Contra: Legacy of War - Every Gamer Review

OH BOY HERE WE GO! This will be the first of the two Contra games that sucked, according to the fans. I can understand why, since this was a time where most 2D series were going 3D in a bid to survive in the video game industry at the time, and Contra was one of those series to take the leap and see whether it worked or not. So Konami were ready to make a 3D Contra game and it should be…what? Both of these games weren’t developed by Konami but a western developer? OH FOR FU…

Contra: Legacy of War, known in Europe as…Contra: Legacy of War? Wait, the series can actually be called Contra in Europe? YIPPEE! Developed by Appaloosa Interactive and published by Konami and was released on the PlayStation in 1996 in the US and in 1997 in Europe with a Sega Saturn port released only in the US in 1997. And for a game that originated from Japan, this game was and hasn’t ever been released in that country…oh dear.

Our villain of this game, Colonel Bassad, is using soldiers, robots, and alien mutants to take over the world. But Ray Poward (from Contra: Hard Corps) has been assigned to stop Bassad, along with his new crew, Tasha the Female, CD-28 the Robot and Bubba the Alien. It seems that having a complex plot to show off your 3D game was the first thing to be thrown in the bin I guess, but hey, it’s a start.

You can play as one of four characters (As I described below), each with different speeds and weapons. In terms of the gameplay, I was surprised that whilst there is a transfer into 3D, it still has that element of Contra. It still has that run and gun feel and even weapons have that element of Contra in it.

And that’s where I stop with the compliments because other than that, it doesn’t work. First off, the isometric world, it tries to give you the linear fast-paced Contra experience, but then you have the controls. You can jump, shoot, duck and strife but MAN OH MAN is it a slog to play given that, because it’s an isometric world and you have to use a D-Pad (I played the Sega Saturn port by the way), so it’s difficult to even shoot the bigger enemies, you want to stop to shoot accurately but the game doesn’t let you do this, leading to you always getting hit first.

Speaking of which, the camera is simply terrible due to the fact that enemies can hit you off-screen and then later on in the game you have to do precise platforming and the camera doesn’t give you any good of a perspective, there was one time where I lost so much lives because of a moving platform that kept screwing with me. The game world is so dull compared to the utterly creative and memorable levels of previous Contra games. In fact, none of the levels feel like Contra and look brown and generic…JUST LIKE CALL OF DUTY, HOLY SHIT KONAMI PREDICTED THE BULLSHIT!

The difficulty is straight up BS, they brought back the one hit deaths with 9 lives but this isn’t an NES game, this is a 3D game and that kind of difficulty can’t work with this game and it shows. Oh, and by the way, if you ever lose all your lives, so long as you have continues, you have to start the level all over again, GODDAMMIT is that a kick in the teeth. I think they were trying to keep the arcade elements of the original Contra games but forgot that this is the 32-bit era where that Arcade style just didn’t appeal to anyone anymore.

Oh, and the game only has four levels, so the game is very short if you EVER get good at it…somehow.

Any positives? The weapons are OK, you have a standard machine gun, collect power-ups to get a flamethrower, spreader, bomb and…a homing laser. Ladies and Gentlemen, the homing laser is probably the best thing about the game and the weapon that has surpassed the spreader in usefulness…how the hell did you do that Appaloosa? Though spreader and homing laser belong to Ray because everyone has a machine gun, flamethrower and bomb but each character will get different weapons.

The graphics are very, very poor, with level design with too little detail to it and there are 2D sprites that look ugly. How the hell does this game look worse than Contra III…no, the MSX port of Contra looks ten times better than this, at least the classics have aged well compared to this atrocity. The music is also bland, which is a shame too since Contra music has always been good before, but this is the generic 90’s gaming guff that just gets in my nerves.

Overall, Contra: Legacy of War is a terrible Contra title, but I won’t lie it was a noble feat in trying to at least keep the Contra formula and taking to another dimension. But it just doesn’t work in 3D at all, albeit the developers failed to get it correct. I’m sure there was a PlayStation game that surpassed this game and became a better 3D Contra game than this one. Whether you’re a Contra fan or not, this is certainly one to avoid.

You can get it on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.