Contra: Operation Galuga - Arcade Hard - No Death Clear (Browny / No Perks)

WayForward and Konami have finally released a new Contra game! If you don't count Rogue Corps (and who does?), it's been 13 years since the last proper Contra game came out - Arc System Works' incredible Hard Corps: Uprising. That's a hard act to follow, but WayForward clearly took a lot of notes from HCU and made a very respectable entry in the series. I do have some complaints of course, but it's a pretty great game all around and well worth the $30-$40 you can get it for.

First up, the positives. I like the large cast of characters - most of them are a bit different from each other, between their abilities, weapons, and HP. Some are clearly better than the others, but it all adds to the replayability. That's one of my favorite things about the Hard Corps games (and something I really wish Shattered Soldier had), so I'm glad they carried that over. The new Overload mechanic is pretty cool too. It lets you sacrifice one rank of your weapon for a super attack. They vary in usefulness, but they're fun to play around with and take advantage of whenever you can. The level design, enemy variety and bosses are also very good for the most part. They mix up the platforming, enemy density and placement, and stage hazards really well (the reflection stuff in stage 6 is especially cool), and you can zip through most of it once you've practiced enough. There's also plenty of difficulty options (perhaps too many of them), between Normal, Hard, Extreme, and Ultra Extreme. They've also included a number of "perks" you can equip to make the game easier as well, so the difficulty is highly customizable.

All that said, of course there are also a few things that I don't like about this game:
The autoscroll stages are too long, and once you're good at the game, they're boring to play through over and over. I get the need to have an autoscroll section, but just one of these stages would have been more than enough.
(Edit: After playing more today, I think the parry the first boss on stage 8 does is predictable. He goes for it when his meter is ~50% full, so until then you can attack without worrying about it. I'll take back my complaints about him now lol.)
The last boss is a bit finnicky as well; the danmaku can be awkward to dodge, and his worms sometimes bump into me when I'm all the way on the edge of his thumb. I don't know where else you can safely stay to avoid them, but maybe there's a better strategy. This game is most similar to Hard Corps Uprising, but I think the balancing isn't quite as good unfortunately.
The soundtrack is also just bad. I don't know why they decided Contra needed an orchestral score, but that not a good idea at all. Thankfully you can unlock a "Retro Remix" OST, which is better, but a few section seem to not have any music at all, AND the sound mixing is bad so it just kinda fades into the background. Nothing ever stands out. For a series with a lot of great soundtracks, that's especially disappointing.
I'd also like to see better practice options. You can only select individual stages in story mode, which seems a little different from Arcade. But story only goes up to Hard difficulty, so there's no way to practice anything in Extreme or Ultra Extreme besides just playing full runs from the start every time. Why? Plus you can't use the full cast of characters in story mode either.
I think those are all the things that bug me right now, after playing for the last 4 days or so? Whenever it came out. Like I said though, I think it's a great game overall and it's been a lot of fun to play. I'm not sure where I'd rank it in the series just yet, but it's definitely way better than Spidersaurs, at least (WayForward's previous Contra-like).

PS. I'm playing with Browny because he's easily the strongest character in the game. I learned everything with Bill, but I started trying out the other characters after losing a few no death runs in the last stage. Browny is a lot easier, and is honestly kinda braindead in comparison. Just spam his homing lasers forever, maybe switch to the black hole if you want protection from certain things. I'll go back to playing with Bill & Lance now.

0:00 Intro
0:54 Stage 1
3:35 Stage 2
9:14 Stage 3
13:21 Stage 4
18:15 Stage 5
24:41 Stage 6
30:42 Stage 7
34:23 Stage 8

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