CONTRA: Legacy of War
Contra made its first tentative jump to polygons in 1996's Contra: Legacy of War for the Playstation. Unfortunately, it missed by a few pixels and fell, tucked into an eternal somersault, into a bottomless pit. Konami farmed out work on this title to American developer Appaloosa, who are best known for making games about dolphins that talk to floating crystals. Also about this time, Konami nearly sold the rights to the Metal Gear series for some magic beans.
Much like Hard Corps, LoW has a team of four commandos with slightly varying abilities fighting an onslaught of alien cyborg invaders. Ray returns, with a blue-skinned lady mutant named Tasha. And just because Konami loves us, there are not one but two robot pals. Well, one of them's a cyborg, but I really don't care.
I dread the concept that I might have put more effort into typing this than was put into the presentation of the game. The disc itself has a nice flat camo pattern with the Contra logo, and I only bring it up because it's about the most eye-pleasing thing in the game. Let me throw down a few basic recurring elements to help give you a feel for the look of LoW. Each stage is presented as if it were an overhead level from Super C filmed by a tottering drunk. There are times where you're running in a straight line then notice yourself drifting as the camera decides that it really wants to get a different angle on that bush in the background, which brings me another major annoyance- the scroll only goes forward. That's right, if you're battling a boss and try to head to the top of the room to avoid an attack, there's about a 1 in 5 chance you'll be able to go to the bottom again. Most grunts, as well as the characters themselves are presented as sprites, which gives them a weird, stiff appearance in contrast to the amazingly boring polygonal bosses. The best thing they could come up with for the middle of the first level was a gun pod on a stick. A good example of how half-assed the look of this game is when you encounter that time-honored Contra first-level obstacle- the Big Wall. After taking out the two crappy gun turrets (that seriously look like they belong in Star Fox) you shoot the wall's weak spot and it just falls over. Then you realize that the wall was actually a flat polygon, which really looks pathetic when it falls over like a cardboard cut-out.
I could let the graphical errors slide, of course. Appearances are only skin deep, can't judge a game by its poly count, etc... but in this case, it really is as bad as it seems. Powerups are hidden in walls at random, including a Barrier right next to where you start out. The game seems oddly liberal with the Barriers, compared to the previous ones when they seemed to crop up every three stages. You can switch freely between special weapons once you get the corresponding falcon item- unfortunately they're all vaguely color coded and kind of hard to tell apart. The enemy grunts appear endlessly at random as usual, which would be fine if not for the fact they tend to walk out of solid walls as often as they come from side streets and other places that make sense. As mentioned before, the enemies are surprisingly dull for a Contra, and most bosses and minibosses are just classic bosses in glorious 3-D. For example, the Contra III turtle boss comes back, only appearing to be made out of metal. It looks like a Power Rangers snapping turtle mech or something.
The battle with the troop transport at the end of the first stage sums up the game oh so very well. As you jump to hit it, the screen moves up ever so slightly, as mindless troops jump from up top and try to kill you once they figure out a way around the stupid scaffolding piece. As you score the final hit (assuming you jumped) some bug in the game forces you into the lava aqueduct thing it was floating over, and you'll respawn in the lava about three or four times before the transport suddenly reappears as a big rotating platform.
About the time I made it past the level 2 miniboss by the skin of my teeth only to be lured into a trap by a Gyruss arcade machine (I'm not making this up, either.) I decided it was time to start cheating and using codes to unlock the FMVs and such. The game's opening FMV is simple but passable- a bomber drops some bombs, nearly gets shot, then gets shot down after all. Then I decided to play the enemy commander's monologue. What joy.
Let me make an aside here, that FMV stands for Full Motion Video. It generally applies of live-action, animated, or computer-generated cutscenes above the capabilities of the game's graphic engine itself. Classic examples including the video cutscenes of Wing Commander, or the lavish cutscenes of the post PSX-era Final Fantasy games. Here, FMV is used to give us a totally still picture of a green-faced man, whose mouth moves in an awkward, inaccurate way that must have a whopping three frames of animation. And the voice- oh, the voiceover that accompanies this is comedy gold. He speaks like some half man, half lizard that got drunk and tried a lousy impression of some random foreign accent. He goes on at length about how you are powerless to stop him and his BR-R-R-R-RAIN, that you're on a direct course to face judgment at the hands of the Alien Emperor, and oh yeah, that "YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES... HAVE BEEN RESSURECTED... TO PROTECT MY BR-R-R-R-R-RAIN."
Let's recap the major points of LoW just in case my stream-of-thought rambling has thrown you.
- Lame 3-D camera effects, and sprite-based characters and enemies that clash with poorly-textured polygonal enemies
- Muddled gameplay centered around a control scheme that manages to be easier to navigate in than the overhead sections of Contra III while much much harder to actually move and avoid enemies in
- Numerous bugs and distractions, along with nonsensical item placement
- The best minibosses they can come up with include a shiv-tossing trilobite, a gun pod on a stick, and some big-headed spider mech... thing that looks worse than I can effectively describe. Seriously, it looks like a third-grader's attempt to duplicate the Arachnotrons from Doom in Lightwave Studio. I've seen more ominous 'biomechanical' monstrosities made out of Legos. Pre-Bionicle.
- "MY BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RAIN...."
Are we up to speed? Good. LoW is a pretty regrettable title in the end. Despite some claims I'd heard beforehand, Appaloosa seems to have made some conscious effort to impart this game with a Contra feel, like the sound effects, and of course, re-use of numerous bosses. But just like adding landmines to soccer doesn't make it 'better' soccer (note: soccer with landmines is toally rad), adding 3-D to Contra doesn't put it on par with games designed for it to begin with. This whole game is like an extended lame overhead sequence from Super C with texture maps and less-than distinct obstacles. Jumping with any sort of precision is kind of like trying to land a baseball in a hat three feet in front of you by tossing it straight up.
Oh, and to spare anyone else having to look, the ending is appropriately weird- the alien homeworld explodes, and the Contra team stands defiantly unharmed on a hunk of it, flying aimlessly toward destinations unknown. The Alien commander tries to claw his way up from the bottom of the fragment, again screeching about his BR-R-R-RAIN, and... that's it. Fade to black, cutting off the end theme in mid-note. Is it a cliffhanger? Some sort of epilogue? And why does the only alien who speaks call his own race "Aliens?" Maybe these questions, in addition to "What's a Contra, anyway?" in the next thrilling installment;
C: THE CONTRA ADVENTURE
(Or maybe I'll skip ahead to Shattered Soldier. Which I hear is actually really good, if not crazy hard.)
...MY BR-R-R-R-R-RAAAAAAIN.
Options include control settings, difficulty, and whether or not you get run over by a tank. Just kidding, the tank will always hit you.
Stills don't really give you a feel for the wobbly camera and cut-out environments.
I think there was a go-bot or something that transformed from a race car into a giant snake. Kind of reminds me of the weird flamethrower tanks in the Jungle Conflict. Not pictured: totally lame trilobite critters who just lay mostly still on the ground and don't seem to mind if you kill them.