Contra Extreme Team
The plot is nothing special though the difference is your actually fighting an evil military empire that has robots at it's side, I'll admit it feels more like a "G.I. Joe" plot but you know I'm fine with this because it's something different for once, where it's not the usual aliens but humans and robots.
The gameplay is the same, which is fine by me if it's not broke don't fix it. The graphics are great, the blend of both 2-D and 3-D but also the use of Japanese Animation I always felt was a beautiful combo but mostly really makes both the enviorment and the characters lively. The sound and music is also great, some of the songs they have are memorable. There is a great varity of enimes but most importantly bosses which are as intimidating as ever, one I remember is that Wheel Robot boss that looks like a lost additional "Transformer", took a heck of a while to beat that sucker. And as usual the game is hard but not hard to beat if you know all the right places and what to do then you can get though the game alright, I can get though some levels without dying once (or at least not as much as before).
Those features are not new but what makes this game stand out is some of the features that were added that are further proof that sometimes when a video game franchise goes for a long time it gets better and better with time. From the fact you can pick characters each with their strength's and weaknesses and a few unique abilities, and also there are a couple of hot females in the team a blond with one eye and a samurai whom kinda looks and reminds me of the character Susuka from "Outlaw Star"; I just thought that was cool and a nice break from things being an all male fest.
There are mini bosses and the levels are longer, let alone the game is pretty long about 8 levels which makes the game both more chalanging and exausting, but that's fine but me the more the merrier, plus don't fret even when you lose all your lives there are a few checkpoints which make the difficulty managable so you don't have to start all the way to the begining which is a relief. There is also a level where it's stealth action, this might put some people off from what their use to and a bit chalanging but I though this made the game more interesting, and 2-D stealth action games have became a bit of a lost practice so there was a nostalgia element in this.
Though the one thing the I really like the most is the RPG element, the points from your kills actually buy certain items in the game like upgrades and a few extra abilities which also help make the difficulty managable but most importantly just put you a step ahead in the game.
The only bad thing for me would be there are no more anime cut scenes, it just from the texts I read in the loading times and that anime cut scene I saw as an intro, it felt like there was potential for a story. This fact I felt was a lost opportunity for the game because this could of been another unique feature for the game, it could of been like with "Ninja Gaiden" (NES saga) where after the actions of any or two characters you would see the story on them, seeing those cut scenes would have made better use of the loading time.
Overall Contra Hard Corps Uprising is a good shot and hopefully for this semi series it won't be the last shot.