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Hard Corps review:
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Part B (Sheena)
Hello and
welcome to another my review of Konami's Contra Hard
Corps (1994). In this one, i become
Sheena, the blonde female and go to 'good ending 2' route. Excuse me if i make same-y conclusion in the end from other. Because -you know- it's the same game and i'm lazy sod.
There she
is, in character selection. She wear red hairband which quite remind me of
Rambo. Given how very shoot-y Contra, my thought about her being female
incarnation of John Rambo is appropriate. Suddenly, i recall a lady with the same name in Violent Storm which is another Konami's
game. Albeit in different genre: Beat-em-up. Let's compare them!
Well, both
of them blonde and wear earrings. One are destined to be 'damsel in distress'
in post nuclear-apocalypse era where there's lots of brawny guys with mohawk
and worn-out cloth, while the other is hardcorps soldier
(who can die with enemy's gentle touch) in violent universe filled with bullets
and explosions. You can guess who's who. Hey, both of them have fair smile! Good for them.
I know that
i've made this gif from this scene. But, please! It's amazing and so explosive. Michael Bay really dig
this, i believe.
Quick
remainder on the control: direction pad for aim/move, A button to cycle
weapon/screen-clearing bomb selection, B button to shoot, and C button to jump.
Pressing A button while holding B button will change your stance. Stance #1
allow you to move and shoot at the same time. While stance #2, will make you
stand still whenever you're firing. This will allow you to shoot to any
direction without moving. The shot indicator that's near the photo, indicate
your current stance. One of the enemy robot standing on top of volatile oil
truck. I'm doing him a favor by shooting the truck rather than shoot him
directly.
The giant
Cyclops waves at you. How nice of him. But after that, he shoot deadly
laser eye (that can spawn explosion pillars with enough gap
that i can slip by) so i have to shoot his eye until he's destroyed.
It's purely self defense.
At the end
of the stage, i meet a manned robot as boss stage. His deed so far: lead robot
assault on this city, stomp over a car, slash building beside me, and violent
action toward law enforcer (me). Your crime is very big, pal. By the way, each
character has 4 weapons: A to D. Sheena's weapon D is perfect for boss fight.
She shoots multiple lasers that later bounce to homing on enemy. Very nice!
Nah! I
choose to face other direction from you. How do you like my ignorance, Deadeye
Joe? As i want to go to route with good ending, i must let him go away and save
research lab, instead. So my ignoring act here is reasonable.
Let's skip
about how i end up grabbing on air police's vehicle and jump to where i fight
this assassin. He fly using jetpack then he throw grappling
hook at heli's landing and spinning around with shadow image effect. Watch out
for his grappling hook and himself then shoot in one direction soon he's
defeated.
But, no. He's back. But this time he keep flying with jetpack and occasionally
shoot laser eye diagonally at me. Not exact my position. Just in general
direction. While i'm on flying machine's wing but it always heaves so my
shooting direction isn't constant. Lucky that i'm resistant to airsick
otherwise i'll be dead inside and outside.
I know that
that battle against this deathplane is intensely difficult. But i admit it's
cool as it has 3-way turret on both of its wing and flame sprayer in the center.
So it deserve in another screenshot.
Another
thing that i want to show you again is this funny hostage situation. I save the professor from his captors by simply run toward them and then they just run away, without waste a bullet on top of that.
Heavy_battlecry02.wav
"I used
to be a soldier like you, then i took bullets in the knee (and then i
die)"
At the end
of the stage, i can't catch up the villains. They got the alien cell and leave
this tinker robot to kill me. It can constructs debris from ceiling to be sentient
garbage with various pattern depend on its form. Mostly you can cling into left
wall to be save from the garbage attack. Or you can sliding pass them safely.
Sliding can be performed by hold down and press jump. But you have to be aware
that everytime the robot's creation is destroyed he will come down in anger
where it's invincible and lethal to touch so you have to immediately hit the
ground.
After that,
i hunt down the hacker that orchestrated that robot assault as distraction for
those soldier to get the alien cell. His name
Noiman Cascade and his base in this junkyard. It's guarded by robots and this
junk car that hide rocket launcher inside its hood. Amazing, huh?
When i meet
the hacker, he dissipate me with disintegrating beam. Well, that suck!
Not really. He transports me to this
virtual reality. Then he turn into Taurus (bull with only head and a pair of
leg), Sagittarius (who can shoot destructible homing arrows), then Gemini (that
can shoot lethal orbs in semi-random pattern). I see that he's nerd that have
unusual obsession toward zodiacs, which makes him very unique kind of nerd.
Tired of
being mythic embodiment of star formation, Noiman become a small red square.
After that he become large box, then jagged tank, and finally this craggy
chopper. His last transformation is (unsurprisingly) the most difficult and i
still suck at it. His bombardment and his tail propeller that suddenly come
down to me, are too much for me. But don't let this discourage you to play the
game, i'm just suck at playing Contra.
After that,
he's really finished. Yes, your game is over,
pal!
Noiman spills
the bean about who he works for. It's Colonel Bahamut. He is ex-hero who
attempt Coup D'état against government but fail. I feel sorry for the legendary
dragon with the same name with this coward fool.
I'm not
going to make "Guns n Roses's Welcome to The Jungle" joke again,
we're too good for that. I like to talk about Sheena's weapon B instead. It's
grenade with projectile trajectory unlike Ray's that travel straight. There's
pros and cons about this. The pros: you can produce explosion without
accurately hitting enemy first, perfect for clearing crowd. The cons: it won't
work well/safely if the enemies are in higher ground than you, and it has quite
short range but it can travel high enough if you aim directly upward.
A giant statue drop its head and these
dragonflies come out from its ear.
Oh, look!
The proud mother is here too.
Then i fight
this sphere-bot. It throw its legs which -let's be honest- not good way to kill
me because A) i can easily crawl beneath said leg B) make the sub-boss look
silly. That's the thing what separate CHC with other conventional Contra. Most
of the bosses and/or the sub-bosses tend to never shoot you directly. They have
fixed attack pattern or convoluted way to decimate you, that you can memorize
so you can do better next time you play the game.
After it gets severe beating another one come and latch onto it,
making the formation of 2 spherebot like this. They can walk in the manner of
drunkard who pretend to do Broadway performance. You can either jump over them
or slide pass them. I recommend slide pass them as it's the safest method as
they swaying left and right make it difficult to jump over them safely. Also
you can damage enemies by sliding pass them. After that the lower orb initiate
jet launch, which will make them fly. I don't know what attack they're up to as
they're immediately exploding after they aero acrobat above me while i keep shooting.
Think you're Wright brother or such, huh?
I try to
make the reunion as awkward as i can. Is hanging
on the ceiling awkward enough?
I skip the battle with Deadeye Joe because
it's too long. Instead i show you how smug the treacherous
professor if you choose to surrender rather than fight to the bitter end. Feel
smug all you want now, prof! You'll definitely pay this soon. You hear me?
Now how do i
get out of this cell without my weapon? There must be a way.
"Ba-baka!
It's not like i'm doing this for you or anything". The tsundere Deadeye
Joe blow my cell's door and give my weapon back. Engineer_thanks01.wav
I missed the
day when i was young and pure and don't have any problem with these robot
design. Yes, i can imagine that cannon
as robot's phallus. It can go worse. Once in a while, they will simultaneously
ram their cannon, colliding with each other rapidly. That's the best i can do
to not sound like robot porn. Seriously, i'm not making this up. Blame Konami
for this revolting sub-boss design! To avoid
that melee move you can either jump up as many as you can or you can drop down
the platform and crawl. Once you have destroyed one of Robo-dong, the other
will lose its cannon and drop down. Then it try to attack you by jumping around
on its belly. It wish to have proper leg for lower part instead of long wang
cannon. Pathetic.
This is
something awesome to ease my horrible experience back there. Some of Colonel's
soldier riding on bike and try to potshoot with me with handgun. If only they
shoot faster, the game will be much harder their badblood idea will be
working well and not embarrasses themselves like this.
This sub-boss
attack by bouncing everywhere like water hose that wildly spray high-pressured water
if you don't grab it. Otherwise, it shoots sphere
beam from its muzzle. You can't hit with your weapon. The only way to defeat
it: lure the cannon to shoot on its own body then a countdown timer appear, do
the second time before the timer reset and it will be gone for good. It's
puzzle sub-boss i reckon.
I believe
there's superhero who stop speeding train like this. Superman, i think. But i
remember Heavy doing so in End of the Line (SFM), instead.
I can easily
crawl under your kick, doofus. Beside this he can 1) lifts train's front and launch
bouncing orbs 2) jumping around like Kangaroo on hot asphalt 3) doing Terry
Bogard's Power Wave. Once he's defeated he stumbled back and the train crush
him.
Get off my
train! I borrow that line from Caleb in Blood. Cool, huh?
This is the
last battle against Deadeye Joe. He's in that spherical robot or machine. First
he stab entire room with its 4 bladed limbs. You can't destroy the main body
instead you have to destroy the limbs. Then it re-grow the limbs and spins them around while floating. Again, lay waste the limbs.
Finally it slams itself on random location at very high speed. I wonder why the
final phase is the easiest to deal with al least that's what i feel.
During Joe's
dying state, Colonel suddenly come and stomp him to smithereens with his flying platform. I know he rescued me and such but no need
to be so cruel like that, bastard!
On the next
room. Colonel mad at the professor for no reason and kill him.
He's really prick, isn't?
Actually, he
later turns into this monster. He crawl around and later shoot his web path. The
web is harmless but he try to bait you into his crawling path by shooting
either an orb that once bounce will homing at you or multi-directional orbs
like this. I'm having hard time dodging his attack because i don't like
fighting in closed room like this. Even though you can climb wall and ceiling
in this situation, i just find this kind of battlefield not do me favor.
Finally, i
confront the Colonel. He said that he fuses with
corporeal form of the alien cell. He will turn into Super
Saiyan, right?
Or he becomes
big naked shaven gorilla. See that countdown number? Once it reach '0' he will
charge to the other side in almost sonic speed. It seems
the transformation is cunning than i suspected.
He can shoot
big alien energy across the screen or he jump first then he shoot smaller ones
but more rapidly. He reminds me of Akuma/Gouki. I hope he doesn't suddenly
execute Shun Goku Satsu next.
The Colonel can no
longer control the alien power and soon he turns into this two-headed alien
turtle. When he's in rightside, he bangs his own head rapidly against the floor
then red-blue molecular shaped debris fall from the sky at seems random spot.
When he's in leftside he will extends his head in semi-tracking pattern. It's
very hard to bait his attack here to create safe space at least that's what i
feel. Between those attack he will jump to change side. As for his weak point,
it's his face. There are 2 of it, you can't miss them.
The final form: heart
that surrounded by dozens of head. If you have phobia to bald head, i'm sorry
to show you this nightmare. This one is surprisingly easy. If you keep sliding
away in corner when this thing approaches you, you'll be fine. All it can do is
floating around while expand or shrink the heads layer. The weakpoint is
obviously the heart.
With the final boss perishes, the castle is crumbled to dust.
That's according to 101 Villain's Rule. Just ask Dracula if you don't believe
me! Speaking of the prince of darkness, if you give Sheena a whip you can
easily mistaken this game as Castlevania. Given, they're both Konami's game.
Character review: Sheena is another medium type character with
Contra's standard arsenal, some are altered version. Weapon A is more power and
bigger version of the standard bullets also with more blue-red colour. they're
start smaller and some distance farther become bigge. It may imply that this
weapon is less damaging at point-blank distance. But most of the time you can
keep distance to enemies with no problem so this special "flaw" is
kind of moot in my opinion. You don't need to fire accurately when using weapon
B but it's effective if you're in higher ground. I haven't talked about weapon
C, that's because it's just dull rapid single laser. But it will pierce through
enemies or anything unlike Ray's laser (Weapon A). It's especially useful
against Professor's last creation. As i choose to turn myself in, i can't show
you that. Weapon D is perfect for boss battle and bit usefull for crowd
clearing. Sheena doesn't have proper weapon that cover large area so i conclude
that she's more specifically for sub-boss/boss battle than Ray.
Route review: You can witness Deadeye Joe being Tsundere. But
there's the Robots with cannon as their genitalia. You can kill professor
though not directly as he turns into monster, first. You got to see typical
villain's castle destroyed, but you can see your character riding the hardcorp
bike. So this is not the best but still good ones. Very good.
That's Contra
Hard Corps (1994). Is it great? Superb even. Is it difficult? Sadly, yes. It has knife-edge intensity of difficult. I can't really enjoy the game to its fullest. You can play it relaxily. You can
finished it. But you can't do both. But maybe with rigorous training, you can
accomplish that. The musics are very great. The graphic are gorgeous. The
gameplay is certainly wonderful, with enough uniqueness on every stages mostly in graphic/visual. The boss/sub-bosses fights are amazing and interesting (except the you know what). And the sub-bosses are
plenty too. The branching path certainly make up with replayability font.
That's certainly what the classics lack of. The distinction between the
characters also good feature. Also that shooting stance. It works very well and
slick.
Overall i can surely recommend you to play
Contra Hard Corp (1994), especially if you're Contra hardcore fan (unlike me). Do
note that Japan version has 3-hit kill system instead of 1-hit kill system like
US version that i played. If you don't care much about any reading and want
fairer gameplay. You should go for Japan version. Whatever your choice, you can
go wrong with playing this game. I mean it has multiple ending, and tons of
explosive action. I guarantee
you will love this.
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