Contra: Rebirth

[SkyMyl]

Labor Day. September 2009.

I felt as though my collection of WiiWare titles was rather stale. And, seeing as Cave Story won't be coming out for another month, decided to spend 1000 Wii Points (!!!) on Contra Rebirth. Knowing full well it would be a hard son of a b****, I woke up early, ate a hearty breakfast, got a can of Pepsi, and loaded it up. I was greeted with a very "meh" opening to the game. The title screen, though, looks badass. I immediately went to the options, set the difficulty to normal, set my lives to 5, configured the buttons a bit, and hit 1P game. Then I chose my character.

Hard choice, isn't it?

What followed was about an hour of disappointment. Now, where do I start in describing the game? Well, the gameplay.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as Contra 4, which is basically Contra 1 remade for the DS. The differences, however, only has sidescrolling levels, only has three (Unstackable) upgrades, (Spread, Homing, and Laser), and while you can use two guns, you can't dual wield them like in Contra 3. On that note, you don't have the nukes you had in 3. Don't fret, you only have five stages to blast through. And the game isn't that hard, either!

Wait, a Contra game? EASY!? Well, for the most part, yes. This one isn't that hard, really. It follows in the footsteps of Mega Man 9 and likes to surprise you with traps now and again, but once you fall for the trap, you won't ever fall for it again. Granted, there is a Hard mode, but it's not Hard; it's cheap. Cheaper than your 99 cent store!

There is one instance where the game just ramps up the difficulty without warning, regardless of difficulty setting, and that is level three. I don't get why you need to ride on top of an enemy vehicle, avoid flying enemies, avoid missiles, fight this sadistic miniboss, after which, you jump off the vehicle you're on, jump onto a robotic llama in front of the vehicle, and jump from robotic llama to robotic llama in a pointless stampede before fighting the boss on another enemy vehicle.

...WHAT?

Now for the story.

..actually, screw the story. I can't even begin to describe it. In between the games levels the "story", if it can be called such, is explained in fifteen second long still cutscenes. THAT'S ALL I CAN TELL YOU. It's horrendous. It's absolutely horrible. But at the same time, it makes the game more enjoyable. It's like each cutscene tries to get a chuckle out of you. Especially the one where they mention one of the Contras dressing up as a woman to get behind enemy lines.
Does it have any relevance to the plot? No. Funny? Maybe. Mockable as all hell? dang right.

Did I neglect to mention there are unlockables? Beat the game on Easy, you can play as BR-W9, who may or may not be the real villain of the game. Beat the game on Normal, and you can play as Plissken, who may or may not be the real villain. Beat the game on Hard, and you unlock NIGHTMARE difficulty, in which every enemy that dies will leave behind a suicide bullet as a list ditch effort to kill you! Yes, every enemy.

The first stage isn't that bad, but afterwards, you're playing TouhouXContra. It's quite literally, a Nightmare. It's kind of a shame you have to unlock it to get a real challenge, and since you have to go through Hard mode to get it, it's a little redundant.

But hey, it's not all bad! There's no Konami Code, but there's a Debug Mode. Of course, unless you have access to the European version, you're out of luck.

Overall, it's a decent game, but it's too pricey at 1000 Wii Points. A better deal would be to go buy Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES) on the Virtual Console for a much more reasonable 800 Wii Points. Better game, better price. Unless you already have it, in which case, save your Wii Points.

...ROBOTIC LLAMAS!? ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS!?

[Doodle]

I was kind of looking forward to this.
It sucks to hear it...well, sucks. D: