Returning Again for the First (Third? Fifth? Eighth?) Time

The ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. franchise can be broken into three phases. The first is the classic era, from Contra back in 1987 through Contra: Hard Corps in 1994. These games exemplified what fans loved best about the series: hardcore, arcade-style, run-and-gun action that was absolutely uncompromising. It was fast, fun, and very difficult, and the fans ate it up. It was the kind of gameplay, though, that you wouldn’t expect would survive in the move to three dimensions since the graphics were sprite-based and the action was fixed on a two-dimensional plane.

That led to the next era of Contra, from Contra: Legacy of War in 1996 through Neo Contra in 2004. These games explored how to work 3D space into the series. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the game, these titles were not huge successes for the franchise. There’s something tight and simple about Contra gameplay that these titles lacked. They either went too hard into the third-dimensions, barely feeling like Contra, or they flattened out the gameplay so much that they felt like thin copies of what made the series great. It was clear these games didn’t work, and Konami had to restructure the series once more to figure out what was best.

And that led into the third era, which started with Contra 4 in 2007. And no mistake, this was easily the best game in the series since the original run. It was fast, it was tight, and it understood everything that made the series great. Developers WayForward were tasked with revitalizing the franchise and they did it via a back-to-basics approach that shows absolute love for Contra’s hits. In short, they absolutely knocked it out of the park, which is why it was so strange that for the next three games in the series – 2009’s Contra ReBirth, 2011’s Hard Corps: Uprising, and 2019’s Contra: Rogue Corps – Konami moved the series away from WayForward and to other development teams. While those games sometimes had some interesting ideas (well, maybe not Contra: Rogue Corps), none of them really measured up to the bar set by Contra 4.

So it makes sense, then, that after 17 years away, Konami would once again turn to the team that masterminded the last truly exceptional game in the series: WayForward. Given the reins once more, the company put together another reinvention of the classic gameplay, iterating on the games that came before the try and get that core Contra experience, top to bottom. The result was Contra: Operation Galuga, and while it might not be as good as Contra 4, it’s still a pretty solid entry for the series.

The game is functionally a remake of the original Contra, although with a lot of remixing going on. You start off as the two classic heroes of the franchise, Bill Rizer and Lance Bean, who are tasked with heading into the Galuga Archipelago, off the coast of New Zealand, to investigate a mysterious gravity pulse. The Earth Federation had already sent in soldiers from the GX Army before, but they hadn’t been heard from since. And previous to that, the archipelago had been the site of a meteor landing. No one doubts these events are all connected.

Once the two soldiers head into the jungles, though, what they find is the Red Army, operating there, having turned the island into a military base. The Red Army found something strange in that meteor, and they’ve been experimenting, creating powerful bio weapons. It’s up to Bill and Lance, along with allies they find along the way, to infiltrate deep into the Archipelago, find every last member of the Red Army, and defeat them at every turn. It’s the fate of the world hanging in the balance, and only these soldiers can save it.

Contra: Operation Galuga is, functionally, a sequel in gameplay to Hard Corps: Uprising. It makes sense, in a way, since that game was a prequel to everything else that came before it. If you’d played that game before, this new title would feel perfectly of-a-piece, then. You have all the basic mechanics that were standard over in that game, from dashing, jumping, and double-jumping, two upgradable weapons you can swap on the fly, and a perks store you can spend your points at to further upgrade your characters. WayForward clearly looked at Hard Corps: Uprising and said, “yeah, we can do that our way.”

There is a fun twist that was added in that gives a little extra depth to the weapon stocks. While the usual main weapons all show up (in some form for each character) – Machine Gun, Spread Shot, Flame Weapon, Homing Missiles, Crush Bombs, and Laser Beam – each of which can also be upgraded to be more powerful, the weapons can also be burned off to create a temporary, powerful secondary effect as well. For example, Spread Shot can create a burst of bouncing projectiles that move around the screen, while the Machine Gun can create a barrier around the character, protecting them for a short window. Each alternate mode, called Overloads, can be applied in interesting ways, giving more options for the player to use.

The variance in the game comes from the characters that are unlocked in Story Mode. While Bill and Lance are the two main characters, other allies, like light and lithe Ariana, the powerful Stanley Ironside, and the agile Probotector bots, can be unlocked, providing their own skills to the team. Lucia and Stanley can use a grappling hook to navigate stages, Stanley and the Probotectors can Hover, and Ariana has a slide that lets her get through tighter areas. Each hero will suit players in different ways, and when you also take into account that some of them have alternate firing modes for the main weapons, it provides a lot of customization for the game.

Graphically the game does feel in line with Hard Corps: Uprising as well. WayForward ditched their lush pixel graphics from Contra 4, which does make me a little sad, but in their place are very well detailed, polygonal action that is almost as good as what they made before. That, paired with a rocking soundtrack remixing and rearranging the classic Contra tunes, gives this game a very solid, classic feel even while all the action has been updated to play like the modern entries in the games.

Like with Hard Corps: Uprising, you can play this game in either Story Mode (with the perks shop) or Arcade Mode (without). Both modes are fun, although Arcade will feel far more like classic Contra. It’s the harder mode of the two, since it lacks the perks shop and all the helpful upgrades you can buy, although it’s like the mode any fan of the old series will focus on. The game does feature a best of both worlds approach, like Hard Corps: Uprising, just wrapped in a very faithful feel for the original series.

If I have any knock against the game it’s that, like Hard Corps: Uprising, this game lacks a lot of alternate play modes that would help prevent it from feeling repetitive. You get the two-dimensional actions, sometimes on the ground and sometimes on bikes, and that’s it. Unlike WayForward’s previous homage to the original Contra, this version lacks any kind of fortress stages. This despite the game being billed as a remake of the original title. There are brief moments where the action turns behind the bikes while the characters are driving, and there’s a boss fight done at a slightly different angle, but these moments are few and far between. Just a little change up here and there could have really helped this game feel fresh and innovative and not one stage after another of the same action again and again.

It is good action, though. WayForward knows what they’re doing and they found a way to blend Hard Corps: Uprising’s action with the more traditional look and feel of the series. I don’t think Contra: Operation Galuga quite as good as Contra 4, which is still the high water mark for the series in my opinion, but this is a pretty close second for the new era of Contra. Twice now the company has come forward to put their spin on Contra and they’ve done a solid job. Let’s just hope that in the future Konami says, “these are the guys,” and gives the keys to WayFoward once more. Of all the developers that have taken a stab at the series, WayForward has done the best at making Contra feel just right.