Review by: the Dark Falcon

I love Contra, man, that's great! Oliver North got on that stand and said, "I stand by the fifth amendment!" and whoo! Um, whoops, heh, that's Iran/Contra. Man, it's like I'm a CNN correspondent on a drug high. No, when you say Contra, I'll talk about Konami's legendary action series, starting with the great NES titles that really made my day after a stressful day at school. Then I'll go on about the SNES Alien Wars game and say just how much ass it savagely kicked. To top it all off, I'll talk about the sweating out I had with the Hard Corps Genesis game, and gloat when I say, "I beat it...no, I destroyed it!".

Now Contra enters the 32-bit age, but there's something different here...something not right. It turns out Konami only published the game, and didn't develop it internally. Apolloosa, a company I rarely heard of before, had made the game from scratch for 32-bit. I shrugged it off, figuring, hey, it still has the Konami badge on it, what can possibly go wrong? Well, almost everything, as Contra: Legacy of War really doesn't live up to the name.

You choose from four different styles of combatants (a man, a woman, and two robotic reject freaks) and take on the impossible task of battling an army with small weapons. Hey, sure, the government's out of spending cash, let's send in some lone soldiers and sip some tea while we wait for their return, shall we? In earlier Contra games, this was a blast, but not this one.

I found a number of errors with this new Contra title. First up, we have the graphics. Instead of doing a solid 2-D action game (which would've done two things- suited the 2-D-specializing Saturn to a tee and kept the Contra series going the way it was), they did an awkwardly designed 3D one, and placement is off whack due to this. You'll die several times just because of where you are on-screen, and, folks, this really shouldn't happen. And, knowing Konami, that goes double. The players also animate slowly, leaving only the bosses to look kinda cool in that metallic gone to hell sorta way. The 3D glasses are supposedly a nice touch, but they just make things look even more confusing. It's like watching a rerun of Howard the Duck and then putting on some cheapo X-ray specs...exactly like that, to be precise.

Music's nothing special, and, for Contra, that really chaps my cardboard (um, yeah...). Normally, Contra games are known for their epic soundtracks, which are not only groovy but make the on-screen action seem more important, and much more exciting. Here, it moves along at the pace of a dead vacuum salesman, only there to really supply some sort of background. Same for the sound FX, which are typical gunfare noises that also feature little variety. I had to look at the box again to see if this truly was Konami's work...yep, it is.

Then the control, well, goes out the window, thanks mostly to the placement issue I stated above. There's jumping and shooting, like in the first game, and there is a damn good challenge that puts up a good fight, so you won't walk all over the game in a matter of hours. But, judging by the faults I looked over, where's the fun in losing your life over and over again by accident? And even if you do manage to clear that flaw, you still have enemy gunfire to avoid. Almost a no-win situation, if you ask me.

I am absolutely enraged that Konami couldn't have done some work and given us a Contra that we gamers deserve. No, they hired some outside studio and said, "Here, make something with soldiers shooting things and make it 3D". That really flattens my monster truck tire (I keep getting weird with these references, huh?). I give Contra: Legacy of War a 3 out of 10 and hope, no, make that pray that Castlevania for Saturn is done in-studio by Konami. I mean, can anyone imagine what would happen if Rage Software (the producers of the mega-lame Revolution X) got their hands on Castlevania? That'd be like handing the nuke button to Mayor McCheese...who knows what kind of apocalypse would happen? AGH!