What game are you wasting time on?

[Abhay]

Arx Fatalis with the latest development snapshot of Libertatis installed. I absolutely love the atmosphere and the overall gameplay mechanics. Enjoying the game a lot.

 

[HansDampf]

Descent, to dust off my joystick. I've never played this. Can I pick higher difficulties without getting my ass kicked?

Btw, the D2X-XL source port is kind of a mess. It wouldn't even install itself properly. The readme says I should open the ini file and change the line "check_setup 0" to "check_setup 1". But there is no such line. Adding it didn't do anything either. After I'd copied the files manually I was still getting error messages, but at least the game would start. Then it spent 15 minutes calculating lightmaps(

) and the game looks like this:

Spoiler

I've also just noticed the watermark on my own screenshot.
With those millions of options and switches I'm sure there is a way to make this look decent. But why waste more time? I've installed D1X-Rebirth instead, copied the two files it told me to copy, and it just works. As far as I can tell it looks pretty much like the original, just in higher resolution. And bugfixes, which is all I wanted.

Spoiler

 

[Squid]

Currently playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl again because I beat it back in high school and never finished the other two games. So I guess I'll slowly make my way through them and try to play Tyranny when I have the chance too.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Playing Killer is Dead.
Weird ass game, kind of cool though. Surprisingly good port for a console game too. The M+KB controls work just fine with it, though the mashing is a bit wonky.
I do have some performance issues, but that might just be because I have a relic of a computer.

 

[sullynathan]

My Hard drive just died, no games for a while

 

[Gregz]

Deep Sky Derelicts

 

[hellbent]

Deep Sky Derelicts

Nice, I have this one on my GOG wishlist. How is the procedurally generated content (levels, loot) looking for you so far?

 

[Gregz]

Deep Sky Derelicts

Nice, I have this one on my GOG wishlist. How is the procedurally generated content (levels, loot) looking for you so far?

I'm enjoying it, nothing objectionable so far.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Deep Sky Derelicts

Nice, I have this one on my GOG wishlist. How is the procedurally generated content (levels, loot) looking for you so far?

I'm enjoying it, nothing objectionable so far.

Loot is actually decent.

 

[Grotesque]

 

[hellbent]

Currently playing 2017's best RPG* on my gaming rig while messing around with some character / party combos in Pathfinder and Wizards & Warriors before I officially sink more time into them.

*

Spoiler

ELEX, of course

 

[Freddie]

Finished Unavowed

Urban Fantasy adventure from WadjetEye and it was actually pretty good, though perhaps it felt a tad short. There are several backgrounds to choose from which but I don't know if / how much different content there are depending from chosen background.

Story is set in modern day New York which I found very refreshing. It's sort of Urban Fantasy Noir which may sound horrible but it works! It's with these games that it's very difficult to say much without spoiling the game, but some thing happens to main character who is then later recruited to organisation known as Unavowed. They fight against supernatural threats with their little group. Each mission starts from house which is their HQ and player can later choose which mission the crew takes in subway. Most of the time there are two or more companions with different skills on a missions.

I felt companions were mostly okay. I felt couple of them had potential issue with their quite long life experience which can create really ridiculous situations in RPG's, but game really didn't went that deep with characters, which brings me to other potential issue. Characters were quite well fleshed out in terms of dialogue and inter party conversations which covers a lot of their life experiences, but older the character is, more difficult it to represent what said character has learned from all those experiences. Pride is the most common way to explain 'supposed to wiser' kind of character doing something stupid, but thankfully we see only one instance of that in this game.

However the story which progresses by doing missions is good. I really liked how certain mission backgrounds could actually work without supernatural element and that's pretty much all I can say. I felt final missions was perhaps a bit convoluted but it was short and actual finale fit well within themes of the game and was implemented well.

Puzzles are mostly pretty straightforward. I can't consider it cumbersome or too difficult either. Beginner friendly for sure though.

It's a Pixel Graphics adventure. Nothing against it and I was surprised by quality of some animations, like idle animations of fellow in the basement. The best thing was how I felt it was perfectly enough to build some sort of modern Noir atmosphere. I felt soundtrack and voice cast also contributed a lot to that atmosphere and feeling the game has. For audio, there appears to be some editing mistakes. I haven't checked the files but while voice cast is all right, audio quality is uneven. There's some clipping on lower frequencies and in some dialogue it sounds like some definition was lost either in recording, storing process.

Overall Unavowed is IMO surprisingly well build experience which IMO achieves a lot with so little. Mission structure makes it good choice for players who wonder their time budget and I would also advice anyone wondering about Pixel Graphics just forget that and try the game.

I would also recommend this game for those who wonder about how to make game work in modern setting / urban fantasy.

€ 14,99 on GOG where I got it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Started the new Destiny 2 expansion, Forsaken. The character that Nathan Fillon voices was killed off because Fillon has other projects by a traitor and our hero embarks on a personal vengeance quest. Well in theory, I progressed a little and it looks like we're saving the space elves from extinction. I think I identified who his secret ally is the instant I saw her, too. Our new alien ally is a crime lord who speaks perfect english even though his counterpart from the first game was a scholar from a scribe clan who lived among humans and spoke in somewhat broken english. Their race normally speaks in grunts so this made it look like he was making an heroic effort to speak hyooman, now it looks like he fell on his head.

There's a new PvE-PvP game mode where you fight mobs who they drop points that you can deposit to send increasingly stronger garbage mobs (award no points) to the enemy side, like Tetris. Sometimes the enemy gets a chance to enter your side of the field to attack you directly, and a kill wastes any points you haven't deposited yet or heals your boss mob if it's already spawned. It's kinda fun.

 

[someone else]

My base in Serpent Isle.
Serpent Isle is so grimdark I even have a dead baby, to make clean diapers dirty.

 

[RK47]

Checked out the game...it's cheap. No voiced lines in game.
Seems clunky...but the setting is p. weird.

 

[newtmonkey]

Playing Metal Max Returns on a SNES emulator, this game is actually pretty fun. It's more of a simplified SaGa game, way more linear and lacks a ton of the mechanics, but it's actually pretty fun to breeze through for all that. Makes me want to play the rest of the series when they're translated to see how the series evolved over the last 20+ years.

The game's pretty amusing too, but looks like Nintendo censored the best part: The MC can get an item called "Sister's Panties" and use it to avoid gas-inflicting status (in the NES original)...it got changed to "Sister's Towel". DECLINE!

The Metal Max games are awesome. The head guy behind the series was also instrumental in the best of the classic Dragon Quest games (DQ2 and 3, if I recall correctly), and it shows. MM3 on the DS is also a lot of fun if you want to keep going. The same guy has been in charge of the whole series, so if you like one you'll likely like the others.

 

[Valky]

I just defeated Ellmac, and quickly realizing that this is an incredibly game.
Is La Mulana 2 any good? I'm only 5 hours into the first but I know this is a real gem.

 

[Ovplain]

Going through my goddamn backlog. It's colossal. It's disgusting! Would probably be best to just write a bunch of this shit off, but I can't. I have to at least make an effort.

The last bunch, thank the F Christ I had some old saves left:
DOOM (Had lass than half way to go, had fun!)
Wolfenstein: The New Order (Just the final boss left. No idea why I stopped the last time.)
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Think the save I used was midway through the game, still took me nearly 3 weeks to finish together with both expansions.)
Batman: Arkham Knight (Started from scratch, took almost two weeks, had a blast, nice send-off.)
Beyond: Two Souls (Old save, about a third through I'd say, wrapped the game up in 3 days. Well, 'game.' Did end up caring about what happened to the girl though, so that's something.)
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (Started from scratch, took a week. Solid 'GTA-clone.')
Virginia (From scratch, took like an hour, hour and a half though! Hardly a game, but much like with Beyond, I was invested, I cared. Nice music, nice style.)
Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition (Just an easy one to chalk off the list, took a couple hours. Whatever, it's a fighting game. The story was insufferable!)

Barely made a dent, goddammit. Stupid games. Won't be buying any new ones for a while, that's for sure.

 

[HansDampf]

Descent

I'm playing this like a normal WASD shooter, except with a joystick instead of a mouse, using the usual jump and crouch keys for vertical slide, and q and e for roll. I went with Hot Shots difficulty (3/5) and also didn't want to use quicksaves since this game has an extra life system anyway. When you die you lose all your weapons and upgrades, but you can pick them up again from where you died. Seems fair... Until I got to level 6! How am I supposed to deal with those grey drones and their Vulcan Cannons? The only way to kill them without taking a fuckton of damage is to know where they are and shoot a homing missile around the corner. I've lost so many lives here and had a game over at the boss in level 7. I can start a new game from level 7, so I haven't lost much progress, but still... How?!

One more thing though. The woman who says "Self-Destruct Sequence Activated", I knew I've heard that exact voice clip before.

Spoiler

It's from their album Comalies, which I know thanks to

Spoiler

 

[Baron Dupek]

Started playing Unreal again after watching video with easter eggs and secrets. I missed so many of them it's not even funny. Some of them are quite tricky, and they let you grab some gun way earlier, like ASMD under the elevator 2 levels back.
For once YT Recommended Videos worked like it should be from the very start.

There is DX10 render from kentie, HD textures and fan-made patched, but you can't get them working together. Pity. Got DX10 render, gamma works better and even better in windowed mode.
Got confused at the beginning because WSAD was not default control scheme. Then realized that I played UT with arrows for quite some time...

Never trust the Skaarj, always walk over them after fight or put a bullet or two to be sure. That sleeping Skaarj in the water temple was neat surprise. And some of them still chase you when new level loads. I like how weapons are put on some kind of pedestals, like a proper Messiah's Tools of Salvation (c). Can't save some scuba gear, get instantly drown when you switch it off no matter how long you were underwater. Huh.

Funny, they say your gaming performance get worse with your age but I get quite opposite impression. I always felt like Unreal have "maze-like levels" and get lost. That was decade ago, but now? Let's play it and debunk it.

Recently finished Divinity Original Sin 2 DE. People already said a lot about the game, tbh it worse than DOS1 for me.
Feels like it have ToEE syndrome, where combat system is nice but encounters - not so. All you care about is height winning margin, then stripping out armor.
That infamous armors system sounds good on paper but it makes combat drag on and on, burning out people faster.

I spend €39 on digital onion stripping simulator, feels scammed.

 

[RK47]

I'm getting this.

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE234198.html

I'll see you guys at 6 am.



AHAHAHHAHA THEY HAVE DRM NOW AHAHAHAHHA

 

[Valky]

I'm getting this.

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE234198.html

I'll see you guys at 6 am.



AHAHAHHAHA THEY HAVE DRM NOW AHAHAHAHHA

but also

 

[Hevnknekt]

Thanks to Raapys I rediscovered Mission Critical, a game I played in my early teens. Finally completed it.

A very clever and engaging adventure game, with great puzzles. The final 1/3 of the game became a bit too outlandish and surreal for my taste though, and I found myself in agreement with the antagonists.

In any case, it's available on GOG and I recommend giving it a shot.

 

[Durandal]

Just cleared Contra III: The Alien Wars on Hard Mode. It's badass. I even have the American box art set as my wallpaper. Optimism and high hopes abounded as I reached the final stage with seven lives remaining which I was confident by then I wouldn't even need half of, until I pulled the sine wave attack from the final boss lottery and panic set in because I never took the time to practice avoiding that one. Double panic set in when I drew the same lot twice, leaving me with only two lives and one less C. Now that's terror. The only thing that kept me from ending my run then and there were nerves of steel.

Spoiler

Super Probotector is a top-down shooter from the Contra top-down shooter series by Nintendo, released in 1992 for the Super Famicom in the West. The premise is simple, taking place after the events of Metal Slug, an alien organization called Red Falcom decides after their covert infiltrations being foiled by the Contra force to begin a large-scale invasion on Earth, igniting The Alien Wars. In response, the Earth Government sends out the Contra, consisting of Bill Rizer, Mad Dog (or Jimbo and Sully if the manual is to be believed, but the Contra continuity is one massive clusterfuck, normally the second player would be Lance Bean but he has been replaced by Mad Dog now, even though Lance appears in the credits for some reason), and the unnamed helicopter pilot, to repel the alien threat and strike at its very heart. This new threat is on a level unlike anything before, that they finally convinced Bill to wear some body armor for once instead of going out half-naked like usual. Not like it helps much.

The premise of the gameplay is also as simple as it can be. You move, you duck, you jump, you shoot. You die in one hit by anything. You can pick up several weapons on the field, but now you can carry two weapons, of which you can wield one and keep one in reserve, so now you're less constrained by the weapons the game decides to give you and have more freedom to mix 'n match. It also makes recovery easier as you only lose the current weapon you're holding on death, but can use the one you kept in reserve so you're not doomed to use the default pea shooter, as most weapons you pick up in the field tend to be stronger. If you hold L+R you can also spin around firing both weapons in all directions, but you lose control of your character while doing this and it's not exactly accurate, on top of incurring loads of slowdown and losing both weapons if you get hit while doing this. It's completely useless in actual combat, though it makes for some fun posing after killing bosses. The pea shooter also received an upgrade to be fully automatic, so you're no longer forced to ruin your thumb after you die. Funnily enough it has its own uses, as it has no projectile limit and a larger maximum range than most weapons, making it useful for ekeing out some enemies even if that is the more defensive way of doing this.

Holding R locks you in place and lets you shoot in all eight directions without moving, which is a definite must in any run 'n gun. It's a pain to have to constantly shuffle around back and forth if you want to shoot diagonally. There's also smart bombs now, which wipe out all enemies on screen, but interestingly enough not the projectiles, and it deals minor damage against bosses, so it's only really useful against zako swarms or swarms of other destuctibles. Which then makes the smart bombs not all that useful because there aren't that many times in Contra III where you actually get swarmed, there are more smartbombs than there are opportunities to use them. At the very least you want to be saving them up for the final boss where they are useful. Though you lose all bombs on death, and only start out with one remaining in the stock after dying, so it's not something you come to rely on either. It's one of those strange barely-utilized additions to the game alongside the L+R double fire. It's not even viscerally satisfying to use smartbombs either, it's just an expanding epilepsy-inducing circle which also really slows the game down and is often too slow to kill things in time for an emergency.

The biggest understated addition, one barely even realized to its fullest potential by the game itself, is that you can hang onto things like poles and other objects, and also climb on any ceiling or wall. This might seem rather rudimentary and minor, but once you get to Stage 3 you can see just how much of an extra dimension this adds to Contra. You get bosses which are fought while climbing a wall, a boss with a rotating flamethrower whose stream you have to avoid by climbing around it, and a miniboss with a rotating pole with the weak spot being right under the boss. When climbing, you can't move while shooting (you need both hands for climbing, obviously), making offense less of a straightforward element and has you consider your positioning more carefully. There's a lot more versatility in setpieces when you can hang onto anything, which you'll especially see in Stage 4.

I can't think of any other game mechanics outside the gravity reversal in Alien Soldier/VVVVVVVV and the Spider Ball in Metroid II which let you unrestrictively use the ceiling like this. Stage 3 realized this brilliantly and in Stage 4 uses it to create the best moment in the game period, which is why it especially hurts that it's barely used throughout the rest of the game. It's only really utilized in Stage 3, at the end of Stage 4, and briefly in Stage 1 for an easy platforming segment and in Stage 6 for one mini-boss. Stage 2 and 5 are top-down shooter stages where climbing on things is out of the question to begin with. One can only speculate how climbing could be utilized had the top-down stages been just regular side-scrolling stages. Not that the rest of the game is worse because it doesn't heavily feature climbing more, but it certainly feels like wasted potential considering climbing is a core movement ability.

The other weapons have also seen some changes, the F(lamethrower) goes from a thing that fires a useless rotating fireball into a continuous stream weapon which drags along when you change firing directions so you can more easily in the diagonal-ish directions with it, making it a lot more useful. The S(preadshot) is still there, not as OP as the NES Contra iteration but still damn powerful when applied up close. The H(oming Missiles) are the worst weapons in the game which is an appropriate position for a weapon which does not require aiming. It's too weak to be seriously used and you're going to get better results if you use a weapon which requires more skill to use. L(aser) is like, ok, it's the weapon you use when there's nothing else to use because its RoF is too sucky for it to be used regularly. Which is strangely the opposite case in the top-down stages where the Laser is a continuous beam and hands down the strongest weapon there.

The C(rusher Missiles) OTOH are the most powerful weapons in the game, limited by having a projectile limit of like three and a very narrow range (though the range of its explosions is decent). Crusher Missiles are definitely the expert's weapon of choice as they yield the greatest damage potential when applied up close, at the cost of lacking area coverage and rate of fire as other weapons like the Spreadgun and Flamethrower. Clearly some weapons are more useful in general than others, but then Contra is not a game about picking the right weapon for the right situation, and it will usually give you the most suitable weapon for each new situation anyways. Weapon balance isn't as necessary here as the more powerful guns come with drawbacks which can be superseded with skill. I still found myself using every weapon in the game in my run (apart from H) because I died and had to pick up something else/I wasn't confident enough to C+C my way through with the weapon swap glitch.

C+C is your CQC and also most definitely the most powerful weapon combination in terms of sheer DPS thanks to the weapon swap glitch. Each weapon has a projectile limit, but this limit is separate for both two weapons you're carrying. So the most efficient way to play involves regularly swapping between weapons so you can combine the damage output of both weapons at your disposal. This is a bit tricky and can be annoying to get the hang of when you have to rhythmically tap the weapon switch button on top of holding Fire (by default the top face button on an SNES-like controller whereas the shoot button is the leftmost one), but it's hard not to do it once you get the hang of it. It also makes weapon combinations more unique when you can combine them both at the same time, so for example you can combine the power of the C with the area coverage of S (something which I'm sure inspired NAMI to expand upon in Gunstar Heroes after he worked as the main programmer on this game). Or just S+S for double point-blank power, although C+C is better at pure DPS.

The problems with this are that the required input method isn't particularly intuitive, and that it is too dominant of a strategy for bossfights (and there's a lot of mini-bosses in Contra 3). Imagine using only a single Crush Missile to kill a boss without the weapon swap glitch. Using two at once practically halves the time required to kill. For stages this amount of firepower is usually overkill, but it definitely helps for boss fights. It essentially doubles your DPS, but other than a wonky input method there's little risk attached to doing it and no reason why you should ever shoot one weapon at once for boss fights. There should be a reason why you wouldn't want to dual-wield, though usually why you wouldn't is because it's a pain to have to do it more than necessary, and discouraging spam or abuse by lending mechanics clunky inputs is just a lame way of doing it, especially when it doesn't have an excuse either like a limited amount of buttons on the controller like with the Genesis.

It'd make more sense if the useless L+R dual-wielding spinjump was replaced with a dual-wield function which would let you fire both weapons at once in the same direction while still giving you full character control, but have you lose both weapons if you get hit while dual-wielding as an additional risk. Maybe also slow you down when doing it. Maybe change the input so you can dual-wield just by holding L instead of L+R so you can use the R button to lock your movement while dual-wielding as well. This is a bit trickier to implement for the top-down stages, but screw them. As you always start out or are left with two peashooter rifles you could just always freely dual-wield them for double damage if you have nothing else, but that's why you might as well lose even your second peashooter if you die when holding it (if you have only one peashooter, you shouldn't lose it of course), leaving you with only one weapon until you pick up another (which gets downgraded into a peashooter if you get hit holding that one), so you can't mindlessly dual-wield both peashooters either. Obviously you wouldn't be able to dual-wield while hanging onto things, which is why the wall/ceilings might be safer to be in while the floor is more hotly contested with enemy fire, although you can only dual-wield while standing on a surface, so it's a bit of a risk/reward type of situation where abandoning the safety of climbing allows you to output more damage. Although it's a glitch, weapon swapping/dual-wielding could have definitely been fleshed out into an actual mechanic.

I think I need to stress out that the weapon swap glitch doesn't ruin the game or anything like that, far from it. The game is still designed to be playable using a single weapon, and it's not inherently less fun (except for your fingers) to play with the weapon swap glitch since you get to kill things faster. The difficulty is not completely invalidated if you use it, though C+C makes ST6 more of a crapshoot once you figure out a proper path since you can nail those bugeyes with C+C before they spawn their homing projectiles, whereas the zakos can be jumped over or quickly nabbed. The latter part of ST6 is also one big boss rush, so having C+C by that point definitely helps. That's just the one non-boss part in the game where you can basically memorize your way through with C+C and almost disregard the RNG zako element. However the weapon swap glitch is clearly unintentional, and could have been fleshed out properly.

Alright, Stage 1. Stage 1 is more of a steamroll explosion and more about making you feel cool than really challenging you, but that's perfectly acceptable for the first stage in a game. The pacing in the first stage is relentless and constantly changes things up, so even if it is on the easier side it doesn't get boring. Konami knows how much everyone likes their spreadshots, so right off the bat they give you two. One for both of you if you're playing on two player mode. On top of that you're also introduced to the barrier power-up (if you don't miss the power-up carriers anyways), so the first part has you shredding through dozens of zakos and mooks coming in from both sides of the screen and through the windows, while fuckin' invincible. It's classic Contra with aggressive zako spawns getting mixed with enemies in fixed sniper positions pelting you with bullets, so you're constantly firing in every direction. One new thing is that there's also zako variants which shoot you if they get close enough, which is even more taxing. If you get this part down properly, you never have to let go of the move right button. At no point do you have to stop. If you're cool enough, you can even do this part without ever looking to the left. It's not too hard since it comes down to memorizing sniper positions and knowing how to deal with the RNG, but then this part doesn't last too long either. It's a bit weird how the first part of the stage is the hardest, though.

As per Contra tradition the first boss you face is a Turret Wall, which you can bring down really easy if you apply the spreadshot to its core, after which you jump into a tank to bulldoze through everything and take out the next turret wall with one tank shot. All you do here is hold down the right button and nothing can kill you since you're driving a tank, and the tank can take a lot of damage before going up in flames. There isn't much challenge involved, but again it feels cool and is short enough. After that there's a brief mini-boss fight with a tank which is easily dispatched by standing behind it before it comes crashing through a building. Contra 3 also likes to showcase Mode 7 a lot, as a bomber flies in and turns the ground into a massive sea of fire.

The next segment is purely platforming and serves to teach the player about hanging onto things and climbing things like walls, while you've got bouncing fireballs and erupting streams of fire to contend with. And if you're good enough, you can just push forward through this entire bit without having to wait for the fireballs. It's certainly necessary given how heavily climbing is going to be featured in Stage 3. The boss of this stage is a giant turtle, which you can speedkill before it does anything by standing in front of its core and shooting both spreadshots at it using the weapon swap glitch. On Hard Mode this strategy is unusable because the turtle will start moving up and down a lot sooner, making it impossible to stand in front of its weak spot long enough, so instead you speedkill it with C+C while standing in the bottom left corner before it can even attack.

I'd have been fine with it if the boss was speedkillable on just Normal Mode using S+S or C+C because it's only the first boss anyways and the real challenge lies down the line, but on Hard Mode this boss isn't made much harder if you have C+C. Which is a shame, because especially on Hard Mode this boss does have some interesting attacks which you now don't get to deal with at all. The intended challenge here was to jump and drop down a column of platforms where you'd have to get on the floor in order to be able to get a clear shot at the boss' weak spot, while the weak spot itself can shoot sets of fast bullets which force you to jump over them, as the turtle itself spawns waves of zakos or fires a straight laser making it impossible for you to jump over any obstacles. I don't really mind when the first batch of bosses can be speedkilled when they're usually dead easy anyways, but on Hard Mode this guy can be a decent challenge, so it feels a bit undeserved to go down that easily with C+C, even if it is abusing a glitch.

Stage 2 is a top-down shooter stage. As per Contra tradition you need to have at least two stages where you play with a different view-point other than side-scrolling, just because. Especially here Konami wanted to show
off Mode 7 with all this sprite scaling and sprite rotation. When you start off this stage, you have to pick a spawning position from an overhead view of the entire level (which can be everywhere), and the game will zoom
into that spot while rotating. woaaaaaaaaaaaah. I still hate the top-down stages. They're not bad, they're actually decent even and manage to utilize the traditional Contra RNG decently. It's just that they don't really hold up to the side-scrolling stages, and that potentially better side-scrolling stages could have been made in their stead.

The goal in the top-down stages is to blow up all the bunkers in any order you like, then you will be automatically transported to the boss. Bunkers are basically stationary enemies who will pop out of the ground to shoot at you, and every bunker has their own special behavior, which is randomly distributed amongst all the available bunker positions in the stage. You move around in eight directions, but can rotate your aiming direction with the shoulder buttons. Instead of jumping you throw yourself on the floor which makes all bullets miss you, except you can't rotate or move while doing so. With this set-up, the more engaging way of challenging the player here would be to mix huge bullet spreads with contact damage enemies forcing you to mix repositioning yourself on top of going prone to avoid the bullets, and forcing you to turn and rotate to face incoming enemies from all sides.

Which... doesn't really happen here. Regular enemies can usually be strafed around, whereas you can take out most bunkers while prone. The chance for whether a contact damage enemy spawns when you are shooting a bunker while prone is too low, allowing you to take down a lot of bunkers with relative ease. It gets kind of repetitive when most bunkers can be solved by circlestrafing or going prone. Especially when you get the Laser which can kill anything in a second in the top down stages. If the stages weren't so non-linear and reliant on RNG zako spawn for enemies to spawn while you are fighting bunkers, then we might have had something better on our hands. On Hard Mode the available bunker behaviors change to be more tricky on the whole, so you've got a bunker which remains locked up until you stop firing, or a bunker which only opens up when you turn your back towards it. The latter is especially frustrating to deal with at first, until you realize that the L+R spin move works really well against it. Which is like the only place in the game where the spinfire is actually useful for anything.

The Stage 2 boss is a nuisance, starting from its introduction. "Wait, did it just fall on me?". It's a giant spider tank with a tail cannon which on Hard Mode will perform a spinning laser attack if it gets close enough, though you can destroy the tail cannon by pedalling backwards while shooting as the boss keeps inching towards you. Then you have to destroy all its six legs and then its core. You don't really have to destroy its legs, but it's a definite must on Hard, because on Hard the boss' jumping attack will come crashing down much faster, making it impossible for you avoid colliding with its legs. You won't take contact damage for destroyed legs, but you will from undestroyed ones, so it's a RNG roulette deciding whether the boss will land on you with a functioning leg or a broken leg, but either way you can't outrun its legs no matter what you do, even though you can in Normal Mode. In Normal Mode avoiding this attack just comes down to moving in a straight line in any direction, which isn't particularly engaging either, but it's a better alternative than playing Russian Roulette where the bullets are giant turret legs.

Anyhoo, the boss will only do this crushing attack if you walk too far away from him, or if you damage his core too much which makes him enter a berserk state. So the idea is to pick off all his legs before damaging his core at all, so you won't get turned into a pancake afterwards. Of course, this 'berserk state' is never communicated to the player at all, and it doesn't take away from the fact this is still a shitty attack. If you know about this you can avoid getting flattened, but the learning process here is shit. Other than that the boss has a charging attack where he'll start spinning and move in a straight line in some random hard-to-gauge direction, which is also avoided by moving in a straight line away from the boss. Damaging the core of the boss itself can also be annoying because all his attack involve him spinning, and his core is only shootable on his head, so you need to get lucky enough again that when he's done spinning after attacking that his core will face you, or face close to you so you can get some shots in before he jumps up in the air again. This fight is shite.

Thankfully we then get to move on to Stage 3, which features these really cool industrial backgrounds with factory towers everywhere punctuated by a gray sky, and in my opinion the best track in the entire soundtrack. As Stage 3 is a large climb, it has bottomless pits everywhere, and your death screams amusingly have an echo to them if you fall to your death. The first part revolves around destroying ball-droids which are invincible until they uncurl to pop off a shot at you, and a bunch of sniper dudes (whose fire rate is blindingly high on Hard Mode). Nothing much going on here since you can memorize your way through. After that there's a rail climbing section where you're being assaulted by those flying bugs from the cover art who try to kill you by dragging you off to the top of the screen, except you can shoot them down before they do so. It's pretty much impossible to die here once you figure out how they work, since you only need to move forwards and shoot diagonally forwards while jumping to avoid getting grabbed, and even then you can kill the bugs in a second before they manage to drag you up.

Then you get to the first mini-boss in the stage, and probably the first actually good one in the game. The set-up is that you're hanging onto a railing above a bottomless pit, as a flying robot with a rotating pole starts hovering beneath you. However, its core is located on the bottom of the thing and you can't hit it while hanging on the railing, so you need to hang onto the rotating pole instead and hit it from beneath. The boss will also regularly extend a drill from the top of its body, so you need to disengage from the pole towards the railing before you hit twelve 'o clock. On top of that, the rotation of the pole will regularly reverse directions, so it's a constant game of repositioning yourself so you can get to the right part of the pole which lets you swing beneath the boss. All the boss does is extend his drill, the challenge here is to get beneath him without screwing up by falling off, colliding with the body of the boss, or the drill. Unless you have the Flamethrower, which can penetrate through the boss' body and let you hit its core from the railing, though even then you have to avoid colliding with the pole because you will automatically grab onto the pole when it collides with you. Still, a very fun mini-boss.

Which stands completely opposite from the next part, which is one minute of solid nothing (also known as 'time for donations' in certain other circles). After the mini-boss goes down, the game suddenly enters auto-scroller mode, where you have to climb a wall as far as the auto-scrolling allows you. Until the boss you just killed suddenly comes in flying and attaches his two legs to the wall you're climbing. He then starts firing pairs of missiles at you while also climbing the wall himself, and he's also invincible for this whole part. The problem is, the missiles can easily be avoided consistently just by climbing as far as the boss' topmost leg whenever he climbs another step. All you're doing is tapping the up button every once in a while. The attacks don't get changed up, there's nothing to adapt to, all you do is press up at a regular rhythm. Nor can the boss be damaged while it's climbing, so in terms of offense and defense there's absolutely nothing going on here. Trying to shoot the boss only results in more slowdown, which will only drag out this segment more. And because this is an auto-scroller segment, there's nothing you can do to speed things up. At least the music is good.

Things go up again as the boss pulls out two sections from the wall adorned with lethal spikes while the boss tries to kill you by ramming you, but the catch is that the boss' weakspot only opens when he's about to ram you. This part is incredibly random as you can't really tell whether the boss is really going to attack or just faking out a wind-up, but that's the fun part because you're constantly climbing up and down in an effort to guess what the boss is about to do and to position yourself so you can get some shots off as the boss charges in. And then he dies for good.

A bit of climbing later where you're pelted on by a tower of snipers (which is unfortunately easily solvable with a smartbomb), the recon drone mini-boss spots you. All it does here is drop a stream of grenades, but you can easily avoid this by standing at either of the edge of the screen and do nothing, which is boring. After that it opens it doors which spawns runner zakos and also makes it vulnerable to your weapons, though the zakos aren't a problem with the spreadshot since they can take out both streams of zakos and damage the boss while at it, and with C+C you can destroy it before the zakos even get to you in the first. Not much going on here.

A fortress assault follows, where you get sniped from rockets off-screen, but you get a shield pick-up for some reason here so it's not a problem at all. Blow open the door, and you've got turrets popping out of the wall trying to gank you. As again per Contra tradition you need to have an upwards platform climbing section (not the same as climbing on walls), as turrets and zakos spawning from the sides give you shit. This is one of those parts I wish was greatly expanded, up to one half of a stage at least. Wallclimbing isn't even utilized here at all, and rotating poles are only used at the very end of the section where you need to jump from one rotating pole to another, though it's impossible to miss at that point and aside from the turret there's nothing actively trying to impede you jumping from pole to pole, as opposed to the zakos from before making it harder for you to jump to platforms above you. This part ends way too soon and is just one of those examples of wasted potential as a result of the game's hyperactive pacing.

The final room you get to is protected by two Terminators, the blue one shoots diagonally at the floor, and the brown one keeps jumping around or randomly decides to hang on the ceiling to fire a spread of projectiles at you. You don't want to be on the floor here at all, which is also why the room locks you in and features climbable walls and ceilings. To avoid getting squashed by the brown one you have to climb on the ceiling away from him, and to avoid his projectile attacks you want to climb as far away from him as possible. It's a cool fight which C+C invalidates a bit too much IMO because it can kill the brown Terminator after one attack cycle while the blue Terminator can't hit you at all while you're hanging from the ceiling. The blue Terminator could have also played a more active role by shooting the walls and ceilings where you're most likely to be, instead of the floor.

After destroying both Terminators then comes Mama Terminator knockin' through the wall, who's got homing eye lasers, can spit a maelstrom of fire, and throw bombs at you too. The homing lasers you avoid by climbing alongside the surfaces, the huge rotating stream of fire you avoid by quickly climbing a half-circle around it, and the bombs you avoid by quickly moving away from the bombs (usually climbing away if you were standing on the floor). While this boss greatly utilizes climbing and looks really cool, it's unfortunately also really static. If you can beat it once you can reliably do it always. There's no degree of RNG to any attack to make it more engaging, not even any zakos. To avoid the homing lasers you climb a half-circle around the room. To avoid the flamethrower you climb a half-circle around the room and drop down. To avoid the bombs you climb where the bombs aren't, but because the bombs are always aimed at your position you can usually predict where they'll get vomited. Having the bomb vomit be combined with the two other attacks at random timings and a longer fuse would have been neater. As it stands the only real challenge is on Hard Mode when the rotation speed of the flamethrower is much higher and is much more strict with the time you have to avoid it as you have to disengage from the ceiling pretty early, especially when you're used to the flamethrower speed of Normal Mode.

Stage 3 is all over the place. There are some good parts, there are some ok parts, there are some boring parts, there's nothing consistent about its quality other than its inconsistency. This chaotic style of direction is something felt throughout the entire game (with the exception of the top-down shooter stages funnily enough), and is something that would get further exacerbated in Contra: Hard Corps (where Nakazato, director of Contra III, also worked as a director for that game). Every 20-30 seconds a completely different type of challenge or a different mini-boss is presented. Instead of gradually building on a gameplay concept throughout the stage like the NES Contra did, the game constantly keeps changing things up. Which does lend the game a hypnotical manic pacing and really sells the feeling of non-stop action, but quality can fluctuate wildly because you constantly have to pull new things out of your ass to keep it up. Sometimes it really works, sometimes it really doesn't. This type of pacing is not inherently bad or anything and can work (see: Alien Soldier), but the majority of those individual parts need to be at an even quality for it to work. There's more good than bad in Stage 3, but the bad parts can at times give you the impression that the developers were just seeing what sticks on the wall instead of actually having an idea of what they're doing, yet getting really lucky. I do love this kind of pacing, but a frequent result of it is that some elements or mechanics (like climbing) do not really get the attention they deserve.

In line what I said previous paragraph, Stage 4 isn't a regular side-scrolling platforming stage--it's an auto-scrolling vehicle stage which has you on a hoverbike chasing down a battleship. Not that I mind. Structurally it's like a quicker Stage 1 where it's zako rush->miniboss->obstacle course->miniboss->último jefe. Here you get harrassed by several hoverbike aliens who will either shoot diagonally down forwards if you go too far right and drop grenades with lasting explosions that need to be jumped over if you stick around the center or left. What's cool here is that these hoverbikes are worth a lot of points. If you manage to kill a lot of them you can get two extends in this section alone, maybe three if you nail them all. What would normally be a casual game of hopscotch with not a lot of reason to destroy those pesky bikes instead becomes a frantic rush of trying to kill as many hoverbikes as you can for those precious points and extends. No complex scoring mechanics required!

Next is a brief miniboss against a(nother) tank, this time supported by jetpack soldiers pinching off single bullets at you. This one is kind of lame because the jetpack soldiers always hover around the player's maximum jumping height, so you only need to jump repeatedly to kill them as soon as they appear. The tank fires projectiles which you can safely destroy just by shooting it. With the default peashooter and most weapons really all you do here is hold down SHOOT while jumping to get rid of the zakos. You have to be careful not to get hit by their bullets, but their aim is terrible and they will only aim in front of your bike instead of behind you or something. If the jetpack soldiers moved around you to shoot you from multiple angles instead of just in front of you at jumping height, and if the tank fired (indestructible) projectiles which required more precise jump timing so you can't carelessly mash jump to be able to hit the soldiers, then we might have had something more engaging here.

After that you surgically dissect the enemy battleship's belly as you ride under it. This battleship is seriously long if you go look it up on the wiki. Alongside the belly there's several defense emplacements installed, such as electrical lasers which fire straight down for a second at fixed intervals and require you to move under them when they aren't firing, some destructable turrets, a weird tentacle arm thing which looks unpredictable but all you really need to do here is drive under it when it's retracted just like with the electrical lasers, and then the game briefly locks the scrolling as a bunch of mooks drop out of the ship's belly en masse in an attempt to collide with you (direct contact with alien bodies: Bill Rizer's biggest weakness), so you have to kill the black guy hanging on the pole before you can proceed. This is fairly trivial with the Flamethrower which gets dropped 15 seconds before this part, as the constant unlimited stream of fire which sways when aimed diagonally acts as a perfect shield against the zakos. This part could have been made less trivial if they didn't give you the Flamethrower beforehand, as it stands I'm mostly spraying my fire in every direction until I can proceed. The tentacle arms and electrical lasers are purely static--on repeat playthroughs they aren't that interesting when you don't have to adapt to anything.

All that remains on the belly is a bunch of electrical lasers which fire a bit faster (really scary) and a dick-ass cannon which is bound to score a cheap hit on every first-time player. It fires a shell diagonally downwards which leaves damaging explosions along the road, but you have to avoid this shell by baiting it to fire at you by standing under its line of fire and then quickly backing up forwards again. Which you have no way of knowing because this isn't telegraphed in any way and is never required of you in the preceding stages. I'm guessing that the idea here was that you have to destroy this cannon before it can fire at all so you can pass under peacefully, but when most electrical lasers take an unrealistic amount of damage before they can be destroyed, it's hard to imagine that this cannon would also be destroyable or have less HP (which it does). Even so, it's easier to bait out the cannon shell and then safely destroy the cannon, since the cannon can only fire one shot anyways. It's a shame that baiting attacks is only really used here to a very small extent too.

What follows is a brief mini-boss fight against a two-legged 'tank' (big orb). It walks around, shoots one destructible missile at you, and jumps. Not really a hard one since all you need to do is shoot diagonally right upwards or shoot it from beneath when it jumps. But after that the fun really begins.

You ditch your hoverbike and instead decide to hang on a missile hanging from the helicopter piloted by the legendary unnamed Contra pilot with nothing but your gun in one hand and inhumane grip strength in the other (cool). Then while ascending you have to fight a jetpack cyborg ninja while hanging from a helicopter missile (COOLER), after which the helicopter launches the missile with you on it towards the enemy battleship as you have to constantly jump between missiles in order to disable the shield on the battleship's core (COOLEST). Now this is attacking aggressively. This is undoubtedly the most badass setpiece in video game history, period. If not, it's certainly a top 10 contender. "Tearing apart a battleship while hanging on from missiles you have to constantly jump between 2000 feet above the ground" is such a cool fucking concept that it's impossible not to get swept away by it. And it's not purely 'cinematic' either laden with QTEs, it's all pure challenging gameplay too. It might very well be the best Contra III has to offer.

For starters, you can only hang onto a missile for about 1-6 seconds before it crashes into the shield of the battleship and explodes into nothing, leaving you falling to the ground or hanging onto another missile if there happened to be another one below you. There's two targets you have to destroy, one near the top of the screen and another near the bottom. These are rather small in size, and the constant linear movement of the missiles make it impossible to maintain a steady diagonal shot. These targets also double as turrets, and will regularly shoot a burst of bullets shot diagonally upwards or downwards at fixed intervals, often hitting you when you are hanging around the center of the screen. On top of that you will have destructible mines being randomly spawned en masse from the shield, making you destroy or avoid those as well. Shit's nuts. You're constantly jumping from missile to missile not just to ensure your own safety, but to get a good shot at the targets. Because the missiles are always moving and getting destroyed as new ones come in, the playing field gets changed up constantly and you have to keep adapting under all the gun fire, as the turret fire and mines constantly impede your ability to freely traverse between missiles. There's always multiple things to keep track of and your safety is constantly being threatened even if you kill everything before it gets to you. It's one huge test of your reflexive and anticipative abilities. It's not just miles ahead of the borefest that led up to this point, but even in general this part is really good. I'm sure that the Dragon boss in Cuphead was inspired by this fight. It really makes you wonder how the same minds that conjured up this made everything in Stage 4 leading up to this point a huge bore.

It doesn't quite end there yet either. After destroying both targets, the shield is disabled and the core is wide open. At this point the battleship switches gears and instead of shooting you it decides to swat the missiles out of the sky directly with homing lasers. You can't get killed by them, but you can get killed by gravity if the missile you're hanging onto ends up intercepted, so you're jumping even more frantically between missiles now. While it's safer to hang onto the topmost missile, you more often than not need to hang onto the middle two missiles in order to get a proper shot at the battleship core. The missile spawning order and what missile gets intercepted next is to my knowledge largely RNG here (I mean, it sure feels that way) as this part has to work with the mission positions carried over from the first phase which could be anything depending on how long it took for you to end the first phase. Even though this phase is less dangerous because you aren't getting constantly shot at from all sides, having the ground constantly swept from beneath your feet (from your hands) at an even higher frequency sure makes it more tense than the first phase, especially after surviving the hell that was the first phase.

Hard Mode neatly touches up this fight by increasing the speed of the missiles so you can spend less time hanging onto them, and have to jump more often, and the missile salvos are more bunched up so the distance you have to jump from one missile salvo to the next one is much greater and harder to pull off. The funny part is that the order and timing in which missiles spawn is entirely deterministic (to my knowledge), so RNG isn't an excuse for why your scrub-ass ended up crashing face-first into the dirt. Only the mines are really RNG, but those shouldn't be a major problem if you shoot them away out of your sight every now and then. Although this fight is largely deterministic, the nature of the elements involved make it incredibly difficult to exactly reenact the same inputs for each playthrough, as the player ends up often having to adapt. The platforms are very dynamic and your free space is constantly being contested, it's hard to get anything consistent going on here. The underlying strategy can be the same, but consistency of execution is another thing. This fight shows that pure RNG isn't completely necessary to make an engaging dynamic fight, at all. I just wish that save for the initial hoverbike zako rush and the missile assault that everything else in Stage 4 wasn't so static by comparison.

Then we get Stage 5, which is the second and last top-down shooter stage. Set in a desert, with some weird-ass ZUNTATA-esque music playing in the background. This stage likes to employ bottomless pits and has thus removed most walls and placed streams of sand everywhere which slightly push you in a certain direction, just to get you to fall off more. In practice the push force of sandstreams is rather minor and the ground you can wlak on isn't that narrow, so you're not that prone to fall off if you're careful enough. You can mitigate most sandstreams easily. Only thing you might have to watch out for are the now-orange snakes from Stage 2 which now randomly split into four separate heads who keep shooting at you, though I found them only to be a problem with a peashooter. This stage is kind of a cakewalk, maybe even moreso than stage 2 since all the bunkers have the same behavior and don't require some fucking around before you know what gets them to open up to your guns. There are sand whirlwinds which constantly rotate your aim and require that you hold down the shoulder button to turn into the opposite direction so you don't keep constantly turning circles. Funnily enough enemies also get whirled around if they stand on a sand whirlwind and can't hit you while that happens. There is one dickish bridge which you should never cross, because it will collapse when you start walking on it and the game may decide to spawn an enemy at the other end of the bridge, preventing you from crossing the bridge without making contact with the enemy or crossing the bridge in time after killing the enemy. Stage 5 isn't too hard, especially considering most bunkers will drop an F or if you're lucky an L which will help you clear out most things with ease, the only real danger is slipping and falling out of carelessness.

The Stage 5 boss is a bit of a strange one. It's an overgrown anthill which regularly excretes homing worms, which always drop a weapon or a bomb (which you can milk endlessly until they drop a L in case you lost one, or maybe milk it even further beyond that). Damage it enough, and the whole arena starts spinning save for the very edges, including your facing direction. Just like the aforementioned whirlwinds you need to turn against the sand, as doing so essentially will lock your aim. But the spinning won't stop until the boss dies, so you have to lock it in the right direction so you can actually hit the boss. Getting the facing direction right is the only really challenging part of this boss. The worms will continue to spawn, but they'll often hover around the inner circle of the arena and are often easily avoided by stepping back a bit. Sometimes the anthill will shoot a line of fire alongside your path which forces you to go prone and reset your aim again, but often this line of fire will just miss you because it was shot off too far away. On Hard Mode this is made more annoying by the fact that you're rotated twice as fast, so you have to double-tap the shoulder button to turn twice as fast as well in order to lock your aim.

The reason why I find this boss so strange because the challenge doesn't come down to crowd control, shooting targets, or even avoiding attacks; the things you normally do in Contra. But instead this one's about locking your aim properly by turning against the whirlwinds at the right time. Which is diving straight into gimmick territory and not what Contra is about, disregarding the fact that Contra isn't known for top-down shooting action in the first place. Turning against the streams isn't even what Stage 5 is about, only one part of it. I can only imagine someone feeling very excited to shove in as much Mode 7 sprite rotation in as possible to make you go woaaaaaaaaaaaah. Despite all the turning, this boss never really spirals into chaos like the Stage 4 boss. This boss is wank.

Then we get Stage 6: the last one. And things start off good, only to get better and better. First off you get runner zakos, but unlike the ones in Stage 1 (has it been that long?) these fuckers are FAST, numerous, and everywhere (and furious). This stage is a huge nod to the final stage of NES Contra where you also penetrated the alien heart, and the first two mid-bosses are ripped right out of that one as well, with the third one being the final boss from Super C which I haven't played yet. Whereas they were the ultimate challenge in the first Contra, now they're only stepping stones for the true horrors awaiting you. The first one (giant xenomorph head) goes down just by standing at the edge of the platform and blasting it in its mouth with a spreadshot or crusher (just like the original, really). Between the first and second mid-boss you have the most grueling part of the stage, where you have quick zakos coming in from all sides and those eye-in-the-wall enemies from NES Contra's final stage as well, and they're also still not fucking around. Now they fire sets of three (destructible) homing missiles at you if you don't take care of them in time. This is one of those few parts in the game where using a smartbomb is actually justified when you lose control. Standing still to stop and take off the enemies one by one is more suicidal than moving forward because the onslaught isn't going to stop any time soon until you make some progress. It's nuts and I love it.

The second mid-boss is the final boss from NES Contra, and about as dangerous. You have to kill the heart, which you can hit by standing right next to it and aiming upward diagonally, whereas shooting while jumping won't let you land a lot of shots at once. Then there's those crawlers coming simultaneously from the ceiling and floor, who may randomly jump upwards or let themselves glide down. Maintaining a steady shot at the heart is hard to do when you've got to mind not colliding with the crawlers coming at your feet and the ones dropping down on you. On Hard Mode the crawler spawn rate is turned up to eleven, which is why I always dispense a smartbomb here so I can pick off three of the eggs which keep spawning the crawlers and make it easier for myself to hit the heart. That's one less smartbomb for the final boss, though.

Starting from this mid-boss we've also entered boss rush mode, and the next guy is the final boss from Super C. What's cool is that at this point the music starts getting dynamic (which I think only a handful of SNES games did) just to imbue that feeling of impending death. He can send down a rain of randomly arranged falling projectiles, which can be tricky, although I wish he didn't spend so much time being invincible. After doing the rain attack he'll either dig underground and then ram you before he does another rain attack, or just directly ram you and then do another rain attack. Which one is random, for the former you just spend more time waiting until you can damage this guy because his digging-and-then-jumping-from-the-ground attack isn't that hard at all once you figure it out, just step off the boss when he digs himself up. It's a minor nitpick for a short mid-boss, but it could have helped maintain the pacing of the stage better.

For the next mid-boss you have to climb a wall (yay!) while you get beleaguered by a metal dragon trying to headbutt you, as the music enters full Predator mode. Essentially it's a repeat of the Stage 3 headbuttbot midboss, but more predictable as it attacks in a more consistent pattern, though it attacks more frequently and its hitbox is smaller. The only off-putting part is the fact that he can also attack with his tail by spinning it around after trying to headbutt you three or four times, which isn't really clearly telegraphed that it's an attack at all, or how it's going to hit you in the first place. This guy isn't too hard, but the precision required to avoid and attack and the tension of reaching this point right before the final boss without game overing can make you more prone to mistakes you normally wouldn't make.

At last we get to the final boss: Emperor Demon Gava. It's a giant head with two supporting tentacle-head things, with the goal being to destroy the main head. The tentacleheads remind me of why I'm iffy about melee attacks for bosses in run 'n guns. With a projectile, what you see is usually what you get. Most of the time it travels in a straight line or homes in on you, and it's usually launched from a distance so you can see and respond to it in time. With melee attacks, bosses usually have some kind of ramming attack where they charge at you in a straight line to kill you through contact damage which is usually telegraphed with the boss winding up, or some kind of sword attack where when the attack is winding up it's usually GAMER instinct to back away as far as possible. The hairy part comes with the kinds of melee attacks which don't adhere to these kind of simple movements and telegraphs.

For example, if a tentaclehead is homing in on you, your natural instinct might be to run away until it stops homing in, as it won't go down fast enough if you shoot it. Which is why when you do run away to the farthest edge of the screen and even lie down on the ground, it leaves you a bit clueless when the tentaclehead manages extend so far all over the screen to where you are and kill you anyways, especially when it's not apparent at all how you're supposed to avoid it. The thing homes in on you, and can stretch diagonally all over the screen. It is far from instinctual to even guess that you can avoid getting the cooties by first jumping in order to get the tentaclehead to extend upwards a bit, and sort of baiting it to overshoot you. That's not what any other attack in the game asks of you, and it certainly wouldn't make a lot of sense to expect the player to jump when something is homing in on them. You certainly won't have a good idea of how far the tentaclehead can stretch itself at first either. This is the kind of attack I found myself subconsciously itching to do a slide and i-frame through it (after playing Contra: Hard Corps intermittently with Contra 3), because this is just that type of a vague attack where using your i-frame move lends you the greatest amount of certainty in avoiding it.

Before I forget, there's two tentacleheads, and when both are alive they can both attack you at once, with equally as trolly attack patterns I had to retry the boss several times with a savestate before I actually got what I was supposed to. You're naturally supposed to destroy them (you don't have to, but it makes it much easier on your remaining lives), but on your first attempts you may not really able to do so in time, or only have the default peashooter to work with. Once you get the attacks this phase of the boss can be a lot of fun because of how unpredictable they are, but the learning process involved is just rude.

The strange bit is that this fight is easier if you destroy only one of the tentacleheads instead of both. If you destroy both, then the boss will constantly spawn a neverending stream of zakos coming at you from left and right on top of constantly spawning homing larvae from its mouth, which creates a level of intense intensity that's much more befitting of a final boss than if you keep one tentaclehead alive where all you have to do is jump regularly to bait the tentaclehead while shooting the big alien's head until it keels over. As opposed to constantly having to crowd control enemies coming from all sides and finding some time and room to damage the head so you can get them to stop spawning. It would have been an idea for this zako insanity rush to be automatically triggered when you deal a certain amount of damage to the alien head.

After destroying the head and a lengthy explosion, its brain falls on the floor, and it challenges you to a game of... roulette? What happens here is that the brain will turn itself invincible and spawn a rotating circle of different orbs around itself. What orb you shoot determines what attack the brain will do next, meaning you can choose between eight attacks, and only during an attack is the brain open to damage. Although the circle of orbs spins really fast and can randomly reverse direction, it's still very much up to player input, so you can select the same attack over and over, so it's not nearly as RNG as it may seem at first. The eight attacks aren't really balanced in terms of difficulty, and some are (much) easier to deal with than others. Which wouldn't have been a problem if all attacks were used in a sequence the player has to go through, but if you can select what attack to use with proper timing, why wouldn't you pick the easier ones?

The white-grayish orb has the brain sit in one corner of the screen and spawn a constant stream of dominoes moving forwards as a sentient domino would, which you have to constantly jump over. Instead you can use a safespot where you lie down in front of the brain which somehow doesn't make the dominoes kill you even though they are visibly colliding with your sprite, but still lets you deal tons of easy damage while the brain doesn't move at all. Or, if we pretend to be honorable and not abuse safespots, the blue-orange orb causes the boss to grow a pair of legs which it uses to shuffle around left and right. But you can stand under the boss as it grows legs, and constantly keep shooting him from beneath while following it's movement, which involves tapping to the left and right a bit and is not all that dangerous.

This is in stark contrast to something like the blue orb attack which causes an absurd amount of blue orbs to spawn from the brain and bounce around the screen which makes it incredibly hard to see what the safespots for avoiding the blue orbs are because you have multiple orbs moving along almost identical trajectories. I have no idea whether this attack is actually RNG, I have the feeling it isn't, though in any case the main difficulty here is figuring out what the hell is going on on-screen. The sine wave snake attack is something that's bound to get everyone on their first try (it sure almost ended my run) because it's way too damn fast and how it moves after colliding with the edges of the screen is way too damn unpredictable. It's one of those things you have to really memorize to get through without taking a scratch because it moves way too fast and too unusual to be able to gauge where the safespots are at a first glance, but because you can usually avoid having to deal with it at all, I didn't feel the need to (which of course came back to bite me in the ass). I'm not a fan of these at all because of how deep they reside in memorization city and are just dickish for first-time players.

There are some fun attacks in there (which you'll probably end up never triggering on your own volition), like the one where a rotating circle of destructible orbs start hovering around you and slowly close in towards you which you have to destroy in time, or one where the brain starts vomiting a stream of spiked blocks, but also weapons and bombs you can go try and pick up amongst the spiked blocks. Even so, you'll go for the easier attacks (why wouldn't you?). This could have been solved by omitting the orbs you shot in the orb circle the next time the orb circle shows up, so you have no other choice than to face the other attacks as opposed to just sticking with the easiest ones, which would at least add a more consistent level of difficulty for the final boss. In my opinion the final boss in a game like Contra should be more than 'don't fuck up the timing on the roulette wheel and deal as much damage in the safespots as you possibly can', and be more about adapting to RNG-infused situations, because that's where Contra really shines. Maybe forcing the player to move and prevent from taking an accurate shot while the orb circle is active through attacking the player or imposing an implicit time limit where if you don't shoot an orb in 5 seconds then you're going to die regardless, then you could at least shake up the execution involved in trying to execute a dominant strategy and prevent things from getting stale across multiple runs.

Whatever the case, the brain explodes, and the unnamed Contra heli pilot is kind enough to drop all the way down in the core of the alien heart to give you a ride out before the whole thing blows to smithereens. But if you are playing on Hard Mode, the brain won't give up, and instead summons an exoskeleton to cover itself while climbing the pit at incredible speeds to finish you off in a last ditch effort while you are still hanging onto the helicopter's missile. What you have to do here is shoot downwards at it and jump when it tries to nudge itself upwards, but then it also starts swinging its arms around. The arm swinging isn't the most well telegraphed attack either. What you're supposed to do is jump from one end of the missile to the other while shooting downwards as the brain swings its arms upwards left and right. Particularly the fact that it's the ends of the missile you have to jump towards isn't made very clear, because sometimes you can avoid an arm swing by moving climbing slightly off-center of on the missile in the opposite direction the arms are coming from, but sometimes the arms will hit you when you are hanging only off-center. The fact that you can't hang off-center isn't made very clear when sometimes it works, and there being no real clear telegraphing in whether the next armswing is one which can or can't hit you off-center. It's tense (especially when it's the very last stretch of the run and you have like two lives remaining), but that learning process again can be cruel and cryptic.

Eventually the brain gets tired of swinging its arms around and decides to focus all its efforts in bumping into you, which gives you the opportunity to put in the last bit of lead and sweat required to finally put the alien brain down for good. It would be silly if you were in a high-speed chase out of a pit for longer than a minute. With the alien threat no more, the helicopter gives you a ride to the city, and a Peaceful Time Will Come. Stage 6 was a wild ride and a great way to end the game, though the final boss itself veered more into questionable territory. Some of its attacks will feel cheap to first-time players, and although they may end up being fun to play around with, there's often other methods which allow you to essentially skip them or render them threatless. In practice this guy can still remain a massive pain in the ass, though only if your roulette skills give out at the last moment like mine. There was definitely room for improvement here.

That's Contra III for you. Although its penchant for different setpieces at every turn led to some rather inconsistent results, what thankfully remains mostly consistent is the non-stop aggression involved. Compared to NES Contra, Contra III on even Normal Mode is a lot more brutal whereas it takes NES Contra several loops to get to that level. Contra III is a lot more demanding in the level of skill involved to get a consistent performance down, I only wish that the challenge was spread out more evenly rather than fluctuating often between cakewalk and anal annihilation. Those cakewalk moments often leave you wondering what things could've been. Like with being able to climb being utilized rather sparingly. Or the top-down stages making way for something better. Still, it remains one of the finest the run 'n gun genre has to offer, and I greatly enjoyed it. That missile rush segment in stage 4 was a thing of fucking beauty. Goddamn.

 

[Prime Junta]

Talk about LTTP. After all these years I finally went and bought an Ass Creed game, Origins. Derping around in the tutorial oasis. So far it's actually a bit better than I expected -- there's some RPG-lite stuff in there, the gameplay is nice and fluid, and it's very pretty. Stabbed some soldiers in the neck, hunted a few deer, murdered some hyenas, good clean fun. Crafting mechanics seem built for OCD grinding which is worrisome; I hope it's not actually necessary.