Disappointing from New Directions

I have written a lot about ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. over the last few months. We’re slowly approaching the (current) end of the franchise and I’ve managed to get through just about every game in the franchise (barring the Tencent-produced, mobile-only Contra Returns, or the arcade-only Contra Burst, which is another in Konami’s line of gambling machines) so I feel pretty knowledgeable about the series now. Not an expert, as there are fans that have deep dived into the series and the lore much harder than I have, but I at least know enough about the games to speak with something like authority.

I preface it that way so that when I state that Contra: Rogue Corps is my contender for the worst game in the series, you understand what I’m saying. We’ve seen mediocre games in the series, three-dimensional titles that miscalculated what made the games good and tried hard to translate the feel into a medium that couldn’t support it. We’ve seen games mimicking the style of Contra without any of the fun or heart. But none of those have been an absolute, tedious chore. That designation goes solely to Contra: Rogue Corps, a game so ill-advised I’m amazed Konami even let it out the door.

Developed by Toylogic, Contra: Rogue Corps is the 2019 sequel to the series, set after the events of Contra III: The Alien Wars and Contra 4. It’s a bold move tying your game to what are, by most accounts, two of the best games in the whole franchise, but to do it for a game that is, functionally, a spin-off that’s really a Contra game in name only is really baffling. What Toylogic made is a twin-stick shooter that, in every way that actually matters (save one), isn’t even really a Contra title. It doesn’t even really need to be in the series, and the fact that it is makes the game look worse by comparison.

Contra: Rogue Corps takes place after the destruction of the alien world that was attacking Earth. The Earth Federation launched a superweapon that destroyed the planet, but as everyone was cheering for humanity, a strange, alien city rose up from the ashes. This toxic site is home to evil creatures, aliens left over from the home planet, and it’s feared that these creatures could eventually spread, taking over the world. The city itself is a cursed place that drives men mad. Only a select few warriors, those that have proven themselves to be immune to the maddening effects of the Damned City can even go in… and that’s where our Rogue Corps of fugitive soldiers comes in.

The game gives you four playable characters to select from: the generic Contra guy, Kaiser; a lady with an alien in her belly held at bay by a sword stuck through her gut, Ms Harikari; a mutant panda with the brain of a scientist, Hungry Beast; and an erudite alien with cybernetic implants, the Gentleman. Each of these technically have special skills they can use in combat, abilities that could prove helpful if you use them… except none of them really felt worthwhile to me, especially not in a game where even your basic pellet gun was good enough to mow down enemies.

Functionally, the game plays a lot like Robotron: 2084 or Super Smash TV, except don’t let those comparisons fool you. Those are good games and Contra: Rogue Corps is not. The basic controls are the same, with one stick moving your dude around while the other aims your weapon at the bad guys, but that’s about where the comparisons end. Those games were powered by tight gameplay and twitch, moment-to-moment action, while Contra: Rogue Corps is painfully boring and dull.

There are a number of stages to push through in this game (assuming you make it that far), and most of them boil down to your guy getting dropped into an area, walking down a hallway to shoot at some enemies, before getting trapped in an arena to fight a larger pack of enemies that swarm around you. Sometimes you’ll then fight down another hallway afterwards, other times you’ll kill a few waves of enemies in these arenas. Then it’s on to a boss who is easy to predict and easier to dodge, and that’s it for the stage and on to the next one.

In fairness to the game the levels do vary their basic design sometimes. Some stages are presented in top down, behind the back action while other sections have a more 3D behind-the-back perspective. Depending on that perspective your second, aiming stick will either swing around on the ground or along the Z-axis to aim at airborne enemies. And, credit where it’s due, when the game flips back and forth between these perspectives it does so fairly smoothly. In a better version of this game I could see this back-and-forth gameplay style working really well.

But Contra: Rogue Corps never really capitalizes on this. Every stage is populated with the same generic enemies, in light numbers. Even if it does try to overwhelm you, the game also provides every character with screen-clearing bombs you can use that will kill every minor enemy. You’re never really in any danger, especially considering your characters have beefy health bars and health drops are plentiful. Even on higher difficulties it feels like the game is holding your hand and being nice the whole time. The challenge of a Contra game is missing here.

And all of that is in support of one of the worst stories I’ve seen from the franchise. It’s painfully bad, with unlikeable heroes desperately trying to be edgy and funny and failing at both. It’s a motley crew of rejects and misfits that feel like they were cobbled together by committee. The only character that makes sense in this game is the Contra dude, and you have to wonder why anyone else exists here. These guys are so painfully dull that they wouldn’t have even made the cut for inclusion in Concord. And every time they open their mouths in the cutscenes you wish they wouldn’t. Sure, you can skip the cutscenes but that only gets you back to the game faster and I’d really rather do anything other than play this game.

What really annoyed me, though, was that the game has an interesting concept. Damned City, generic as its name may be, sounds like it could have a cool gameplay loop to it. It’ll drive your characters mad, which means they can’t spend long in the city before ill effects befall them. If that was a mechanic, where your characters slowly went mad and it caused the stages to change or the enemies to get more powerful, that would be cool. There’s a lot you could do with that kind of mechanic, but the game tosses it out as a story beat and then says, “oh, but your heroes are immune.” Why even put that in the game if it doesn’t matter, then?

And all of this is for what? A game that barely plays like Contra? It doesn’t look like it at all, and if you removed the horrendous rendition of the original Contra soundtrack from the game, it wouldn’t even sound like it. This is a Contra game in name only, and it might have been better if it didn’t even have that moniker to it at all. At least then it wouldn’t be actively inviting the comparison between this title and all the vastly better games that came out before it. When even Contra: Legacy of War plays better than your game, you know you failed.

I don’t want to be mean to this game. I’m sure Toylogic tried really hard to make an interesting shooter. They were paid by Konami to make a Contra game, and so they had to crank out something. It would have been better if they made something that played like “just another Contra” because this is awful. I respect the effort, but the end result is one of the worst games I’ve touched in quite some time.

And now I have to apologize to Appaloosa because we really do have a contender for the worst game in the series and it’s not anything that company made.