Contra: Operation Galuga

It didn't go well for Konami's attempt to evolve Contra into a 3D twin-stick action game just under five years ago. Problems with pacing, visual style and even organisation buried a Contra: Rogue Corps that no one remembers any more. Now it's time to try again, leaving behind many of those mistakes but without going back to the pixel style. And to achieve this, the Japanese have relied on the last studio that understood these elite warriors, WayForward (responsible for the brilliant Contra 4 for DS on the twentieth anniversary of the franchise).

Contra: Operation Galuga is intended as a modern-day reboot of the series. It takes the NES original and introduces as many changes as they see fit, starting with the look and weapons, but returns to 2.5D Run & Gun side action and "me against the world" combat. The old Bill Rizer and Lance Bean (or the Probotectors RD008 and RC011 if you were in the old censored Europe) have to restart their battle against the thousands of Red Falcon terrorists and the aliens behind it all. The story begins and ends the same (no, it's not a spoiler if the script was written 37 years ago), because it paves the way for a future installment that retells the so-called alien wars.

In between, the motivations of the bad guys have grown around a technology that mixes gravitational fields and wormholes. They've made it as over-the-top as possible, in line with the histrionic performances of the voice actors and the characters they portray. The fattening of the script serves to give more weight to the natives of Galuga and, what matters, to grow the list of playable characters. Because, honestly, nobody comes to a Contra to find out what's going on, just to shoot regardless of the who or the why.

This makes Galuga feel the same as always, at least occasionally. It starts once again in the jungle level, then moves on to the waterfall climbing phase, and culminates inside the giant alien. Enough appealing to nostalgia, because the old ones are the most boring levels and the new ones have been made to look a lot better. Unlike Contra Evolve, it's not a remake, but even the ones depicting past environments are modified. And they've done away with the vertical 2D sections for the ones set inside the base. In exchange, there are more levels using vehicles, although I'm the least convinced by them. And while they all share the same base, the placement of elements such as platforms, enemies and real grapples gives a sense of variety. All of them are relatively long levels for this format, and so the eight included in the game took me more than an hour and a half to play on normal difficulty. Oh, and a special mention for the new bosses or some remade versions of old ones, because they are fun to kill.

Talking about challenge is essential to the series and here WayForward has done a great job. To start with, three levels of difficulty (I don't know if there will be more when beating it on hard because I haven't completed it yet), and on top of them, two life systems. The classic one-hit-one-life, and the one inherited from Mega Drive that allows you to take a few hits. There's variety to satisfy all audiences and it's perfectly integrated. As for the difference between normal and hard, it's in the precision of the enemy shots, you know that typical "but the grenade just went where I was about to land". The balance between enemies, weapons, movement speed, lives and difficulty is very good and generates a cocktail with an ideal rhythm for what is asked of a Contra.

The gameplay of Contra: Operation Galuga is where it needs to be because it brings all the usual stuff and adds strategic variants. The downside is that they have opted only for automatic shooting and I would have appreciated to combine it with the option to manually press the button at high speed to improve performance. The weapons are the same as always, so it could use a few new ones, but they have added an overload system and a perk system that you have to work with constantly. The weapon overload causes a momentary special effect, like a protective barrier with the M or slowing time with the L. They're of little use, until you combine them with the perk of regaining a shard of life after burning a weapon, then you start to get a taste for using them. Since you get a lot of them and can even request one from time to time, there's no rush. There are perks that are generic and others to give each character an extra ability, such as Bill being untouchable when dashing. The other point to this combination is the character selection, because while they all behave pretty much the same, there is some personal ability that can be a big plus or, rather, a big minus.

Beware of burning coins on perks at random, because that same money is also needed to buy characters and secret game modes. And you don't earn that much per game, so it will take many hours of play to get it all. It's not a problem because you already know that in a Contra the stages are repeated over and over again. For this there is the arcade mode and the challenges, which are far from easy. These two modes are to test yourself in the genre. By the way, I completed half of the story mode in multiplayer, as the series demands, and the experience was average because the jumping between weapons when picking up new ones and dropping old ones is very confusing.

Well, it seems to be going pretty well with the new Konami and WayForward, doesn't it? Well, not everything. Because Contra: Operation Galuga is ugly as a one of the alien enemies. When the American studio released Contra 4 it wowed with what it achieved on Nintendo DS. But there it was on its home turf, on the pixel. Its 3D visual recreations don't fit either in the artistic section, exploiting that militaristic exaggeration also in the graphics; nor in the technical one, as it has been technically very generic and "plasticy", a problem that Advance Wars 1+2 Re-boot Camp also has. Nor does it deliver audibly, because we have gone from an epic soundtrack in the 80s to another that goes unnoticed if it is not for the remix of the classics, combined with old effects that feel like patches.

Would Contra: Operation Galuga be a better game if it was shown in 2D pixel style? I don't think the problem is the leap to 3D graphics, but the overall implementation. But having picked up the pace of the game well, having managed to integrate the current lives and perks system so as not to penalise so much with difficulty and having got some well-designed levels and bosses, at least Konami and WayForward has a good basis for the series to re-establish itself and the Alien Wars will be unleashed again.