OUCH, PAIN, HURT, WHAT'S THE 30 LIVES CODE AGAIN
With the Xbox LIVE Arcade verson of Contra, very little has changed from the original games. The storyline is realtivily intact, taking place on an island over run by members of the mysterious Red Falcon Terrorist Group. In order to counter the Red Falcon threat, the US Government sends in two commandos to investigate. During the course of their mission the two commandos discover, that Red Falcon is under the control of Aliens bent on taking control of the planet.
The game still retains the features that made the Contra Series famous, including fast game play, increadible difficulty, and lots and lots of weapons. The graphics are a great imporvment over the orignal game, and the music has been improved greatly as well. The game's controls are fairly well done, and the 360's more comfortable controller makes rapidly pressing the fire button a lot more easier then the NES or Arcade cabinat. However, the 360's controller set up can result in button mix-ups in the heat of a game, especally if the player is unused to the controler. The addition of the Xbox LIVE Achievment System, also makes trying to beat the game with out the famous Contra Code all the more tempting.
However the game's major drawback, especally for those who have never played Contra before, is it's difficulty. Like the original arcade and NES versons, this verson of Contra is increadibly hard to beat, with enemies litteraly coming out of the wood work, the hard difficulty, and inablitiy to alter the difficulty setting makes the game all the more challenging. The game's worst draw back though, is the fact that this isn't the NES verson, it's the Arcade Verson.
Despite it's difficulty and the fact that this is the Arcade verson of Contra instead of the NES verson, it's still a very good port, and well deserving of the Contra name, and will still appeal to fans of the series.