Review a Bad Game Day - Contra Force (1992)

If you press the Power button, you go back to sleep and 

forget all about this game.  If you press the Start button, 

you see how deep the rabbit hole goes and find out 

just what a nightmare you're in for.

Konami had a good thing going with the Contra franchise in the late 80's and early 90's.  They had 2 successful arcade titles, a pair of wildly successful (and critically lauded) conversions for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a solid Game Boy iteration of the Contra formula, and had just celebrated the release of Contra III: The Alien Wars for the Super NES console, which was both an excellent game and a technical marvel on the platform, showcasing the hardware's abilities.  In development was the Sega Genesis follow-up, Contra Hard Corps, which ended up being another excellent entry in the series.  As many already know, the franchise would go completely off the rails a couple years later with 2 rather poorly designed (and poorly received) PlayStation titles that Konami saw fit to outsource to an outside team.  It wouldn't be until years later with Neo Contra on the PlayStation 2 and Contra 4 for the Nintendo DS that the series would find its footing again in some meaningful fashion by getting back to its roots.

There's a bit of a forgotten chapter in the Contra series, however, and that is 1992's Contra Force.  Released only in North America, this game saw Konami using the Contra name for a game that tried its best to emulate the Contra formula to a certain extent, while adding new elements and changing up the play stile a bit to add something fresh to the gameplay.  To be fair, this game was originally developed in Japan to be called Arc Hound, but was never released there.  Instead, Konami slapped the Contra name on it and released it in the US to cash in on the series' popularity and sales numbers.  It was a poor decision from a company that was usually pretty good about what games it localized.  Why couldn't they have skipped this and given us the excellent Crisis Force instead?  I digress.

The game starts out innocently enough, with the familiar Contra logo on the title screen, with the word "Force" directly underneath, conspicuously in a different font, a whole different feel, look, and aesthetic than the logo it's paired with.  Still, one can easily overlook such trivialities if the game behind the title screen is good enough.  The first problem is that the title screen is only available for about 2 seconds, possibly less.  If you don't "PUSH START BUTTON", as you're invited to, within that short window of time, you're immediately pushed into the "attract mode" for the game.  Rather than a couple looping examples of gameplay, we get what is supposed to be a snippet of back story for the game and its main character, Burns.  Unfortunately, even though the gist of the plot can be discerned quickly from the 2 or 3 screens displayed, it's very stilted and not well done.  Ninja Gaiden had better cinematics and dialogue 3 years prior, so Konami was obviously phoning this one in.  In addition, with what limited "story" we are presented with, we find that we're not controlling muscular Rambo types to take on a large alien horde, but are part of what appears to be a spy/special ops division taking on human terrorists.  Who cares that we've had 4 wildly successful titles in the series prior to this installment, all based on alien invaders.  No, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater and abandon the successful formula that has propelled our product to great accolades and sales by slapping this popular name on a game that has NOTHING to do with our franchise and tarnish its name and reputation.  Someone at Konami USA back in 1992 clearly needed to be slapped upside the head.  In any event, you can identify 3 flaws with the game within 30 seconds of powering up your NES console.  I wouldn't consider that a good start.

"This is the crack team that's going to take down my organization?
This is going to be easy, boys!" - Random Video Game Terrorist

The first thing you'll notice after you hit Start and begin the game is that you're presented with 4 different characters to choose from: Burns (the leader of the special forces squad), Smith, a typical 90's 'tude character, complete with manly 'stache and hip glasses, Iron, a tough looking dude who can wield what looks like a bazooka, given the right power-up, and Beans, a skinny fellow who also appears to have 'tude.  I mean, look at his cool hair!  All kidding aside, another minor issue crops up at the Player Select screen: rather than pressing Down on the D-pad to select the first character (traditionally the top-left), you press Up.  If you press Down, you get Beans instead of Burns.  In addition, rather than the ability to use the full D-pad to select characters by moving Left, Right, Up or Down, you simply press either Up or Down to cycle through the list, and it goes top-left to top-right, then bottom-left to bottom-right, assuming you're pressing Up.  Reverse that if you're pressing Down instead.  As I said, it's a minor issue, but since the game's stock is already plummeting at this point, it's a noticeable design flaw that becomes more glaring in context with the game's other flaws.

Once you select your character and press Start, the next thing I noticed was that the character walk animation is really goofy.  Kudos to the design team for at least trying to make something semi-realistic, but it really looks somewhat unnatural.  Not to be too cliche or gauche, but the walk has that "trying overly hard to pass gas" kind of look to it.  All 4 characters have that sort of walk animation, so you can't escape it.  It might seem to be nitpicking on my part, but it's noticeable enough to mention.  Here's a GIF animation to illustrate:

It might be hard to tell from this GIF, but the walk is

just kind of stiff and funny looking.

Once you get into the gameplay, things seem normal at first, as many of the usual Contra elements are present.  You can fire upward and diagonally, as well as downward and diagonally downward while jumping.  You walk from the left to the right and blast baddies.  You start with the usual single-shot "pea shooter" weapon and can collect power-up icons.  However, the first change you'll notice is that the screen can scroll back to the left, which should be a good thing.  However, one of the game's fatal flaws creeps in because of this new found directional movement.  Namely, that once you stop running to the right and go back left, sometimes it doesn't scroll correctly when you start running to the right again.  You'll need to backtrack to the left and move right again.  The screen's scrolling point of origin fixes on your character at whatever spot on the screen you're at, so if you're an inch from the right side of the screen, that's where it will scroll from and you'll be rushing into danger.  You can correct this by going left again to roughly the middle of the screen, then turning around and resetting this point of origin, but the fact that you have to do this at all is a major design flaw.  How did this issue get past beta testing?  Worse yet, if you're all the way to the right and you're on a small platform, you'll have no room to move back left, so you may have to jump or maneuver back across multiple platforms (which may or may not be available) in order to create enough area to reset the point of origin.  That, or you're forced to move left and right in tiny increments to keep resetting the position until you can feel safe enough to move on and have a larger area from which to reset it comfortably.  This is a huge design issue that should never have been included in a final product.

If that wasn't bad enough, the hit detection is also dodgy.  There were times in the first level where I was clearly shooting at a bad guy, but he didn't fall.  Sometimes it took 2 or 3 shots to take them down, even when the previous play through of the stage only took a single shot.  There's a spot in the first level where an enemy is on a moving conveyor belt (though he is conspicuously NOT MOVING), and if you shoot the belt underneath his foot level, sometimes you'll take him out, sometimes you won't.  3 of the 4 characters crouch when you press down on the D-pad, but Beans does the full lay on the ground maneuver like the previous installments in the series.  However, sometimes bullets that are CLEARLY travelling above his body will clear him, and other times it will register as a hit.  The lift truck in the first level moves normal at first blush, but if you get behind it, it does this bizarre thing where it moves toward you when you're walking toward it, but purposely moves away from you if you're walking the opposite direction.  That sounds strange, I know, but you can tell the truck is actually moving, not just that you're walking toward or away.  Some ledges cannot be trusted as well: I was standing near the edge of a ledge where some boxes were dropping from the ceiling, and though my character wasn't touched by a box, he slipped off the edge though I wasn't touching the D-pad.  This happened more than once, so I'm fairly certain it's another design flaw.

"Why is it that I gotta keep moving, but these two guys

can stand on moving platforms and not move? - Beans

Less a design flaw and more a casualty of innovation without careful planning, the power-up system in this game is somewhat uneven and problematic.  The Contra series has seen its share of less than useful weapons (the flamethrower from the 1st game comes to mind), but some of the weapon choices in this game just don't make sense.  Adding a Gradius-esque power-up system was a cool idea, but the secondary and tertiary weapon choices are a bit off in some cases.  Burns can power-up to either a hand grenade, or a machine gun.  Go for the machine gun, because the grenade can be difficult to use and not very handy against enemies some distance away.  Beans has a landmine you can use, but BE CAREFUL with that, and plan to use it for areas where it could be useful.  There are spots where you have to overcome landmines, and if you jump and shoot diagonally downward at the mine, you can destroy it.  Good luck taking out enemy mines by attempting to drop your own.  Some of the other special weapons are handy, but nothing as awesome as the original game's spread gun, or Operation C's cool homing gun.  Playing devil's advocate, I can see how managing the power-ups provide an element of strategy, but it becomes very easy to paint yourself into a corner when you have only one weapon available at any given time, and it's one with limited range.  Speaking of limited range, why would they make the bullets disappear at a certain range?  This is a projectile weapon, not an energy weapon.  Not to get too scientific, because this is just a video game we're talking about, but any 8-year old playing a video game should be able to discern that bullets fired from a gun don't just disappear into thin air after 12 feet, they keep going until they hit something.

Now that I've completely trashed the game, let me point out a handful of good things about it.  The graphics are actually pretty good, with interesting level graphics, some decent moving water in the background of the first level, and nicely animated stuff like the mashers in the first level.  Equally awesome is the fact that many of the background objects and things can be shot at and destroyed, which adds an additional element of realism.  Rather than having to try and run through the mashers (not possible), you can simply shoot them at the top and destroy them.  Partially broken pieces of scenery and be blown away, and even some other bits that look just fine.  It's a nice touch in a game riddled with so many flaws.  The music, while not very memorable, at least retains most of the Konami signatures such as the pacing, energy, as well as the general sound and feel.  In addition, despite the fact that it's not well implemented, the strategic element and augmented weapons system was at least Konami doing something different in this type of game.

"Now you see them.......now you don't!" - Iron

Perhaps my biggest issue with this game is not with the game itself, but the fact that Konami saw fit to localize it as a Contra title.  Before everyone cries foul and we get into an endless Doki Doki Panic! and Super Mario Bros. 2 debate, let's take a step back and remember that DDP began its development life cycle as a SMB title, and was changed to something different partway through.  This was never intended to be a Contra title, insofar as I've been able to discern through various Internet resources.  This was a shameless cash-grab on Konami's part, and unfortunately they only figured us stupid Americans would fall for it.  Thankfully, we responded in kind and the game didn't perform well.  I remember renting this game with a friend as a kid and being frustrated with it, and finding very little fun factor compared to Contra or Super C on the NES.  None of my other NES-owning friends rented or bought it, and I don't know anyone else who owned a copy as a kid, at least not that has told me they actually spent money (or their parents did) on a copy.  The existence of C: The Contra Adventure and Contra: Legacy of War tells us that Konami didn't learn their lesson here, unfortunately.  We can still take solace in the fact that poor sales of those titles helped to steer Konami back in the right direction with more recent Contra games, however.  Had this been released as anything other than an established franchise here in the US, it may have performed okay and been recognized as a game with good ideas marred by some bad design choices.  Or perhaps it could have spent more time in development and localization to work out those bugs before going to market.  We'll never know, and that's okay, because this game can stand as a good example of poor design and marketing choices.  This is most definitely a "try before you buy" kind of game, so take no shame in emulating it before you plunk down your hard-earned cash.  This one's not easy to find on the cheap.

Game On! "Guardian Saga" for iPhone

With all the powerful, fancy technologies available today, gaming has risen from the status of "Slightly less than nerdy" to a very mainstream, acceptable thing to do.  People play Farmville and Bejeweled on their Facebook accounts, Angry Birds on their phones, and Wii Sports with their families.  Where gaming was once a bastion of geekery everywhere, it has become so ubiquitous now that it's becoming harder to remember the time when geeky kids (like myself long ago) gathered around a TV and a Nintendo or Sega console to fend off hordes of demons, take out rival gangs, stomp on walking mushrooms and turtles, and collect golden rings at high speeds through a grassy green area.  Indeed, those halcyon days of childhood gaming bliss are sadly no more.

What we have today is a group of very powerful game consoles that do their best to impress you with realistic graphics, sound that can match the latest blockbuster movie, and gameplay mechanics that are not always easy to pick up when initially sitting down to play.  Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoy the impressive nature of today's games.  I like the faux-realism of a title like inFAMOUS (makes me a want a PS3 real bad!), and a title like L.A. Noir reminds me that we have come so far in the pursuit of realism within gaming.  But, call me crazy, sometimes I long for the simpler days of yore where small sprites that barely resembled the character they were portraying jaunted across the screen in pursuit of the big bad foe and the "action sounds" of a game like Double Dragon sounded more like snapping wafers than snapping necks.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who feels this way, as the Wii Virtual Console service would attest, as well as the string of casual games available on various smartphone platforms.  Not to mention the handheld gaming market is still a place where more retro-styled games can happily exist without being tampered with too much.  So while there have been a number of retro-styled RPG games developed for the smartphone world, none can claim to be as purposefully retro as Guardian Saga for the iPhone.  Indeed, this 8 or 16-bit wonder (developed by 9th Bit Games) is the most retro-styled game I have played so far on the iPhone, and is one of the most enjoyable games I've played on any smartphone platform (yes, even against Angry Birds!).

Guardian Saga is a nice amalgamation of classic RPG gameplay and slightly updated graphics.  Visually, the game resembles 8-bit classic RPG's, with Dragon Warrior being the primary influence.  Graphically, though Dragon Warrior is the main influence, elements of early Final Fantasy titles also creep in, though everything is much more bold and bright.  The graphics are cleaner than an 8-bit title, so they have a more polished 16-bit look to them, though some of the effects (like the fog over the water) are far too clean even for 16 or 32-bit, so obviously some of the graphical power of the iPhone is used.  Fade-in and fade-out effects are nice, and what little animation there is in the game is done nicely, with that touch of old-school feel to it.  The music in the game is reminiscent of 8-bit RPGs as well, and I'm reminded very much of the GameBoy title Final Fantasy Legend (the original), which actually isn't a true Final Fantasy title, but rather the English translation of Makai Toushi Sa·Ga instead.

I've been walking o're the world map, all the live-long day...

Gameplay is very simple, with lots of map crawling, loads of random, turn-based battles, and talking to NPCs in the various towns and locations.  Conversation with most NPCs is pretty dry, though there are a few funny moments (a redneck girl in one town cracked me up) and a handful of characters that will say more than one sentence to you.  Indeed, these aren't the lengthy conversations that recent RPGs give you, but resemble the kinds of things programmers had to sacrifice when they had only so much memory to work with on a game cartridge.  Overall, this game has a nice clean, bright, familiar but enjoyable graphic appeal to it.

All this fog has to be a harbinger of some kind!

Music is nice in that old chip-tune way, though pretty sparse.  Sound effects are also wonderfully retro, though again, sparse.  The world map is actually fairly decent in size for the relatively small scale/scope of the game Guardian Saga actually is.  Control is fantastic, wich a nice NES-styled see-through "control pad" on the screen (lower-left corner) and then a single "action" button when you need to either talk to an NPC or activate something (like switches in the Earth Shrines).  Directional control with this simplistic method is very fluid and works fantastically.  Battle scenes are directed by simply tapping the option you want to choose (Attack, Magic, or Run) and it does just what you tell it to do - simple, elegant, and it just works.

This enemy is called "Bubbles" - sure doesn't look cute and cuddly!

The menu system (accessible by tapping the stats pop-up in the upper-left corner when remaining stationary) is also intuitive, giving clear indication of what you need access to.  Equipment can be swapped out merely by tapping on the existing equipment you want to replace and picking the new out of the list.  Spells are accessible via the Magic screen, and are available via a single tap.  Items and qeuipment are just as easily reached.  The "Quick Save" option is useful if you need to save somewhere outside of a town (you normally save at the local pub, of all places), though it does exit to the main menu when you choose that option.

Yeah, I got your options right here.

So with all this great gameplay and content, what's not to like?  While I applaud the designers for what they've done here, there are a few improvements that could be made.  Firstly, the music and sound effects are incredibly sparse.  There should be more of both, and the music should change based on being in different locales more than just world map music, cave/dungeon music, and "the storyline is advancing via cutscene" music.  The few sound effects are good but there just needs to be more of them.  Also, while the game is easy to pick up and relatively easy to play, there just aren't enough options - a larger world map would be good with more towns and a bit more "easing" into weapon and armor upgrades.  After your first 2 upgrades things start to get really expensive and you have to do a lot of grinding just to build up enough cash to get that sword or armor you want, which is a bit more tedious than it needs to be.  Random battles are always a point of contention with traditional RPG games, and while the battle frequency is nicely balanced, I feel like the battles could be better somehow.  I also feel like the game is a bit short - I'm only about 4 hours or so in to the game and I'm already about to down the 3rd Guardian (out of 4), so it seems like even the shortest early console RPGs had more gameplay than this.  I would really love to see a sequel to this game with a larger map, more music & sounds, more varied areas/landscapes, a longer and more involved story, and more NPC interactions (with more humor).

Despite my few qualms with the game design, this is a well constructed adventure that really evokes that feeling of late night Dragon Warrior  or Final Fantasy marathons, which ultimately is what this game appears designed to do.  It takes me back to my childhood where RPGs were somewhat daunting and intimidating (before they really started to interest me), so they make me recall the Friday night sleepovers at my best friend's house, and me staying up late to try Dragon Warrior after he fell asleep, only to be bested by the stupid blobs.  This is a fun adventure that is well worth the $1.99 9th Bit Games is charging for it, even though I snagged my copy free via the FreeAppADay service.  If you have any interest in classic RPG gaming or want to relive the early stages of the genre's heyday, this is the adventure for you.  Highly recommended.