Back to 3D, But Not Much Gained

Honestly, I have no clue what direction Konami wanted to take the ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. series in at this point. I don’t think any fan at the time did, either. The company was flailing, shifting wildly between modern 3D gameplay and classic 2D gameplay, trying to find anything that would stick with fans. The games developed under Appaloosa, Contra: Legacy of War and C: The Contra Adventure, were passed over by fans due to their departures from the classic gameplay, as well as their muddy graphics and tedious levels. Contra: Shattered Soldier returned the franchise to its 2D-based gameplay, but its gameplay was too focused on bosses and scoring perfect runs and lacked the overall finesse of the classic action. Neither style really won over the players.

So, instead, Konami remixed it all again for their next game: Neo Contra. Technically a follow-up to Contra: Shattered Soldier, especially since it brings over the weapon system and scoring mechanics of that game, the title shifts the action back to the 3D plane, giving players an over-the-shoulder, top down perspective on the action. It’s a drastic change once again, making players feel like they have to once more reset their expectations and try to figure out just what it means to be a Contra game. What it wasn’t, though, was what players were really looking for.

Set in the year 4444 AD, the Earth is now a prison planet (think NYC in Escape from New York, except for the whole planet). Bill Rizer, hero of the Alien Wars, has been in cryogenic sleep for nearly two thousand years. He is awoken, though, when a faction takes over Earth and attempts to use its new found power for nefarious means. The group, Neo Contra, is led by four elite warriors, former contras, now united under the control of Master Contra. To defeat a contra you need a contra, and so Rizer is sent out, teamed up with a mysterious Samurai, Katana Jaguar, to head out and defeat this rebel faction.

Does any of this plot make sense? No, not really. Especially not when it’s revealed that Rizer is a clone, and that Master Contra is also a clone of the original Bill Rizer. When you try to piece it all together and figure out what any of it means you just lose track and get really confused. The point of it all is that you have to go out and shoot a bunch of dudes, and tanks, and aliens, and whatever alien-mutant-dude-tank hybrids the game throws at you. It’s Contra. This isn’t a game that requires thinking. Ignore all the cut scenes, set aside the plot, and strap in for action.

Sadly, on that front, the game can’t always deliver. As I noted above, the action is set on a 3D plain, instead of the usual 2D perspective. This isn’t totally outside the bounds for classic Contra as both the original game and sequel Super Contra featured base missions and overhead shooting sections that required the players to shoot their way through alternate play modes. Those games, of course, featured the various perspectives as differing play modes to keep things lively. Neo Contra focuses on the one play style, for the most part, and it leaves much of the game feeling very samey.

Not that the action is bad, mind you. This is your standard run-and-gun action that is the bread and butter of Contra. Like with Shattered Soldier the player gets a three-weapon loadout they use through the game. This time around they can choose from one of seven different load outs with various weaponry, such as the standard machine gun, homing missing, grenade set, or a charge shot, fire whip, lock-on laser set, or even a Gradius-based ripple laser, GV laser, variable set. Each pack has its upsides and downsides and finding the right set is a matter of taste and need. Some of the weapon packs are obviously useful and some require you testing them out to see if they suit your needs.

The upside for this is the variety. The downside is that, like in Contra: Shattered Soldier, there are no power-ups and there’s very little penalty for death aside from a lower ranking at the end of the stage. For fans of the classic gameplay, with all the trimmings, this does feel like a bit of a downgrade. Die and you come back with your full loadout, no questions asked. Sure, if you don’t get an S-rank in every stage you don’t get to see the “true” final ending, but if you’re bad at Contra games and just want to get through the game at all, this won’t feel like much of a penalty, and taking away the power-ups, letting you have all the weapons at all times, reduces the thought and strategy that used to be inherent in the series.

And, honestly, the game feels easier than many of the classic entries as well. Since it brought forward the scoring and ranking system from Contra: Shattered Soldier it also features a big issue that game had as well: there are only so many enemies the game can pack in due to the rank and points. Each enemy is worth a point, with bosses being worth more, and if you get 100 points (and don’t die) you get your S-rank. The game can’t put too many enemies in because then the player would get a huge point rank before they even got to the boss, and much of the required shooting would then be nullified. Instead of having respawning enemies that come at you from all sides, enemies are deliberately placed and very specific. It makes the stages feel less full, and thus less hectic.

In fairness to the game it does feel like the devs realized this because, in the last stages, they finally start introducing little enemies that aren’t worth points and, thus, can’t factor into the ranking. And then, for the last few fight missions, it abandons even the point system altogether, just focusing on if you die or not as your rank. This works better as it means the game can focus more on delivering a lot of enemies and over-the-top situations, making you wish most of the game could have done this instead of being so slavish to the rank and points system.

It’s also in the final stages of the game where Neo Contra is finally willing to get really weird. Most of the game feels basic, sedate even. It’s a series of base missions, all of which look the same, with only a few exceptions. There is one short bike section, and another vertical section up a wall, but these moments are few and far between while much of the title is one flat base after another. It all starts to feel very repetitive, making players think they’ve seen all that the game has to offer by the time its initial four missions are over. Things get a little better in the back half, and the boss fights take on bullet-hell aspects that make them more fun… but even then, something special is missing. The mix is off, and Neo Contra never really seems to find its footing.

The biggest failing, though, is its length. With only seven missions, two of which are basically just long boss fights, the game is criminally short. The average player could get through this game in under forty-five minutes. An S-rank player will do it in under thirty. For a full priced release at the time, that little actual gameplay (even if it is padded out with nonsensical cut-scenes in between the action) is hard to justify for the price. It feels shorter than even a classic game from the series, which is just not enough game for the money.

Again, it’s not that it’s a bad game. There are moments where the game plays well and has decent action. The 3D graphics are crisp and clean and the soundtrack has thumping beats that feel much more in line with the classic series than whatever Nu-metal tunes were going on in Contra: Shattered Soldier. The problem simply is that while Neo Contra isn’t bad it’s also not that great. It’s fine, but in a way that makes you long for the truly classic gameplay of old. 2D perspective, sprites, chip tunes, more to do, all of that. Konami clearly wanted to update the game into new perspectives for modern audiences but they still didn’t quite know what that meant.

Thankfully, just a year later, the company would finally find the format and gameplay needed. And all it took was going back and making a retro sequel to their games of old…