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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 15, 2011 11:26:14 GMT -5
Contra 4 is the kind of game you would expect from someone whose only experience with the series were the two NES versions, Operation C and Contra III, while acting as if the original arcade games, Contra: Hard Corps, and Contra: Shattered Soldier were suddenly bad or mediocre games. As mentioned above, most of the stages and situations are rehashed from the early games in the series and even the graphic designs (especially the main character sprite) looks like they were based more on the first NES game than any other installment. Hell, even the soundtrack is composed entirely of arranged music from the original Contra (with a couple of tunes from Contra III here and there). This by itself is not bad and Contra 4 is not a completely terrible game by any means, but game's extreme difficulty is mostly due to poor balance than any actual foresight or good level design. They brought back the peashooter rifle only because it was the default weapon used in the NES games, but it's too painfully weak (even on the Easy setting) and there's no reason to pick up any other power-up besides the Spread Gun and Machine Gun since they're way too powerful (especially the enhanced versions). The half-inch gap between the two screens was also unnecessary and only allowed for bullets and enemies to hide easily from the player. I like Contra III because the weapon balance was pretty good and no weapon felt less useful than the other (even if it meant nerfing the Spread Gun a bit). I never felt that balance was there in Contra 4, where the Spread Gun is only the most powerful weapon because it was the most powerful one in the NES games as well. Plus, the whole "Mad Dog and Scorpion are not really nicknames for Bill and Lance, but two separate guys" retcon is retarded, no matter how you look at it. It's the kind of stuff a fanboy would pull off. 
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Post by evilakito on Jan 15, 2011 21:07:18 GMT -5
Contra 4 is the kind of game you would expect from someone whose only experience with the series were the two NES versions, Operation C and Contra III, while acting as if the original arcade games, Contra: Hard Corps, and Contra: Shattered Soldier were suddenly bad or mediocre games. I wouldn't call either game "bad" or "mediocre" by any means, but I did feel that Shattered Solider wasn't quite Contra-y enough for me. The NES Contra games required a lot of focus and highly trained muscle memory, whereas Shattered Soldier felt more like an R-Type game in that it was really slow-paced and forced you to memorize the levels (in which case, they became pretty easy once you knew what to do). My only big complaint about Contra 4 was that they limited your continues. It never made sense to me that the further you get in the game, it not only gets harder, but you also aren't allowed as many chances to practice them. After mastering the first few levels, it's total bullshit that I have to play them over and over again just so I'll be able to take another stab at the later levels. I feel that if I've proven that I'm able to beat a level on only three lives, then I should be allowed to play the next level until I can beat that one without losing my three lives, and so on. If I'm forced to play through the easy levels again, it just gets boring and tedious. |
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Post by Discoalucard on Jan 15, 2011 21:55:53 GMT -5
OK, so here's the train of logic of how Contra 4 ended up the way it did - the general feeling towards Contra (at least in the eyes of the producers) was that everyone was familiar with the series in the NES days - it was one of the most talked about games when I was a kid, anyway - but as it went on it dropped in popularity. The idea was to go back to what people were most familiar with, hence why the less boss rush-y feel, the limited continues, the pea shooter gun and the behind-the-back stages.
I really liked Contra 4, though. I don't have a problem with any of the above (with the exception of the crap ass standard gun), its biggest issue is just the fact that it's on the DS and it's just not all that comfortable to play. I prefer Contra Rebirth, though, because it was mimicking Contra III rather than the first two.
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Post by munchy on Jan 15, 2011 22:13:08 GMT -5
My main issue was with the behind the back stages and the one jet ski one. I'd rather have had more side scrolling stages instead, but otherwise it's one of my favorite handheld games of all time.
Also it did lack much of the sense of humor of Nakazato's (sic?) Contra games, which I kinda missed.
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Post by X-pert74 on Jan 16, 2011 5:52:48 GMT -5
I also disliked having the default rifle come back in Contra 4. It encourages you to mash the fire button rapidly, which every game since Operation C had avoided, which was a change I greatly appreciated (since pressing the fire button over and over is more conducive to carpal tunnely-pain in my experience). The DS lite is also very uncomfortable to hold, and it makes it harder for me to play Contra on it than I do on other controllers like the SNES or PS2's. The retcons with Mad Dog and Scorpion were also pretty stupid. I think the way the Japanese version handled things makes more sense (in the Japanese game Mad Dog and Scorpion are just two new guys who weren't involved with Operation C).
There were tributes to Hard Corps as well though. That game wasn't totally ignored. There's the obvious inclusion of Sheena as a playable character, and at one point in Contra 4 you're riding a giant rocket, which is definitely from Hard Corps. Later in the same stage you fight a giant robot who resides in the background while in the city, and that's another Hard Corps tribute. It doesn't help the game's case for being very unique though.
I love some other things about Contra 4 as well. The challenge mode was awesome, and so much fun to do. Every single challenge was playtested and refined to near-perfection. Outside of a glitch in the Pacifism challenges (which was ironed out of the Japanese release), the challenge mode was handled wonderfully. Being able to unlock emulated versions of Contra and Super C is also pretty nice (even if the emulations aren't quite perfect). I also like the really epic feeling of the final stage. Even though it's just like nearly every final level in a Contra game, the background music in particular is very effective there.
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 16, 2011 11:35:35 GMT -5
The two new guys really serve no purpose anyway, since they're just palette-swaps of the same main character sprite and the 4-players mode that was originally planned for the game was ultimately left out. If the producers were so obsessed at using the "Mad Dog" and "Scorpion" nicknames, they could've easily just claim that "Mad Dog" and "Scorpion" were always Bill's and Lance's nicknames (especially since they were supposed to be targeting the game to older NES players who wouldn't had been familiar with the series' contradictory continuity anyway) and just give the two new guys different names (like say, "Paul Paxton" for the black guy and "Michael Henriksen" for the tanned one) if their inclusion was really necessary. And then they have the balls to claim that their two new characters were really the "true stars" of Operation C all along. Sorry, but everyone's copy of Operation C only has a 1-player mode and it may star Bill, Scorpion, or whatever character you wish it were, but there was certainly no "Mad Dog and Scorpion" since it was just one guy. At the very least, "Jimbo" and "Sully" were specifically claimed to be alternate versions of Bill and Lance and not different guys (although their voices were annoying). One detail I really liked about the arcade Contra games is that Bill's and Lance's sprites actually looked like they belonged to different character and were not just palette-swaps. They actually looked like they did on the title screen. Granted, this detail was lost in the NES versions due to graphical limitations, but even in the SNES game they were still palette-swaps. In Contra 4, it looked they just based the sprites from the NES versions, where everyone is just a shirtless commando distinguished by the color of their pants. I think there was a lost opportunity at making each of the main character different from each other, especially considering the cool poster art that came with that issue of Nintendo Power, where "Mad Dog" and "Scorpion" were drawn to look like Wesley Snipes and Vin Diesel. And yeah, Sheena and Lucia were only included in Contra 4 because of T&A fan-service (not that I'm complaining). |
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Post by cj iwakura on Jan 16, 2011 11:41:17 GMT -5
I loved Contra 4 because it felt like the old Contras again.
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Post by kitten on Jan 16, 2011 15:12:17 GMT -5
Oh no! They had "the balls" to mess with the continuity of a Game Boy game whose plot was completely inconsequential. It mostly tributed the NES games and Contra III! Your complaints are so bizarre, a lot of people didn't care about most of these things or wanted them. I mean, seriously, one of your biggest problems with a run n' gun shooter is the continuity? Really? Really?
I also don't get what you're talking about with weapon imbalance, and given what you said, you clearly didn't experiment with other weapons. The crush missiles are considerably more powerful than the upgraded machine gun, as is the laser weapon. It has a more balanced weapon set than most of the other Contra games, and I felt like I could run with any one I liked the most. You can see videos of excellent runs posted with things even like the homing missiles, too. I felt the difficulty for the game was very fair, and it felt like the first "true" sequel to the Contra series since 3 (I love Shattered Soldier and Hard Corps and even really liked Neo Contra, but it feels like much more faithful a sequel to the original trilogy of home console games).
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 16, 2011 16:03:38 GMT -5
It may seem like I'm nitpicking over something as superficial as character names and generic character sprites, but let me put it this way. There has been several games by Nintendo starring Mario and Luigi. Some of them only had Mario in it and a few only had Luigi in it. Now let's pretend that Nintendo suddenly decided that not all the games with Mario and Luigi actually had Mario and Luigi in it, but the two Toads from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and then Nintendo highlighted on their official site and documents which games starred the two Toads and which games starred Mario and Luigi. It would be an unnecessary change to already established continuity and quite frankly stupid, since the older games would still have Mario and Luigi in it, not matter what the later games would say. If Nintendo ever made such a change, Mario fans would be in uproar (it doesn't necessarily have to be Mario, it could be any popular video game franchise from Sonic to Street Fighter). But since Contra is more of a cult franchise with a smaller fan-base, I guess Konami gets a free pass in messing up the continuity any way they want. You say I'm complaining about an "inconsequential change to an inconsequential continuity" and I'm saying, well "they shouldn't have change anything in the first place if it's so inconsequential".
As for the weapon balance. The Machine Gun is the only weapon capable of full autofire, so it's a lot easier to use against bosses since you don't have to tap the fire button to shoot faster, while the Spread Gun is best for the small fry segments due to the ground it covers. I never found the Homing Gun to be as effective as the Spread Gun, while the Laser and Crush Guns requires the player to tap the button so there's a trade-off there. The Fire Gun just plain sucks.
Just to clarify, I never said Contra 4 was a "horrible game" or "mediocre", just that it felt way too fan-made. On that note, it's a well-made fan-game, but it's not without its flaws. I'm glad nobody defended the gap between the two screens though.
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Post by kitten on Jan 16, 2011 16:56:40 GMT -5
It would be an unnecessary change to already established continuity Doesn't Zelda, another classic series, already do silly things with a ridiculous canon? Nobody really cares. It's not worth criticizing the game so much over. Seriously, though, the most recent Halo game rewrote a shitload of canon and fans hardly cared, and that's a series with multiple best-selling books published for it by a respectable sci-fi author. Contra is a run n' gun series where the story is primarily just an excuse to fight ridiculous aliens and robots. You're being extremely anal-retentive about this. Contra is quite literally my favorite video game series and I thought the dicking around with the canon was charming. ...And now you confirm my suspicions that you definitely don't know what you're talking about and didn't experiment with the other weapons. Not only is the laser more powerful than the machinegun, it also operates on "full autofire" when upgraded (its disadvantage is its less wide range when compared to the machinegun). |
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Post by thethird on Jan 16, 2011 17:04:09 GMT -5
Seriously, though, the most recent Halo game rewrote a shitload of canon and fans hardly cared, and that's a series with multiple best-selling books published for it by a respectable sci-fi author. I dunno, some of the forums I visit had plenty of fan-rage to go around. I didn't have a problem with the changes they made but it seemed like a vast majority of the "hardcore" Halo fans were damn angry. |
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 16, 2011 17:19:19 GMT -5
Doesn't Zelda, another classic series, already do silly things with a ridiculous canon? Nobody really cares. It's not worth criticizing the game so much over. Seriously, though, the most recent Halo game rewrote a shitload of canon and fans hardly cared, and that's a series with multiple best-selling books published for it by a respectable sci-fi author. Contra is a run n' gun series where the story is primarily just an excuse to fight ridiculous aliens and robots. You're being extremely anal-retentive about this. Contra is quite literally my favorite video game series and I thought the dicking around with the canon was charming. Because I still think of "Mad Dog and Scorpion" as aliases for Bill and Lance, in the same way that Charlie from Street Fighter has the surname "Nash" and "Dr. Eggman" is a nickname for Dr. Ivo Robotnik. If Capcom and Sega can combine the American names of their characters, I'm not sure why Konami didn't do the same with Bill and Lance. Yeah, I neglected to mention that the enhanced Laser Gun has full autofire, but it's only for the enhanced version. And like you said, it doesn't have the same wide range, so my point still stands. I will acknowledge that the Crush Gun and the Laser Gun both have the advantage of piercing through their targets, which is useful for the final boss. Otherwise, I find the Machine Gun more useful for the majority of situations. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2011 17:22:58 GMT -5
I can respect someone feeling that a franchise has changed their characters and / or continuity for no readily apparent reason. At the same time, I'm really envious of people who can just let that stuff slide and appreciate a game for what truly matters, the gameplay.
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Post by kitten on Jan 16, 2011 17:54:13 GMT -5
I dunno, some of the forums I visit had plenty of fan-rage to go around. I didn't have a problem with the changes they made but it seemed like a vast majority of the "hardcore" Halo fans were damn angry. A few of my friends talked about how it was a little lame, but understood why they did it. I don't know anyone who actually got angry about it and I'm a pretty big Halo fan. I guess some "hardcore" fans on the net got pissed, but I strongly doubt that represents any sort of "majority." It's just a really anal thing to complain so much about mostly inconsequential changes to canon. There's a Halo comic that's currently in production that is fixing up the disparities between The Fall of Reach and Halo: Reach, anyway. Because I still think of "Mad Dog and Scorpion" as aliases for Bill and Lance, in the same way that Charlie from Street Fighter has the surname "Nash" and "Dr. Eggman" is a nickname for Dr. Ivo Robotnik. If Capcom and Sega can combine the American names of their characters, I'm not sure why Konami didn't do the same with Bill and Lance. Because Konami doesn't care anymore. Look at Legacy of War and C: The Contra Adventure. As much as I love Contra 4, they took a pretty big risk handing it over to WayForward and the only reason Contra: ReBirth even happened is likely due to Contra 4 having done well. It's a pretty minor change and most fans of the series probably didn't even notice what happened - you only knew who "Mad Dog" and "Scorpion" were if you read the manuals (or played the arcade games), anyway. I grew up on Contra, and they were just "red guy" and "blue guy," to me. I thought the grunt enemies that run around were rugby or football players carrying their equipment on their back and that the weapon capsules were flying footballs/rugby balls. In no way was my Contra experienced diminished, nor would it be if I somehow still thought these things. Mad Dog and Scorpion being introduced as new characters is a bit silly, but the game, like Neo Contra (and ReBirth), revels in the silly nature of Contra and realizes its "roots" are in solid run n' gun gameplay and ripping off American action flicks. You were wrong, whether you "neglected to mention" it or not, and what point still stands? That there's not weapon balance? How is trading some range for firepower not "balanced?" That gives you a reason to use other weapons or at least allow you room for preference. Both the arcade and NES versions of Contra and Super C had one weapon that was clearly superior to the others, and the other games had crappy weapon balancing, too, aside from Shattered Soldier. Contra 4 only has one useless weapon and has some of the best balancing between the weapons the series has seen. If you want to dislike the game, that's fine. Complaining about the screen distance, sometimes excessive use of trial and error and an inferior starting weapon are valid complaints... but don't give me lies about the game only having two weapons worth using and please don't try and convince anyone that the plot of all things is worth criticizing the game over. |
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Post by Ryu the Grappler on Jan 16, 2011 18:35:34 GMT -5
I never said I "dislike" the game. Now you're truly putting words in my mouth. Apparently you can't complain about a game without coming off as a "hater". I still think Contra 4 is a decent game and a good addition to the series (better than some of the other games in the series, namely the MSX2 version of Contra, Contra Force and the two portable versions of Alien Wars), but I think it also has some legitimate flaws (plot complaints excluded, since at least I'm willing to admit I'm mostly nitpicking, although you're also blowing my nitpickings out of proportion) and I wouldn't put it above my three favorite games in the series (which are Contra: Hard Corps, Contra III: The Alien Wars, and Super C).
I still stand on the weapon balance issue. I found the enhanced Machine Gun more effective than the enhanced Laser Gun in pretty much every other boss battle besides the final one and the Crusher Gun is really not that more useful than the Machine Gun in the end. I would put the Crusher Gun a bit above the Laser Gun, but otherwise I found no reason to trade the Machine Gun for either weapon in the end. In fact, I completed the game on one life on the Hard mode using only the Machine Gun and the Spread Gun throughout the entire time.
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