Falksi
Sentinel
- Joined
- November 15, 2015
- Messages
- 480
Contra Hard Corps - Megadrive
^Haven't I seen you somewhere before?…………
Raved about in gaming circles, Hard Corps is renowned as one of the best in the series. I played it years ago, but could never take to it. Something about it didn't grab me like Contra 3 did.
So on the plus side there's branching paths, cool graphics, the usual Contra set-pieces, and some very groovy & well balanced characters. There's no denying that it does a lot of the Contra staples very well, and has some real individuality to boot.
But overall I was very disappointed. Firstly it recycles a fair few elements from Contra 3, which isn't bad per say, it just feels a bit too familiar at times. Secondly the music's fucking wank too. Ear bleeding shit at times. Really grated on me.
But I'm also not a fan of boss-rush type games in general. Despite there being some very inventive bosses, what it boils down to is spending a lot of the time locked in a samey course of repetitive actions. Stay in one place & rely on a certain weapon, jump in a certain repetitive pattern over & over. Not a problem when that's an occurrence once or twice per level, but when it happens 5 or 6 times throughout, it just gets boring. Especially when each one is so punishing and each fight lasts quite some time (whereas they were often over in half the time in Contra 3)
It can be quite fiddly at times too, with the weapon select method another step back from the L/R method used in Contra 3. Yes you can pause the game to select a weapon, but that detracts from the action. There's very little room for error, so that also highlights the fundamental design flaw with the A button both switching your weapons, and locking you in place when needed. It's very easy to pull off one instead of the other, and this becomes frustrating. And there's some absolute total bullshit deaths from out of nowhere too. I know it was rife in this era, but some games take the piss at times, and this is one of them.
It's really strange how just a few small differences from this to Contra 3 can make it so detestable, but I really didn't like it at all.
Very overrated IMO.
2/5
^Haven't I seen you somewhere before?…………
Raved about in gaming circles, Hard Corps is renowned as one of the best in the series. I played it years ago, but could never take to it. Something about it didn't grab me like Contra 3 did.
So on the plus side there's branching paths, cool graphics, the usual Contra set-pieces, and some very groovy & well balanced characters. There's no denying that it does a lot of the Contra staples very well, and has some real individuality to boot.
But overall I was very disappointed. Firstly it recycles a fair few elements from Contra 3, which isn't bad per say, it just feels a bit too familiar at times. Secondly the music's fucking wank too. Ear bleeding shit at times. Really grated on me.
But I'm also not a fan of boss-rush type games in general. Despite there being some very inventive bosses, what it boils down to is spending a lot of the time locked in a samey course of repetitive actions. Stay in one place & rely on a certain weapon, jump in a certain repetitive pattern over & over. Not a problem when that's an occurrence once or twice per level, but when it happens 5 or 6 times throughout, it just gets boring. Especially when each one is so punishing and each fight lasts quite some time (whereas they were often over in half the time in Contra 3)
It can be quite fiddly at times too, with the weapon select method another step back from the L/R method used in Contra 3. Yes you can pause the game to select a weapon, but that detracts from the action. There's very little room for error, so that also highlights the fundamental design flaw with the A button both switching your weapons, and locking you in place when needed. It's very easy to pull off one instead of the other, and this becomes frustrating. And there's some absolute total bullshit deaths from out of nowhere too. I know it was rife in this era, but some games take the piss at times, and this is one of them.
It's really strange how just a few small differences from this to Contra 3 can make it so detestable, but I really didn't like it at all.
Very overrated IMO.
2/5
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2015
- Messages
- 480