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Contra 4 is awesome. And it is awesome in exactly the same ways as the classic games that bear the crest of Contra. Contra 4 is also mean. And it is mean in exactly the same ways as its forebears. That's perhaps a longwinded way to say, "Contra 4 is totally Contra," but regardless, the point remains. From its slavish dedication and great execution of the "run to the right, shoot stuff, don't get shot" formula, to its utterly ludicrous difficulty, Contra 4 is not a game for the easily vexed, but it is one for anyone who loves a challenging shooter.
While the numerical designation of "4" might not exactly be true, Contra 4 feels like more of an honest to god sequel to the classic Contra games as anything in recent memory. Part of that is thanks to developer WayForward's apparent deep, deep love of all things Contra. If you remember the classic arcade and NES games, you'll remember a lot of what goes on here. From the reuse of notable Contra heroes Bill and Lance (or Scorpion and Mad Dog, if you prefer), to the healthy smattering of classic Contra weaponry (the machine gun, the flamethrower, the ever-popular spread gun), and the subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) references to levels and bosses of Contra yesteryear, Contra 4 feels like a celebration of the franchise's heyday, a return to what made the series so fantastic in the first place.
And it holds up better than you might think. The developers took few, if any, risks with the formula here, turning in a gameplay design that just feels like a souped-up, two-screened version of 16-bit-era Contra. You run to the right, occasionally run up (in a nod to the behind-the-back levels from the original Contra), and just shoot every bit of vile alien scum that crosses your path while picking up some of the baddest guns around. The level designs here are top flight in every way. There's just enough nostalgia sprinkled in to send the fans into giggle fits, but at the same time, none of this stuff feels rehashed. These levels manage to feel new and exciting, even if they are just based on an age-old formula, while the boss fights are some of the most intense action you're going to find on the DS, period.
Intensity is really the name of the game here, and it's likely that it's going to be too much for some. More than perhaps any Contra game before it, Contra 4 is hard. Almost excruciatingly so. Normal difficulty is like some kind of cruel joke. Enemies and bullets appear from every which direction, often hanging out in the exact spot you're about to jump to or the area you'd most likely run to in order to duck certain death. Keeping yourself alive is as much about memorization of enemy attack patterns as it is about any measure of quantifiable skill. You get multiple continues if you happen to run out of lives on a given stage, but once you're out of continues, you start the game anew. Granted, this isn't an especially long game, but the odds of players blowing through this thing on their first, second, or even third sittings hover somewhere around the zero mark. To be fair, the game is extremely up front about its toughness, frequently mentioning the challenges you'll face and even making it abundantly clear that easy mode doesn't include the last two levels of the game. The difficulty itself feels almost like an in-joke for the fans. While it's bound to frustrate a number of people, those who can stomach it will persevere and enjoy themselves a great deal.
Though Contra might be a relatively short game, it sure doesn't skimp on the extras. This year is Contra's 20th anniversary, and in celebration of that fact, the game comes with a ton of extra content. Granted, you can't get too much of it until you unlock the challenge mode (which you can do by beating the game on any difficulty level, including easy mode) and start beating the game's challenges. These are all stand-alone level pieces that task you with everything from surviving an enemy onslaught to getting from one end of a level to the other without the aid of a gun. Easier said than done. But once you do get a few challenges completed, you'll unlock everything from additional characters and developer interviews to playable NES versions of Contra and Super C.
The only real bummer about those unlockable titles is that they don't come with multiplayer functionality. Contra was always a better game when you had both a blue and a red guy onscreen shooting at once. Without that, these older titles lose a bit of their appeal--not all of it, of course, but some. Contra 4, fortunately, does include multiplayer for two players, and that is, in fact, awesome. The only disappointment is that it's only for multicard play--no download option.
Contra 4 might not be one of the more immediately striking DS games you'll ever see, but while the game might mostly just look like a 16-bit game on heavy doses of performance-enhancing drugs, there's a lot of eye candy to be found the deeper you go into it. Whether it's the cool-looking backgrounds or the absolutely crazy-looking bosses, at nearly every turn, there is one impressive visual moment or another. The only real bummer is that periodically, the separation between the two screens causes some issues, like bullets you can't really see popping onto whichever screen you happen to be occupying. Audio is also quite enjoyable, from the "inspired by the classics" soundtrack to the goofily fantastic voice samples from the various heroes, such as "Lock and load!" or "Let's party!"
It's possible that Contra 4 might have benefited from a few updates to the design formula and maybe a drop in the difficulty by a half-notch or so, but those quibbles aside, the fact remains that Contra 4 is great at being a Contra game. There is no pretense here about the game being anything but an intensely difficult shooter, as well as a great piece of fan service, and it delivers on that promise. Contra fans and shooter fans in general would do well to pick this one up. It's a blast.
While character driven, scrolling shooter games like Contra got all the press back in the day, hardcore gamers knew that if you wanted more over-the-top bang for your buck, you had to go with Metal Slug. The series has been kicking for over a decade and has recently made its way onto the Nintendo Wii. Now DS players can have a little Metal Slug goodness on the go with Metal Slug 7.
War. War Never Changes.
While this is a new chapter in the franchise, the premise remains the same: One soldier against a vast army of bad guys. Unlike other versions in the series, Metal Slug 7 is truly a solo affair. There's no simultaneous co-op, but the rest of the game remains true to the series.
The well animated visuals look great on the small DS screen although it's obviously not quite as detailed as other offerings in the series. And the title is prone to slowdown when things get really hectic. The trademark humor so beloved by fans of the series is here. Yeah, it's a war game with little soldiers being blown to bits... but it's all so cute and funny.
Metal Slog
Also present is the insane difficulty. When played on easy you stand a reasonable chance of making it through the games' seven missions. On medium you're in for a real challenge. The hardest difficulty level was clearly designed to make grown men cry. And it does. As Metal Slug games go, this one is about as long as all the others. Metal Slug 7 also has several different characters to choose from, each with slightly combat strengths, so you can squeeze out a little more replay value there.
There's also an additional mode which offers the player a series of specific challenges like rescue as many P.O.W.s as you can, or avoid getting crushed by falling debris for as long as possible. These aren't nearly as interesting as the core game.
Been There. Done That.
If there's a criticism to be made here it's that, well, it's just another Metal Slug game. For fans, this is certainly a good thing. But when it's all said and done, there's nothing here you haven't experience dozens of times in the past. It's a shame they didn't go with a compilation as well. Then players would truly be getting some bang for their buck.
1. Fantastically long-winded cutscenes
This is an admittedly easy target, but it’s still one of the most valid – and most-repeated – complaints that can be leveled against Metal Gear as a franchise. A poster child for the idea that Japanese developers are more interested in making movies than games, Metal Gear is notorious for making players spend as much time sitting through long, exposition-heavy cutscenes and codec conversations as they do actually playing the game. Those cutscenes don’t always have much to do with the plot, either, frequently digressing into historical background or musings on the military-industrial complex.
This approach reached a fever pitch in Metal Gear Solid 4, which tried to make up for its lengthier, more dialogue-heavy cutscenes by actually letting you drive the little Metal Gear Mk. II robot around inside of them, hunting for items (and being totally unable to affect the cutscene in any real way). More recently, the series appears to have finally gotten its shit together, as the cutscenes in Portable Ops and Peace Walker never felt overly long – but let’s wait and see what happens when the series returns to a non-handheld platform before we declare this one fixed.
2. The Raiden bait-and-switch
It’s hard to think of a game that was as strongly anticipated pre-release, and then almost as strongly reviled post-release, as Metal Gear Solid 2. And it was all over one little flaw: it didn’t star Solid Snake. Instead, MGS2 forced us to play through its story as whiny, self-absorbed pretty-boy Raiden. Making matters worse, creator Hideo Kojima had deliberately misled fans about the switch, never indicating that there would be a new protagonist just so he could surprise players with it.
The surprise was pulled off beautifully, but it turned out that a lot of Metal Gear fans don’t like surprises – especially not when they involve a beloved main character being absent for much of the game. Eventually, people got over it, but Raiden remains the only Metal Gear hero who had to be completely redesigned as an impossibly badass cyborg ninja before anyone would even consider liking him as a character.
3. Your enemies are colossal morons
Call this one a concession to fun gameplay, but if we were guarding a top-secret facility, and we spotted some old guy who wasn’t supposed to be there, we wouldn’t give the all-clear after a sweep of the immediate area turned up nothing but a suspiciously open vent and a cardboard box that wasn’t there a minute ago.
4. The story’s more needlessly convoluted than Lost
Metal Gear’s story, rife as it is with betrayals and secret conspiracies, has never exactly been straightforward. Beginning with MGS2, however, its complexity became preposterously hard to follow, continually delving into weird aspects of the characters’ backstories and tossing up red herrings and confusing new developments. There were multiple conspiracies to keep track of (The Patriots? The Philosophers? The Sons of Liberty? La lu li le lo?), each with several hidden puppet-masters. Certain major plot points actually made less sense when they were explained. (Ocelot tricked himself into believing he was being taken over by Liquid Snake’s arm, just to mislead the Patriots? That’s… creative.)
Then there’s all the weird supernatural stuff, like the ghostly Sorrow, the surreal Psycho Mantis encounter and the bee-filled The Pain. That’s not to mention all the characters who can’t seem to stay dead no matter how many times we see them “die.” As the series continues to break its own rules, muddle its own continuity and become increasingly silly and hard to keep track of, we can’t shake the feeling that Kojima’s doing it just to mess with us.
5. Don’t like PSP? Too bad
For the past 13 years, Metal Gear Solid has become closely associated with the PlayStation brand, so it isn’t exactly surprising that there would be Metal Gear games on the PSP. What is surprising is that two of those games would be must-play, canonical chapters in the franchise, meaning that if you’re not a fan of the ever-less-appealing PSP, or of the idea of playing huge adventure games on a handheld, you’re left out in the cold.
Honestly, though, we’d probably find the idea a lot more appealing if it weren’t for the fact that Peace Walker ditched Metal Gear’s tradition of solo sneakery in exchange for a four-player approach that’s much closer to the Monster Hunter games. And, like in Monster Hunter, you’re going to have an awfully hard time bringing down Peace Walker’s huge bosses without ad-hoc help. Is it still possible to fight them on your own? Sure, but bringing friends along means a serious advantage – as well as a fundamental betrayal of everything Metal Gear has previously stood for.
Killing is banal: It’s aim and fire, or some variation thereof. Undoing a murder, though—there’s some impressive sleight-of-hand. That’s the objective in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, an idiosyncratic DS game whose hero warps time to bring victims back from the dead. It’s a low-concept adventure that doesn’t fit well into existing categories of games, yet it maintains its individuality without becoming inaccessible.
You play as Sissel, a flashy dude with the swagger of a 1980s Tom Cruise. Sissel is dead. Having lost his life and his memory moments before the game begins, he’s told by a mysterious friend in the afterlife that he has one night to rediscover who he is and why he was killed. That’s a tall order, given that he’s a corpse, but his ghost form comes with extraordinary, though limited, capabilities. Sissel can reach across short distances to inhabit the soul of inanimate objects in the game’s scenery, and once he’s inside them, he can perform “Tricks” to affect the living world—flitting inside a spotlight, say, and shining the beam in a would-be murderer’s eyes.
Even though Sissel is supposed to be solving the mystery of his own snuffed-out existence, he’s sidetracked by a noble desire to keep other people from meeting the same fate. See, another benefit of ghost-hood is that by touching a fresh corpse, Sissel can time-travel to four minutes before a person’s death. Then he uses Tricks to change the progression of events. The challenge in these four-minute panic sessions is to figure out exactly which objects to inhabit, and when to play Tricks with them, such that you alter fate enough to save a life.
Yes, that’s a lot of premise to take in, yet it’s all so intriguing that Ghost Trick doesn’t feel bogged down with setup. Ace Attorney series creator Shu Takumi concocted Ghost Trick, and it shows. The characters are flamboyant and the dialogues are hyperactive. Boldface exclamations of shock are the norm. Takumi has a talent for creating a memorable, loveable cast, although his scripts can lapse into logorrhea, and his direction allows for no filter on his self-indulgence. Does the posh detective character have to do that elaborate faux-Michael-Jackson dance every time he enters a room? Takumi seems to think so.
The mystery story is as clever as the best Professor Layton yarn, but the signature achievement is the way Ghost Trick develops its puzzle-solving challenges. Whether Sissel is saving a life or simply trying to reach the opposite side of a room, each chapter has players push the bounds of strategy, stretching Sissel’s abilities to unexpected lengths. The game’s cluttered spaces invite players to invent new functions for household objects, a celebration of creativity that’s tempered only by a touch of Alan Wake syndrome: If you don’t figure out a puzzle immediately, the game is all too eager to offer ham-fisted hints by way of expository dialogue.
Ghost Trick arrives at a pivotal moment in the DS’ life. Nintendo is set to launch the 3DS, and publishers are already rolling out the parade of rehashes—old saws like Resident Evil, Bomberman, and Super Monkey Ball, remade for yet another platform. As the cacophony of big-ticket remakes moves on to the new toy, the DS is enjoying a relative calm in which its smaller, distinctive games can shine. It’s a moment to be savored by gamers with eclectic taste. Ghost Trick is just one indication that the DS, in its twilight years, is also in its prime.
PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies has been released on quite a number of platforms already, so it certainly wasn't a surprise to see the game make an appearance recently on Nintendo's DS system. But what does seem a bit surprising is that only two months later the company has now chosen to release a slightly stripped down version of the game for DSiWare service after many fans already went out and purchased the DS retail release. So does this lite version of the DS release have enough punch to make it worth your Nintendo Points, or would gamers be better off ponying up the extra money for the retail release?
In Plants vs. Zombies, you take control of a huge variety of plant life in your effort to stop the impending barrage of zombies from getting into your house. Each plant has its own unique firepower or function and it's up to you to figure out which plants work better for the myriad of situations you'll find yourself stuck in. Some plants pack some serious firepower, but they tend to require a lot of sunshine, something that doesn't come easy throughout the game. In fact, planting the more docile sunflowers plays a key role in the game, as many situations will place you in a position where sunshine will be in very short supply, sometimes unavailable at all during nighttime levels.
Adventure Mode is the meat of the game and allows you to play through the game's increasingly more difficult levels. As you complete a level, you'll be given access to a new plant, generally one that will be extremely useful for the upcoming levels. You'll also be able to choose which sets of plants you take into battle with you, another strategic part of the game that will require some thought and careful planning. As you play your way through the Adventure Mode, you'll unlock not only new plants and tools, but also a host of fun mini-games.
The DSiWare version of Plants vs. Zombies loses the VS., Puzzle, and Survival modes of play, but all four of the retail DS mini-games are intact. There's even a brand new and exclusive mini-game called Zombie Trap for you to play. The mini-games are generally fairly simple in their design and feel more like a fun diversion than any type of additional gameplay mode. Home Run Derby puts you up against the zombies where you'll try to hit home runs using your stylus. Each home run awards you valuable sunshine that can be used to pick up the very plants you'll need in order to stop the zombies that are headed towards your house. There's also a rather fun Air Raid mini-game that turns the game into a horizontal shoot 'em up in which you'll match firepower with the zombies and their oversized spacecraft. While mini-games sometimes end up being rather forgettable add-ons to a game, the mini-games in Plants vs. Zombies are all quite playable and entertaining.
The touchscreen controls the game makes use of work very well in handling the intense action you'll be facing. Much of your work will be done by merely touching the plant you wish to make use of and dragging it to the spot on your lawn where you wish to plant it. It might have been nice to be able to just touch the plant you wanted to use and then tap the area you wish to position it in, but the dragging scheme works well enough once you get a handle on it. The simplicity of the game's controls make playing the game a lot of fun since you won't have to spend your time trying to learn an overly complicated control system, something you'll soon appreciate when the action heats up in later levels.
From a visual standpoint, nothing has really changed from the DS release. The game features all of the vibrantly detailed 2D visuals found in the retail release, including all of the assorted plant and zombie animations. There's plenty of striking scenery to behold, not to mention a nice level of variety between the different areas you'll battle in. Given how much sprite movement is generally taking place onscreen at the same time, there will be the occasional bout of slowdown, but all in all it's quite minor and certainly doesn't detract from the otherwise solid graphical presentation.
Much like the visuals, the audio package remains unchanged from the retail release as well. All of the eerie musical tracks return and they do a perfect job of carrying the slightly foreboding theme the game makes use of. Even the creepy sound effects and zombie dialog are intact and do nice job of complimenting the musical score. You'll definitely want to crank up the volume on this one in order to fully enjoy the game's impressive audio/visual experience.
Conclusion
Plants vs. Zombies is a fantastic tower defence-style game with some unique and engaging gameplay ideas and enough length to keep players coming back for more. The omission of the Vs. and Survival modes is a bit disappointing, but the sheer number of levels in adventure mode coupled with the enjoyable mini-games should make the losses a bit easier to swallow. If you already own another version of the game, you likely already have an equal or superior version, but if you've been considering trying out the game, this affordable download might be the perfect opportunity to do so
A decade ago, the prospect of an unholy union between Final Fantasy and the House of Mouse would have been unbelievable – much less the prospect of such a thing bearing several beautiful multi-platinum offspring. But here we are on the cusp of 2011 with another new Kingdom Hearts title looming just around the corner – and it’s looking mighty swell.
Kingdom Hearts Re:coded is an optimized DS remake of what was originally an episodic game series for Japanese cell phones. Thankfully, instead of paying per stage, you get the whole game in one nice little package, with numerous enhancements (and better controls) to boot. The game serves as a bridge between Kingdom Hearts 2 and the still-mysterious Kingdom Hearts 3.
The Kingdom Hearts plot, at this point, is perhaps only slightly less convoluted than War and Peace, but Re:coded thankfully dumps most of the pre-existing plot baggage – at least, it seems like it towards the beginning. Jiminy Cricket finds a mysterious, ominous message written in one of the journals compiled from the previous journeys, so King Mickey, with the help of Chip and Dale, investigates the contents of the message by transferring the journal’s data into digital form. An avatar version of KH hero Sora must eliminate the “bugs” and errors plaguing the journal to uncover the truth............
The original Portal had the element of surprise. Its style of first-person physics-based puzzle gameplay was unique. GLaDOS, the murderous robotic villain, was new and vibrant and evil in the most charming way. Cake jokes and songs about surviving dismemberment were still hilarious. It was short, succinct and essential. Creating a sequel without playing all the same notes and making it feel like Portal: The Longer Version is a tough task. For Valve, it's apparently no problem.
From the first moments of waking up in the rusting Aperture Science facility to right before the credits roll, Portal 2 rarely falters. The world is bigger, the story thicker, and the character development more surprising. The mania of GLaDOS, the facility's operator, is molded into unexpected forms alongside a host of brutally funny personalities. The history of the Aperture Science facility is filled in, character origins discussed, and though its pacing suffers as it occasionally strikes a more serious tone, an abundance of cruel jokes and cheerfully sincere death threats prevent it from losing its sarcastic charm. When you're not staring at your screen with wrinkled, pained expression on your face trying to figure out a puzzle, expect to be laughing.
You still play as Chell, dragged back into Aperture after the events of the first game. You soon meet Wheatley, a spherical robot, voiced by Stephen Merchant (The Ricky Gervais Show, Extras) who helps you through the early stages. It's difficult to overstate how Merchant's obvious enthusiasm for the role benefits the game. No word Wheatley speaks is without witty inflection, and the consistently clever writing perfectly complements the onscreen action. It's easy to be be just as concerned about missing lines of dialogue as about progressing through the puzzles, especially during Wheatley and GLaDOS' verbal sparring matches.
The attention to detail throughout is nothing short of stunning. The facility is in a state of disrepair at the beginning. Once GLaDOS whirs into action, so does the facility, becoming an extension of her body and personality. When you enter a room mechanized crane arms and wall plates spin and shift with an urgency like you walked in on them with their pants down. As Portal 2 progresses, the environments expand from claustrophobic test chambers to yawning underground chasms. Metal girders and structural supports break and crash into each another, snapping apart in chaotic and natural ways, consistently serving not only to entertain the eye but to expand our understanding of the game's characters. The core appeal of something like Portal will never be the visuals, but it's still impressive how much mileage Valve is getting out of its Source technology first used for Half-Life 2 in 2004.
Though there's a much bigger emphasis on story and character development in Portal 2, you'll spend a lot of time tangling with spatial reasoning puzzles in test chambers. Valve brings back the same portal gun while greatly expanding the number of gameplay toys. The gun shoots two linked portals through which you and objects can pass and momentum is maintained. To get from one test chamber to the next and through the guts of Aperture's vastness, you'll use your portals to redirect energy beams, coat surfaces with globular gel that makes you bounce or run at high speeds, pass over gaping pits with bridges of light and manipulate cylindrical tractor beams. Arriving at a solution will require quick reactions just as often as clear thinking, as portals sometimes need to be repositioned while soaring through the air or before timers run out. This isn't a first person-shooter in the traditional sense, but at times it can feel like one as you zoom in with your portal gun to spy distant targets and frantically adjust your aim and fire with precision.
No matter how complicated the puzzles get, the solutions are always sensible. Sometimes you'll "get it" right away and adjust lasers with lens blocks to activate platforms to reach switches. Other times you'll have no idea what to do, exhausting seemingly all possible options until, eventually, a solution so plainly obvious sparks in your brain and you curse yourself for being such a dolt. Valve does an excellent job of presenting you with all the necessary clues without slapping a set of instructions onscreen to explain the way forward. Even when multiple mechanics are mixed into puzzles like jump pads, tractor beams, light bridges and gels, I never felt getting stuck was due to unreasonable or poor design, only my ability to decipher it.
As good as the single-player story is, the co-operative is the real highlight of Portal 2. The beginning of the co-op picks up right after the end of the single-player game, giving you and your partner control of two robots, and serves as a continuation of the story of Aperture Science. It features fewer characters than the single-player mode but is still filled with enough sharp writing, deadpan jokes and absurd humor to keep you entertained between puzzle sections and provide motivation toward an end goal. Better yet, instead of simply recycling puzzle designs from the single-player portion, the inclusion of another player significantly alters the way you need to think.
That's because each of the robotic co-operative characters carries a portal gun, which means two guns and four portals. Valve takes full advantage of the increased capacity for dimensional holes by raising the level of challenge and coordination required. As is obvious if you've ever played Left 4 Dead, Valve knows how a good co-operative mode requires a game design that doesn't simply encourage but requires you to work together. In Portal 2, communication is vital to success.
Getting through can be frustrating, especially if you're playing with someone you don't know, because there's no diffusion of responsibility here. You can't hide in a corner and wait for someone else to do all the work. The contributions of each person involved are plain to see, and Valve's developed numerous tools to help make communication as smooth as possible.
You can set context-sensitive markers on parts of the environment to wordlessly indicate where a portal should be placed, where a partner should move, and even trigger a countdown clock to synchronize when switches should be hit or buttons pressed. The indicators may feel superfluous at first, but once you're setting up four portal chains of light bridges to block turret fire or redirecting edgeless safety cubes as they fly through open air over bottomless pits, it's obvious how useful they can be. Barely a moment will go by in silence while playing Portal 2 with another, except when you're listening to GLaDOS belittle your intelligence with endearing sarcasm.
Really the only place Portal 2 falters is in the second act of its single-player mode, where the pacing sags and the story becomes more concerned with the past than anything else. Even so, as compared to many other linear first-person games where the stories are little more than shrink wrap and glorify a blood-is-progress philosophy, Portal 2's mid-game doldrums are relatively far more creative and confidently original. Valve's sequel serves as the anti-Call of Duty. Portal 2 is a first-person thrill ride from beginning to end that challenges you to think without failing to entertain.
