mess in general, in the good way of word of course.

Graphics 10/10:
The graphics, while not excellent, are very, very spectacular, specially because of the outstanding explosions and final bosses, horribly nauseating cyborg beasts (again, in the good way of the word) bigger than Arnold Shwarzeneger in his good days. The rest of enemies are also splendidly designed, some of them are highly original, it is quite interesting to see what kind of weird and deadly weapon are they going to use against you. The backgrounds very nice because they are constantly breaking into pieces and in no time you pass from a city to a chaotic lake of lava.

Music 5/10:
It is hard to play attention to the music in the middle of the carnage Contra III is, but if you stop kicking butts for a few second you will see that the soundtrack is nothing special, I mean, it is good, very suitable for a furious action game like this one, but nothing out of this world.

Gameplay 9/10:
Few things have changed since the Nes versions, even the weapons are the same, no wait there are some new ones too, oh but they are very few, well... The thing is that the gameplay is still the same. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a VERY good thing, there is nothing worst than completely changing a game when it gets a new version for a new console, but the weapons could have been more varied, they are cool yeah, but there aren’t enough of them in my opinion.

The best thing here is the enormous variety of deadly situations our two machos will have to face, not everything consists on advancing annihilating whatever you have at sight, there are lots of special situation where you will have to deal with giant assassin robots while hanging from moving platforms, or while dodging big pillars of bursting lava, etc. Then we have those overview stages, they are nice addition, they can make you feel a bit dizzy, but they are pretty cool.

As you can see the action and destruction levels in Contra III are so furious that this can easily be President Bush’s favorite video game.

And let’s not forget the great two player option, if you don’t want to die in the next two minutes better go and find some help, two players kicking butt on the same screen doubles the explosions, the guns, and the fun.

Difficulty:
This one is easy, only one word is needed: Impossible.

My last words...
Contra III is an excellent game I know, but it is also too ridiculously hard, call me chicken if you want, but the difficulty is excessive, the last boss for example, how is it possible to beat that thing?, or those two skeleton robots in the middle of the game?. To beat the game, no, to TRY to beat the game, you will have to perfectly memorize each stage, you will have to know exactly when to shot, when to stand still, when to jump, when to everything or you’ll be dead meat in no time.

There is an unknown game called Turrican, which yeah it is a Contra clone, but I found it to be, if not better, at least more enjoyable than this one.

”My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry about that.”

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/04