Released: Septemeber 7th, 2009
Developer: M2 *glares at them*
Publisher: Konami
Genre: 2D shooter
Some people call it Contra 5, the next in the line of the famous Contra series of games. But is it worthy of the title?
(I couldn't find the english version of the title) No....not really. I know loads of people are praising this and are loving it...but I can't see it.I never knew Contra's story, and I didn't really care. In this game, there is the intro, the beginning cinematic, then a cinematic after every mission. I have no idea what's going on. The story skips and jumps and it's just confusing to try to follow. They give us random pieces of information. It's really just a headache trying to figure out what's on. It's best to ignore it and move on with life.
The game makes you create a profile when you first put it on. But after that...you never see the screen again. Yet it had slots for 3 or so profiles. What was the point of that? The options is just the same old, you can set your lives and the difficulty. Then there is a 1 player and a 2 player option. You can pick whoever you want to play as but it doesn't matter. All the characters move the same. You can be the guy in the blue pants (Bill, whose been in like every single Contra ever), the guy in the red pants (Yagyu*, who was in Neo Contra), a female robot, and some other dudes you won't care about it. And no, Lance isn't in the game.....sorta.
The characters are just...stupid. They tried to make them different and with personalities, but who cares? In the beginning, I always thought it was just some muscular, nameless dudes going around shooting people. They added voices in, so they talk when you're fighting (similar to Contra 4) Oh, and I mentioned Lance earlier. (he was the original red pants guy) Here is the perfect example of bad characters and terrible story telling. After some mission, it informs you about what happened to Lance. He isn't mentioned anywhere else except in this one part. A picture of some woman shows up, and it informs you that Lance has been hiding out and he's dressed himself as a woman so nobody will notice him.What? Ok, I have no idea what happened between Bill and Lance in Contra: Shattered Soldier, but...why did we need to be told he's disguised as a woman now? In fact, why a woman in the first place? Shouldn't that be a last resort thing? He couldn't grow a beard and change his hair or something? It feels very cheap, like they just threw that in there as a "omg shock factor lol"
The gameplay itself feels and looks like Contra 4. You run to the right, shooting whatever the crap you see. Well...apparently, they couldn't get this right either. There is too much going on the screen to focus on what you're doing. The smoke from explosions, the explosions themselves, the hidden dots flying at you, the enemies appearing out of nowhere. It's completely unfair to the player. I know all Contra games are like that, but this one has too much. Especially the damn explosions! It's everywhere! How fair is that if you can't even see?When an enemy fires a crap load of dots/circles/whatever those are, it's extremely hard to dodge. In the other games, they had it balanced. Not too many so you still had room to jump. Not here, it's just shit everywhere and you are going to die. A lot of people say this is a fucking hard game. It really isn't, it's the easiest Contra I've ever played. The "hardness" comes from the game being completely unfair. How fair is it when you're cornered (because if you walk forward the boss will hit you) then he sprays crap everywhere, if you jump you die, if you drop down you down, if you duck you die. You can do nothing but panic or sit there and you will die. There is a difference between true difficulty and just being cheap and broken. In the previous Contra games, there would be crap everywhere but it was always possible to escape alive. You were never trapped unfairly.
During the game, you can hold 2 weapons at once, switching between whichever you want to use at will. If you die (while playing on anything harder than easy) you lose it. There is no nuke sadly (from Contra 3) or holding both shoulder buttons (like the above picture) and doing fancy shootin'. You can hold down 1 shoulder button to keep your guy still so you can shoot whichever direction. But...that's it really. They removed 2 very important things from the Contra series. First, there is no Konami Code. That's right. None at all. That's like having a Zelda game without Link having a green tunic. Secondly, you can't steal lives from your friend. How lame. That was part of the fun in the original games. They even put that in Super Smash Brothers. Why would you take that out?Now again, with the difficulty. Some will say them doing them adds to difficult. Why then, do you get unlimited continues? In previous games, you got a certain number of continues, and once out, the game was over. Here, you can die as many times as you like and come back. In some levels, it even puts you at a certain save point, so you don't have to start the level all over. Another slap in the face is the lack of a mini-game type level (those odd levels where it's a different camera angle, like in the original Contra and Super C. But even Contra 3 had the odd level where you were on a bike) and the lack of a "climbing up" level. (you jump up instead of running to the right) Those are classics! Why leave them out!?
There is that odd riding on a train and robot camel level...but it's no fun. There's little room to dodge and the camera knocks you off the train so you fall off and die. They tried to be fancy and fail. There is a part where you must run across on the camel's backs, jump on a missile, and it takes you back to the ride. I really don't understand the point of that. It wasn't cool or flashy. You ran to the left....ran some more...jumped a little...hopped onto the missile....went to the left...then it pushes you back onto the truck you were on before.In Contra ReBirth, where you die is where you spawn. You die, you come back directly where you were. Now, what if you fell into a hole? Well then, you spawn above the hole. If you get lucky, you can manage to move your guy onto land. The above, camel, level I mentioned is the worst for that. You just blink after dying, then suddenly 3 of your lives are gone. I know the original game had a small glitch where it'd do that too, but it was fixed for Super C and all the Contra's after....except this one. More unfair loss of life.
Normally I'd say, "Oh, but the basic gameplay is fun!" Well...no. Here's why....the atmosphere is terrible. I have no fucking idea where the hell I was all the time. In the other games, it at least tried to make sense of it. If you walked into a building, you appeared in a building. Why the blazes do you go into some ancient ruins in this game? Slooowwwllllyyyy hovering down, then fighting some ancient statue? I WANT ALIENS. The backgrounds are very bland and not fun to look at. There is too much going on and it just looks bad. The music doesn't help. They tried remixing some good old tunes (like the Jungle music from Contra 1) but failed. The remixes are horrible and sound very low-quality. Even the original music is terrible. It's very generic, very forgettable.The game feels cheap. Like they spent 3 minutes slapping it together. The way it looks, the way it sounds, the copy-pasta aliens and the cheap locations just scream "WE DIDN'T REALLY SPEND TIME ON THIS" I mean, for the final boss, it's just 2 old bosses from Contra 3...which are old bosses from the previous games! Right before the bosses, you get ambushed by AN ASS LOAD of the final boss from Super C, in mini form. (the weird thing with the woman's face, it puts up the shell to cover it...I can't find it's name) Anyway, these little bitty things are just SWARMING THE SCREEN. All you do is just shoot forward and run. It's so pathetic. I'm guessing it's suppose to be dramatic. At first I was like "lol he's all tiny!" then it got old fast. The uninspiring music, and just the bland shoot and run. I didn't have to dodge or anything. In fact, on my 2nd time through, I was playing coop and my partner just stopped shooting because he didn't need to. The game is tiny, having only 5 levels. "Oh, but it's only a Wiiware title!" shouldn't matter. Megaman 9 is a full blast Megaman game, and it is a Wiiware title too.
Contra ReBirth was a real let-down. It is nothing like it's predecessors. I guess you could enjoy this....if you just...tuned out the awful music and didn't mind a broken game. After beating this twice, my partner and I both agreed that we'd rather be playing Contra 3 or Super C. Or....fucking Contra if fucking Nintendo would fucking put it on the fucking VC already...gahhh. That's irritating.+ Bill is in it
+ The Thank You girl.
+ A nice thought of a game
- Would rather have Contra on the VC instead of this.
- Lance is a woman
- Bad/poorly represented story
- Difficulty lies in the face the game is unfair
- Music is lame
- Environments make no sense
- No Konami Code/stealing lives
- Feels cheap
Contra ReBirth gets a -3. It really was a cool idea for a game, but they did it allllll wrong.
edit: just a thanks to Gamespy for having pictures. I was having a hard time finding them :U
*This is hilarious. Listen to his weird grunt thing when you select him. It's so stupid and funny.
