Contra: Rogue Corps demo impressions on Switch. I should preface this by saying to me, Contra is one of if not the greatest franchise in all of gaming IMO, and the director of this game Nobuya Nakazato also directed Contra: Shattered Soldier, Contra Hard: Corps, Contra 3, and Rocket Knight Adventures so he’s to me what Kamiya is to a lot of you.
I like the heft and impact of the machine gun and tri rocket launcher, I like the art style, the vibrant neon colors against the metal gray is a Contra staple and it looks pretty decent to me I don’t mind the lackluster textures. I like the deliberate pace of the character I’ve seen people call it sluggish maybe in the full game I’d change my mind, but from this demo it felt right, the fact that you can’t run while aiming supports it as an intentional choice to give some weight to character movement, I like the invincible dash and it’s relatively fast recovery, the generous amount of destructible objects is welcome here. Unfortunately overheating weapons while an interesting idea in a twin stick shooter just doesn’t work here it’s frustrating to be swarmed with no option other than to dash away until you can shoot again and even then the cool down is a couple seconds too long. Enemies splatting on the screen obscuring the view now this is an actual “cheap death” critics can whine about for once, having to switch to rockets to shoot enemies above you is annoying. I had some mild fun with this demo, but having played it twice I can see this game play getting a bit tedious, also that jump is fucking stupid, gone is the tight platforming and intelligent enemy placement instead we get lazy swarms of reckless enemies, speaking of which putting snipers who track your entire movement in a game with such a deliberate pace is not a good match it is frustrating to game the system mechanics rather than to play within them.
When it was first revealed I automatically had lowered expectations this is the Contra we know and love as much as 2019 Konami is the 90’s Konami we loved, but even within that I had hope that Nakazato would mine some fun out of this monstrosity and he did…just not enough with some outright obtuse design choices that constrain the player rather than give them freedom.
Also I have to say it again Blazing Chrome is damn near flawless, I kind of wish it was a bit more difficult, but otherwise this is easily one of the best games I’ve played in a long time already trying to beat it with the unlockable characters on hardcore mode. They even have a boss rush mode YES!
You say that as if there should be some kind of loyalty to characters, or even series.
Function VS function has existed since 90’s.
Every pixel art FG had a shoto wannabe, a black boxer, an acrobatic girl, a big wrestler. Every motion capture FG had a MK ninja and Sonya Blade ripoff and fatalities.
I don’t care if they made a 1/1 Marvel clone with Power Rangers. PR had a SF clone back in the day too. Difference is, it’s playable now.
Anyone else get the new Gunvolt game that just came out, Luminous Avenger iX? It’s super fucking rad. It has this combo system where you use air dashes to ram into enemies to lock on but what makes it really interesting is air dashes have limited uses but hitting an enemy or wall(or ceiling or floor even) while air dashing gives a charge back, so you can combo the stages by constantly running into things. It’s basically complicated flight but it’s really interesting and it’s so fast it actually requires some reactions and planning. It feels fucking amazing pulling off combos in a whole section, blasting from enemy to enemy and ricocheting off walls to recharge dashes.
The digital is only $15 and it’s on PS4, Switch, and PC I think, though I hear the PC port has some issues or something. I highly recommend it regardless
When I said he’s “Vergil” I didn’t mean he’ll play like Vergil. I mean he’s ACTUALLY Vergil. Daniel Southworth was the actor for Eric Meyers in Time Force and the VA of Vergil in the DMC Series.
It’s similar yeah but it definitely feels quite different in practice. The speed and control is a lot higher, and the combo is based on not returning to the ground outside of hitting it as a ricochet. The air dash can be done forward or 30 degrees up or down, and you can control the distance by holding the dash button, and ricocheting resets length and dash counters, so you use the geometry a lot more to keep it going. You think about the stage as a whole a lot more
Honestly playing thru Gunvolt 2 with the red guy (name escapes me right now), made the game too damn easy. Either I got better or dude was straight up broken with that Dash+Lock on Bullet combo lol
