Quick Cuts is pretty much my “mea culpa” of not abiding by my review rule of “finish the game”. I think the first in this series definitely allows for this as it is nigh impossible to beat Hard Corps: Uprising while trying to maintain any form of sanity. This game is one of many of a current crop of Xbox Live Arcade games that doesn’t care if you want to play it and punishes you accordingly for wanting to. Any enjoyment you my glean is forcefully taken from you and mocked to your face. For some odd reason, it delights in showing you a letter grade of your foolishness for finishing a level, then lets you bask in your failure as you wait through a painfully long 1999 era load screen. The load screens may be long because of the inordinate amount of real estate you have to progress. And you have to do it all at once. The check points are few and unintelligent in their placement. Typically when you die after a mid level boss, wouldn’t you like to start after you vanquished him, not in the moments before?
Hard Corps: Uprising, according to Konami developers, isn’t a Contra game proper. But they never really explain why most of the Contra tropes are there: Flying Weapon Power Up Pods, Huge Enemies, Brutal Difficulty swings, Run-N-Gun Action, Shooting on Speed Bikes…on and on. Hell, even the start screen plays the Contra start screen theme. What in the hell Konami? This may be because Arc System Works developed it, and not that Konami wants to push this turd as far away from the Contra series as possible. This doesn’t even account for the numerous failed Contra reboots that Konami has produced over the past decade. But I’m “disseminating” Hard Corps: Uprising, not Konami’s woeful Contra success rate.
Hard Corps: Uprising is more or less a prequel to my favorite Contra game: Contra: Hard Corps for the Sega Genesis. If you loved Contra III: The Alien Wars, Hard Corps was a great evolution of all that and more. Adding four distinct playable characters, branching paths through the ‘story’, multiple endings, all wrapped up in the glorious Contra goodness, it would literally be the last great Contra game.
Hard Corps: Uprising comes in a couple of flavors. There’s Arcade Mode, your standard Contra fair, gives you a few lives and sends you on your merry way. This would work in theory if not coupled with the other flavor. Uprising Mode is more of a grinding, leveling sort of experience where you earn points to spend on developing the most badass character. With these points you can add more lives, increase your life bar, unlock new abilities, make your character faster, you get the idea. Initially, the game in Uprising Mode is damn near unplayable. Thankfully, there is a life bar that at least allows you to struggle through the levels with your abysmal pea shooter of a gun. You can get power ups from the flying weapon pods, but to keep them is a practice of pure videogame playing fortitude.
The game insists on kicking you in the face at every turn. There is a fine line between challenge and utter frustration. There’s also a difference between player ability and shoddy, half-baked controls getting in the way of game progress. It is only after hours and hours of “grinding” these enormous chimp designed levels that you can finally at least get even with game, and then you can have a pleasurable experience.
Eventually, if you allow it, the game opens up and finally becomes a “Contra” game. It almost seems like heresy when I type this, but it’s true. Maybe the game broke me on some fundamental level, but about half way through the slog, I started really enjoying Hard Corps: Uprising.
Now, don’t get me twisted, my damaged enjoyment of the game still does not let suffer that the game is poorly designed. I feel like some of the earlier levels were accidentally designed by Sonic Team as they had no business being in a “Contra” style run-n-gun situation. I mean really who thinks that a bloated cavern would fit well with this game play? When has cramped confines of level design ever worked for this type of game?
The voice acting is atrocious. I can’t even understand half of what the player characters are saying, and boss monsters roars could easily be mistaken for yawns. I get the feeling that me and most of the mid-level bosses in this game were simpatico in our game duties.
Not to be too passive aggressive this, but I’d also to call out those supporters of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair for allowing Konami to think that nickel-and-diming the games fans is acceptable. Really Konami, $2 for the other two playable characters? That’s ridiculous and unacceptable when you’re already charging $15 for the game proper.
Hard Corps: Uprising feels like this equation: The game difficulty was set at “x “and then they start you at “a”. It is only after leveling your character to something approaching the “x” that you even appreciate what the game is all about. I don’t think many, if any at all, will actually play the game to that point. It’s a shame really, there’s a lot of good things about Hard Corps: Uprising that are great refinements of old Contra tropes.
This isn’t a testament to it’s “old school” style though. I am indeed too old for some of the games shenanigans. The boss battles in particular play more like battles of attrition that actual tests of player skill. There’s a Wheel Shaped boss towards the end of the game that takes WAY too long to destroy, breaching the point of enjoyment, pass the task of feeling like work. There’s no skill involved, just literal, time eating dismantling. To say nothing of the three part final boss encounter which devolves in to a battle of attrition in the skies where the main thrust of the endgame is trying not to lose all your lives before the boss crushes all the platforms you need to inflict damage upon him, and the side boss of crappy controls not particularly designed for this kind of game play.
I can say that besides Contra: Hard Corps, I haven’t beaten many Contra games. Yes, they are difficult, but they aren’t devoid of enjoyment like Hard Corps: Uprising seems to be. While I can tip my hat to Konami for trying something different and at the very least taking a stab at the download marketplace, they can do better. This especially true coupled with the release of Rush N Attack, they could take a few cues from Capcom and other developers that seem to be getting this grab for nostalgia right. You can scratch that itch with breaking the skin and fucking the fans that will flock to these games regardless of quality.
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