Hard is not hardcore
posted on 10:47 04/03/2008 by idiot
The reviews for Contra 4 for the DS all warned me: "The game is hard! But it's ok! It's old-skool hard!" Well I've spent some time with it, and no. It's just hard.posted on 10:47 04/03/2008 by idiot
See, what made Contra for the NES fun was the fact that it had a 30 lives code and you could play with a friend co-op. I didn't know a single kid growing up who ever bothered to play it without the code. It just wasn't that fun. But playing with the code would teach you the enemy patterns and the boss strategies, and I can probably make it to level 4 or so without dying.
Well there's no 30 lives code for Contra 4. There's an "easy" mode, which doesn't teach you anything. They not only dumb down the levels so you aren't practicing for the "real" game, but they don't even let you see the last level. Oh, and all the weapons are super powered up. So you don't even learn good item juggling. When you switch to normal mode, it's a feat to get past the first level without using a continue (which is pointless because it starts the game over, sans one continue).
Uh... there's a porblem here
"Try and die" game play isn't fun. It isn't hard core. It's stupid, but at least there's a pattern to it. Well forget that also. Contra 4 doesn't have much in the way of patterns. Old games used patterns because enemies were rock stupid and they had precious little ram to store things in. So every enemy would be in the same place doing the same thing most of the time. I recall games for the NES that had random enemies seeming cheaply made, unfair and not fun. You can't be an expert when something you can't see coming will randomly kill you.
Couple this game design, or lack thereof, with the "gap" problem on the DS. When games utilize both screens for gameplay, some of them decide that they should simulate the space between the screens. So bullets fire down from the top screen, disappear into the gap, and emerge on the other side. For some games this isn't much of a problem, but it's always annoyed me because one day this is going to be emulated on something with a long touch screen, and there will be this senseless gap. In Contra 4 it's worse, because apparently every developer gets to guess what the gap length should be and Contra 4's isn't estimated very well. Not to mention, last time I checked, human vision is geared towards "wide" not "tall". Maybe it's just me but I'm constantly being surprised by stuff that was fired down from the top screen.
To be fair, the game is well done except for the tunnel sections. The stackable weapons are great, and the music is excellent. The bosses are huge and make "Mr. Flaily Arms" from the NES Contra look like he's suffering from a horrible alien disease.
Oh my wee little arms!
The game undeniably feels like Contra, something I found many of the sequels just didn't get right. I applaud developers at least trying to get back to the roots of what made games fun. It's been a decade or so venture into terrible 3D games and many wrongs need to be righted. As a bonus, the first Contra game is an early unlockable, however the emulation isn't perfect, and not even a professional development team can seem to figure out how to smoothly scale NES games onto a portable. Regardless, it's a great addition.
Well, it's great for the player. It actually hurts the developers in my opinion though, as going back and playing the original feels like a test of skill. It's like scaling a mountain. The new one feels a bit like being hog tied and kicked off the mountain. It's hard, but not in a good way.
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