Less than five years ago, Konami tried to develop Contra into a 3D twin-stick action game, but it didn’t go well. Problems with pacing, visual style, and even organization buried a Contra: Rogue Corps that no one remembers. Now it’s time to try again, leaving lots of mistakes, but don’t go back to the pixel style. To achieve this, the Japanese relied on the last studio with knowledge of these elite warriors, WayForward (responsible for the glorious Contra 4 for the DS during the franchise’s 20th anniversary).
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Contra: Operation Galuga is intended to be a modern reboot of the series. It takes the NES original and introduces as many changes as they see fit, starting with looks and weapons, but moving back to 2.5D Run & Gun side-action and “me versus the world” combat. Old Bill Rizer and Lance Bean (or Probotectors RD008 and RC011 if you were in the old review Europe) had to start over with thousands of Red Falcon terrorists and all that Behind the battle of aliens. The story begins and ends the same (no, it’s not a spoiler if the script was written 37 years ago), as it paves the way for future installments retelling the alleged alien war.
In between, the bad guys’ motivations grow around a technology that mixes gravitational fields and wormholes. They are as exaggerated as possible, consistent with the performances of the voice actors and the characters they portray. The fattening of the script helps add weight to the Galuga natives and, importantly, expands the roster of playable characters. Because, let’s be honest, no one comes to Contra to understand what’s going on, just to shoot, no matter who or why.
This makes Galuga feel like it always does, at least occasionally. It again starts with a jungle level, then moves into a waterfall climbing stage and culminates inside a giant alien. It’s enough to appeal to the nostalgia, as the old levels were the most boring ones, while the new ones look much better. Unlike Contra Evolve, it’s not a remake, but even those depicting past environments have been altered. They have eliminated the vertical 2D section that was set inside the base. In exchange, there are more levels using vehicles, although I least believe in them. While they all share the same base, the placement of elements like platforms, enemies, and realistic combat gives a sense of variety. They’re all relatively long levels for the format, so the eight levels included in the game took me over an hour and a half to play through on normal difficulty. Oh, and a special mention goes to the new bosses or some remade versions of the old bosses, because they’re fun to kill.
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Talking about challenges is essential to this series, and WayForward does a great job of that. First, three difficulty levels (I don’t know if there will be more in trying to beat it, since I haven’t finished it yet), and most importantly, two health systems. The classic one-hit-one-life, and the one carried over from the Mega Drive, allows you to land several hits. There’s a variety to suit all audiences and it all blends together perfectly. As for the difference between normal and hard, it’s all about the accuracy of the enemy shots, you know the classic “but the grenade landed exactly where I was about to land”.The balance between enemies, weapons, movement speed, health and difficulty is excellent and results in a cocktail with the ideal pacing for Contra requirements
Contra: Operation Galuga’s gameplay is where it needs to be, as it brings all the usual stuff and adds strategic variation. The downside is that they only opted for automatic shooting, I would have appreciated it if this was combined with the option of high-speed manual button presses to improve performance. The weapons are the same as usual, so it’s possible to use some new weapons, but they add an overload system and a perk system that you have to constantly use. Weapon overload causes short-lived special effects, such as M’s protective barrier or L’s slow down time. They’re of little use until you combine them with the benefit of restoring health shards after burning the weapon, and then you start to get a taste of using them. Since you get a lot of them, you can even ask for one from time to time, so there’s no need to rush. Some perks are universal and some give each character additional abilities, such as Bill being untouchable while sprinting. Another point of this combination is the character selection, because although they all behave pretty much the same, having some individual abilities can be a big advantage, or rather, a big disadvantage.
Beware of randomly burning coins on perks, as the same money is required to purchase characters and secret game modes. And you don’t make a lot of money per game, so it takes many hours of gameplay to get it all. This isn’t a problem because you already know that in Contra, stages repeat themselves over and over again. For this, there is arcade mode and challenges, which are no easy task. These two modes are for testing yourself within the genre. Incidentally, as per the requirements of the series, I completed half of the story mode in multiplayer and had a mediocre experience as jumping between weapons while picking up new weapons and dropping old ones was extremely confusing.
Well, things seem to be going well with the new Konami and WayForward, don’t they? Well, not everything. Because Contra: Operation Galuga is ugly as one of the alien enemies. When the American studio released Contra 4, it was impressive what it accomplished on the Nintendo DS. But it’s on its home turf, on the primitive. Its 3D visual rendition suits neither the artistic part, in the graphics, which exploits this militaristic exaggeration; nor the technology, in which it is so versatile and “plastic” that Advance Wars 1+2 Re-boot Camp also has this problem. It also doesn’t deliver aurally, as we’ve gone from an epic soundtrack from the ’80s to another that would go unnoticed if it weren’t for a classic remix, complete with old effects that feel like patches.
Would Contra: Operation Galuga be a better game if it were shown in a 2D pixel style? I don’t think the problem is the leap to 3D graphics, but the overall implementation. But after doing a good job of upping the game’s pace, managing to incorporate the current lives and perk systems without being punished by so much difficulty, and having some well-designed levels and bosses, at least Konami and WayForward have reestablished the series Having laid a good foundation yourself, Alien War will be unleashed again.
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