Great co-op Contra game with shopping system, about as hard as Contra 3, easier than Contra 4/Neo Contra.
The game is meant for you to revisit stages many times to master the stage/enemies (to beat the stage easier and faster for bigger end-stage bonuses) and to explore (hidden secrets, gold medals, and 1-ups abound each stage).
The new shopping system in Rising Mode works really well and is well balanced (i.e., none of the power-ups are useless). Definitely gives you a reason to score big points to power-up your character. There's quite a lot of power-up varieties, like: start a stage with a particular weapon, increase the minimum level of a weapon (each weapon has 3 levels of power), mobility (like triple jump), and increasing HP and number of lives.
A few tips to make the game more fun to play and to save you from "Grinding" to power-up your character:
-Play with a friend (2-player coop). Both players should play the same character (strongly suggest Bahamut) because points for both players go to the main Xbox Profile (Player 1). This way, if both players are the same character, you'll have twice as many Rising Points to shop with.
-Finish stages better/faster to score *huge* bonus points (don't just rely on points by killing bad guys):
-Completion bonuses (which you get from killing *every* enemy in a stage) go from 400,000 (Stage 1) to 1,200,000pts (last stage).
-Time Bonuses go from 3,000,000 down to 30,000 (3M, 1M, 400K, 300K, 50K, 30K), so beat stages as fast as you can because this value drops quickly.
-Special Bonuses are 250,000, which I believe you get for beating a stage without continuing.
-To avoid frustration, don't just plow through the game in one sitting: the stages get much harder the further you get. If you find the stages getting too difficult, restart from Stage 1 to explore and level-up. Power-ups make a huge difference. I don't recommend doing the last stage until you buy almost all the power-ups.