Cleared on July 17th, 2023, exactly at midnight (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 31/160)
This game is just Contra at home. A 2D Platformer/Shooter hybrid where you fight your way through a horde of enemies, but has no grip on what makes the series so good. This could've maybe been forgiven until you realize this is a game that came out in 1995 and beforehand, we've had Gunstar Heroes 2 years prior and Contra: Hard Corps. Heck, I've heard even the NES Contra games were at least fluent albeit brutal. Judging the game on its own merits, it's just really mediocre.
The game has you play as one of two characters being Mitch or Max, each of which having different weapons. I picked Max since I thought he looked cooler, but ended up finding myself annoyed with his grunts since it sounds like an angsty teenager, lol. Anyway, Mitch has a rapid fire cannon while Max has dual pistols and I'm guessing Mitch has higher attack speed while Max has greater damage. At least I think that's the idea.
Then you are hurled into a zone that looks like it was ripped out of Donkey Kong Country, and right away, one of the problems I have with the game is the movement. While I generally prefer games with faster movement speed, this is a special case where faster is not exactly better because the rest of the movement feels very clunky including the jumping and just the precision of your movement is difficult to narrow down and makes trying to avoid attacks rather awkward. It does have health bars to compensate and you can heal, but it suffers from obnoxious enemy placement particularly during the later levels.
Oh and the level layouts are not good. Pluto Act 1 is a nightmare to deal with because it has gravity that sends you flying in a specific spots and they'll try to pull you towards spikes and there is one particular spot where there is a narrow descent with spikes and gravity will pull you towards it. It might not sound like it makes sense, but when you play the game, you'll see what I'm talking about. And even if you manage to get past that, you have a grenadier awaiting to blow you up and if you manage to survive that, you have to deal with a falling glacier. It is maniacal. Oh and this game has a odd habit of forcing you to grab ledges that you don't to grab and sometimes you won't connect with the ledges that you do want to connect which can make both falling down and getting up a genuine struggle.
You also have to deal with uneven terrain in Venus Act 2, Mercury Act 1, and Nero Act 1 which does not compliment the movement of your character or the placement of the enemies. Oh and the grenadiers are just obnoxious because they deal so much damage, are difficult to avoid, and once you manage to get one half of their bodies out, they get a smaller hitbox and will still attack you although they can't move because their lower body is gone. They appear throughout the majority of the game past Venus. In fact, the enemies that you will see are shooters, bladesman (also obnoxious because they are fast and deal a lot of damage), and... that's really it. You do have bosses and they are... ok. The 2nd boss was rather confusing to figure out how to defeat, but they aren't offensively difficult or anything. I still don't like how the final boss doesn't get its own theme.
Now I'm not really sure how the Super Nintendo version stacks up, but from what I can tell looking at the footage, it might have a different feel with having slower movement speed. Maybe I'll revisit it for my inevitable Super Nintendo challenge, but after that, I doubt I'll be thinking much about this game beyond just another dull game that I played.
This game is just Contra at home. A 2D Platformer/Shooter hybrid where you fight your way through a horde of enemies, but has no grip on what makes the series so good. This could've maybe been forgiven until you realize this is a game that came out in 1995 and beforehand, we've had Gunstar Heroes 2 years prior and Contra: Hard Corps. Heck, I've heard even the NES Contra games were at least fluent albeit brutal. Judging the game on its own merits, it's just really mediocre.
The game has you play as one of two characters being Mitch or Max, each of which having different weapons. I picked Max since I thought he looked cooler, but ended up finding myself annoyed with his grunts since it sounds like an angsty teenager, lol. Anyway, Mitch has a rapid fire cannon while Max has dual pistols and I'm guessing Mitch has higher attack speed while Max has greater damage. At least I think that's the idea.
Then you are hurled into a zone that looks like it was ripped out of Donkey Kong Country, and right away, one of the problems I have with the game is the movement. While I generally prefer games with faster movement speed, this is a special case where faster is not exactly better because the rest of the movement feels very clunky including the jumping and just the precision of your movement is difficult to narrow down and makes trying to avoid attacks rather awkward. It does have health bars to compensate and you can heal, but it suffers from obnoxious enemy placement particularly during the later levels.
Oh and the level layouts are not good. Pluto Act 1 is a nightmare to deal with because it has gravity that sends you flying in a specific spots and they'll try to pull you towards spikes and there is one particular spot where there is a narrow descent with spikes and gravity will pull you towards it. It might not sound like it makes sense, but when you play the game, you'll see what I'm talking about. And even if you manage to get past that, you have a grenadier awaiting to blow you up and if you manage to survive that, you have to deal with a falling glacier. It is maniacal. Oh and this game has a odd habit of forcing you to grab ledges that you don't to grab and sometimes you won't connect with the ledges that you do want to connect which can make both falling down and getting up a genuine struggle.
You also have to deal with uneven terrain in Venus Act 2, Mercury Act 1, and Nero Act 1 which does not compliment the movement of your character or the placement of the enemies. Oh and the grenadiers are just obnoxious because they deal so much damage, are difficult to avoid, and once you manage to get one half of their bodies out, they get a smaller hitbox and will still attack you although they can't move because their lower body is gone. They appear throughout the majority of the game past Venus. In fact, the enemies that you will see are shooters, bladesman (also obnoxious because they are fast and deal a lot of damage), and... that's really it. You do have bosses and they are... ok. The 2nd boss was rather confusing to figure out how to defeat, but they aren't offensively difficult or anything. I still don't like how the final boss doesn't get its own theme.
Now I'm not really sure how the Super Nintendo version stacks up, but from what I can tell looking at the footage, it might have a different feel with having slower movement speed. Maybe I'll revisit it for my inevitable Super Nintendo challenge, but after that, I doubt I'll be thinking much about this game beyond just another dull game that I played.