Hard Corps: Uprising might sound like a fresh new franchise, but in reality it’s just the newest take on an over 20 year old series. If you’re an old school gamer, you might remember a Genesis game that goes by the name of Contra: Hard Corps. Now if you’ve followed me so far then it’d be no surprise when I say it was a really hard game, especially the North American edition. Konami or should I say Arc System Works the people behind this prequel to the old Genesis classic have brought the back series to life. Does Contra deserve one more shot at life or is it best left in the past.

The game plays like a Contra game plain and simple with a few fighting game inspired mechanics added for good measure. It’s a fast paced run and gun game with wave after wave of enemies constantly try to flank your position. You’ve got to be vigilante constantly fighting enemies both ahead of you and coming occasionally from behind. You’ve got your basic machine gun but in true Contra fashion you can also shoot down the weapon upgrades that come flying up above you. You also can hold 2 weapons at a time if you remember to switch weapons before you pick it up. You’ve got a good selection to choose from a fireball launcher to a guided laser gun with most weapons being at least some fun to use. The only exception in my book would be the fairly bad grenade launcher, which has limited range and power. Uprising borrows a few concepts that were in the original like being able to stand in just one spot and just shoot enemies from there without moving. Arc Systems added a few cool tricks from their fighting game roots like dashing by double tapping in a direction. Dashing is a fun little trick and lets you get by the levels a lot faster which is a-okay in my book. The other fighting game tricks they added in are the double jump and the air dash, which are handy for making both far and high jumps and work pretty well in the 2d shooter. My one big complaint was when you’re lying prone shooting you can’t change between looking back and forward unless you get up first, this ended up being really annoying to me. Overall though I’d say they got the Contra formula down pretty spot on.

Something that most people might not know is Contra: Hard Corps is a little different between the Japanese and North American versions of the game. When they translated it they decided for whatever reason that they wanted to take out the health bar so you’d lose a life after a single hit, making it one the hardest games at the time . This is all nice and relevant since they decided to finally take queues from the original Japanese version and included an actual health bar so you don’t die nearly as fast. That said when you play Arcade mode it’s pretty fast and brutal, when you first try it out you’ve just got limited health, 2 lives and 3 continues, probably not enough for 90% of players to make it past the first level let alone the entire game. Fortunately they had added in the new Rising mode, which helps curve the difficulty. As you play in this mode you gain points that after you’ve died you can access upgrades via the menu system. You can get stuff like more health, better weapon upgrades, more lives and new abilities. Each character has their own unique characteristics and when you purchase the upgrades they are only for that character. This takes the game from being obscenely hard to being manageable where you earn upgrades that’ll help you advance in the game instead of just being frustrated. The game starts off extremely hard but as you play it becomes more manageable where you’re left thinking you’ll need just one more upgrade so you can through this next boss battle. As you log more play time you also get more continues that work in both Rising and Arcade modes so while Arcade may be out of reach the first time you try to play it, after you’ve logged hours into the game it becomes far more manageable. To put it simply the more you play the more you’re rewarded.

One big complaint I had with the game is in the opening cinematic you see what seemed to be 4 different main characters within game but I only had 2 playable characters. At first I thought maybe they were unlockable characters that you got while playing the game normally but a quick Google search and a look at the Xbox Live Marketplace fixed that. In fact 2 of the characters you see in the intro can only be had if you pay 200 Microsoft points a piece for them. This kind of thing pisses me off. The fact that characters they show you in the intro scene are only able to bought feels like a money grab to get another $5 out of you when they’ve already gotten $15, one of the more pricier games on Arcade already. If it’s in the intro you should be able to earn the characters though playing.

The game has both an online and offline multiplayer mode. The offline is a flawless 2 player Contra experience where both you and your friend gun down enemies with. You can steal lives if you’re a lot worse than your friend or just simply because you have a lot fewer lives because your character hasn’t been played nearly as much as theirs. There aren’t any glitches for me to pick apart and it’s a fun 2-player co-op experience if you’ve got urge for some nostalgia. As for the online, I had some trouble getting a game going when I went looking for a lobby. This tells me the online player pool is kind of limited at the moment and you might need to wait a few minutes before you can get into a game. Though when I got in the game it worked with a minimum amount of lag, nothing unmanageable.

As for the presentation, Arc System Works decided to take queues from their other games and went for an anime style look. While the game doesn’t look bad or anything I just felt like it’s not their best work after I saw how smooth and crisp BlazBlue’s visuals were with a pretty similar look. You’ve got your obligatory wave after wave of similar cannon folder foot soldiers and the bosses are usually some sort of mechanical menace though none the enemy design was too inspiring. It’s a nice bright and cheery world with many guns all shooting at your direction. I did like the backgrounds because they felt alive and always had something going on within their confines. While I liked the art direction I can’t say I loved it because it felt sort of generic. The music is nice and they’ve taken queues from the Contra of old to include some remixes to some old favorite tunes. As for the rest it’s a nice arrangement of some metal that goes well with such a high-octane action game.

Contra is back, and for me it was a nice trip down memory lane. The same gameplay that was fun back in the Genesis days still holds its charm even today. Though I’m disappointed that there’s such a blatant money grab with the extra characters costing more money the game is still fun on it’s own right. While the decision of whether the game is worth $15 is up to you, I’d say it is if you’ve ever loved playing a Contra game.

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