Contra Rebirth is one of Konami's "rebirth" games along with Castlevania Adventure Rebirth and Gradius Rebirth, taking their respective series back to their 2D roots from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Contra Rebirth takes everything that made its 8-bit and 16-bit predecessors amazing and modernizes it. the result is an exemplary game that is well worth the $10 asking price. Contra Rebirth a side scrolling shooter featuring some bizarre storyline about which absolutely no one cares involving future aliens going into the past to invade primitive past Earth, forcing the galactic president to send future Super 'Murica guys into the past to shoot everything with a pulse. The gameplay is definitely this game's strongest aspect; it's all the great run-n-gun action that you remember from the NES Contra, although it is muuuuch more forgiving than its ancestors. Like I mentioned in my review for Castlevania Adventure Rebirth, Contra Rebirth features three difficulty settings (although stage 6, the real final boss, and the true ending can't be unlocked on Easy) as well as the option to increase your number of lives up to a maximum of seven. The visuals are great, bringing bright colors and well designed sprites while keeping true to the feel of the original games. The music is similarly spectacular, the soundtrack being comprised of remixes and new arrangements of old and classic Contra tunes. The game also, thankfully, carries the mid-stage checkpoints and unlimited continues over from Castlevania Adventure Rebirth. The hit detection can, at times, be a bit spotty as there were a couple times I think my shot should have hit an enemy but a lot of times that an enemy's shot definitely should have killed me. That said, though, those instances weren't extraordinarily common in my playthrough, and the addicting fun of the game more than makes up for a few mechanical flaws. Contra Rebirth is a fantastic game for $10 and really showed the potential of the WiiWare platform when developers really used it well. It's a bite sized game that can serve as a low-cost entry into a series that you might either have missed out on back in the day or just didn't have the skill level to enjoy fully. It's a bit on the short side, but $10 is a very fair price for an addicting 2 player experience with four playable characters and six stages to fight through. Fans of Contra and fans of the Wii need to make sure to check this one out. My Rating - B |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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