Contra Advance The Alien Wars EX

This review's title has less to do with Hitler and more to do with the general struggle of playing this game. Prepare to struggle against controls that feel like molasses on a telephone pole in Alaska. Struggle against the unrelenting difficulty and lack of power bombs. Sounds fun?

Remember how awesome Contra 3 was on the SNES? With tight controls, fun weapons and tons of enemies to kill, it was a good time. Somehow when Konami shoved Contra over to the GBA, they managed to muck up your jumping, eliminated dual weapons, and removed the power bombs so there's no saving you. About the jumping, it feels very floaty and unprecise. Especially in the first level where you have to platfor through the fire section, that's where you'll really feel it. You seem to move slower, while there's more enemies on the screen, and they move pretty darn fast.

For some stupid reason, Konami decided to remove dual weapons, so now you can only carry one. The saving grace of Contra 3 was that you only lose the gun you're carrying, so you could still run around with another gun after you die. Not so here, if you die (you will, that's just the way it works) you get to run around with a miserable excuse for a pea shooter while the game still assumes you have the freaking homing missle launcher. Remember the flamethrower? How it cut through anyand everything in your way? Well, now it does about as much damage as a supersoaker. Literally, you'll have to hose an enemy, up close, for about 3 seconds before it dies. And if you pick it up accidentally, too bad, becuase you don't have another gun to switch to.

Now, this isn't a direct port, they took a bunch of levels from Contra 3, and a few from the Genesis version of Contra, so there are a couple new levels. However, they plain suck. The secon level is a train level, ended by what has to be the most annoying boss in this wreched piece of software. Imagine, if you will, a large, blue robot, that runs around and kicks at you, then does a freaking moonwalk jump to start it all over again. To top it off, the boss is only vunerable for about 2 1/2 seconds per attack phase, so you're going to do tons of hiding. Just the same pattern over, and over again.

For some absurd reason, as if Contra 3 wasn't hard enough, Konami decided to increase the difficulty of this game. Like I said, the controls just don't feel responsive, your jumping is ackward, and you only carry one gun. If you dare to choose easy, you only get to play the first four levels, making the game a four level demo for those not good enough.

Alot of the classic Contra music is there, but the GBA speakers don't do it justice. The music doesn't sound as good as it did on the SNES, abnd the weapon sounds did fare any better. You will hear the "arrgh" of your guy dying a lot though. One issue I found to be annoying as hell is the fact that you'll eventually fight enemies that make the same noise when you kill them, so you're never sure if it's you dying or you're killing a bad guy.

I just can't recommend this game to anyone, not even Contra junkies. Believe, me, I picked up this game in hopes that it would be a portable Contra. Instead, I got a piece of garbage that's a shadow of it's former self. The entire game is unessicarily difficult, and the most common sound effect is the "arrgh" your guy makes. This game gets one and a half stars becuase the first level is fun. That's it.

1.5 star(s) out of 5

Discuss More PSX Games More Shooter Games