[EXPRESSO] Contra Returns iOS | Better than Rogue Corps

This isn’t technically new, since it has been available in China for years, but i guess someone at Konami woke from their slumber and figured out they didn’t release it westward yet.

I mean, this is the same company – among OTHER things – that wanted to release 3 Silent Hill games in the same month, cancelled a project involving Junji Ito, Norman Reedus and Guillermo Del Toro, and keeps embarassing itself even with the few things it still peddles as videogames, instead of pachinko and/or slot machines.

Who the hell knows.

And i wanna stress that, because i’m almost surprised by how this is actually decent, fun even, and furious since Konami decide to release that abomination of Rogue Corps and ask full price for it, when the older free-to-play mobile game by chinese developer Timi was miles better.

Sure, it looks cheap, the art direction it’s kept familiar to the Contra bombast even if you can still kinda tell it was handled by a chinese team (as in, it’s solid but kinda generic), but it’s actually proper Contra devoid of bullshit (like overheating mechanic for weapons in a shooter)), and it’s actually playable enough with touch controls, while it supports (and plays better with) gamepad.

There’s the gacha, the power level bullshit and all the upgrading n equipping and shit that comes as standard with the mobile free-to-play model to get you hooked and all the usual crap we fully expect from this business model.

It even leans big into the nostalgia for the olden days, but it actually backs it up on the gameplay department, nothing great in terms of level designs, but considering the trappings of being on mobile and free-to-play, Contra Returns it’s definitely fun enough to waste some time on it.

Didn’t expect that.

[EXPRESSO] Blazing Chrome NSWDDL | Olympus Has Fallen

21XX A.D.

Capitalization of vaguely remembered decades run rampant in the dystopian future where a war against “ze machines” is unfolding. As humanity last stand, the last survivors of a suicide mission, with the main characters designs clearly – “just because we like it” – made to evoke Appleseed’s Dunen and Briareos, you’ll have to attack the enemy HQ in a desperate, last bout of run n gun action.

From the developers of Oniken and Odallus comes a surprisingly good retro 2D run n gun, one that not only evokes the 16 bits days of yore via the usual (but also quite crisp) retro aesthetic, but also because it’s basically Contra III (the weapons will make it even more obvious), with an evasive roll manouver and a Metal Slug-style close quarters knife attack added for good measure. But still, a very good recreation of Contra with enough in it to not just make it a “clone”, made by people that know what to keep from the classics, and where concede to modernity in order to avoid fidelity over quality.

It’s a 6 missions/level affair, but they’re well designed, quite packed and keep the tradition of changing things up with motorcycle sequences, mechsuits, faux-3D shooting sequences, etc. It’s the kind of game that is by design not particularly long, but it’s also very challenging, hard but never soulcrushing difficult, you always feel you can win if you try again, learn and improve. It also gets the arcade type of replayability perfectly, and you’re given various difficuly settings that add or remove “comodities” suck as saving or extra lives. Add in extra playable characters, boss rush mode, and even options for speedrun, and i really can’t recommend this enough.

Shoutout to my buddy Chaosknight69 on Backloggery for recommending this one.

Loved it!