Contra Force Review (Nintendo, 1992)

The Contra series is legendary on the NES. No gamer who played during the 8-bit era doesn’t at least know what these games are. Among them we have the original, and a worthwhile sequel in Super C. Unbeknownst to most fans there was actually a third installment released on the NES. This one was called Contra Force. It wasn’t originally intended to be a Contra game at all. Konami was developing this as a title called Arc Hound in Japan, but last minute changed the name no doubt to increase sales. While it has some vague similarities to the franchise Contra Force is obviously quite different. It’s often considered the black sheep of the series. Today we’re going to take a look at this forgotten spin-off. Is Contra Force worth playing? Let’s find out.

Unlike most Contra titles Force doesn’t feature aliens of any kind. That’s your first clue that this wasn’t originally intended to belong to the franchise. Here you play as a group of ex military members who have formed their own task force called the C-Force designed to protect Neocity from terrorism. A new group called D.N.M.E. (whatever happened to clever acronyms?) has risen up and threatened the city’s well-being. It’s up to the four member squad to take them out. Yeah it’s your basic 80s movie plot, and the aliens theme is sorely missed. At least the intro sequence is kind of fun in a cheesy over-the-top way.

Contra Force does play relatively similarly to the Contra games of old. This is a side scrolling action game with light platforming elements. Your basic goal is to reach the end of each stage at which point you do battle with a boss character. You defeat enemies by shooting them with a variety of different weapons. Look out though because they shoot back. Generally foes can only take one hit before they’re defeated, but the same goes for you. What’s interesting is the fact that you can choose from one of four characters to play as. Each of them has a different basic weapon as well as different upgrades. Right from the start of the game you can choose to play as any of them, and your playable character can even be changed mid-game by accessing the start menu.

One thing that Force does have in common with the other Contra games is that it has both side scrolling and overhead stages. Of the five levels included in this game two are top down while the rest are more traditional run and gun. Unfortunately neither of these are particularly fun in my opinion. The side scrolling stages have too much emphasis on the platforming mechanics. There are several tricky areas with small and/or moving sections of floor that just aren’t fun to navigate while dodging enemy fire. The overhead areas are kind of a mess as well with poor level designs and boring hazards. Other times there’s oddly empty areas, or mind numbing vehicles that move automatically at a snail’s pace. Contra Force just feels really messy, and not in a fun way.

Each character handles the exact same, and they don’t have any special skills to set them apart from one another. It’s only the weapons, but these are a pretty big deal. What’s interesting is the fact that the game uses a Gradius style power-up system. You have a gauge on the screen composed of icons and as this fills up you can activate and acquire the weapon highlighted by pressing the select button. Weapons differ from character to character, but most of them are fairly similar. You have handguns, rifles, machine guns and bazookas. Things get more interesting with homing missiles, flamethrowers, and mines. Despite not loving Contra Force I did like the weapons here. Unfortunately your current weapon, and even the power-ups you’ve collected are lost each time you lose a life.

There’s also a buddy system that you can use here. The second player can take control of another character for a short period of time, and this feature is accessed from the start menu. What’s cool is that if you don’t have another human player that wants to join in you can still use this feature but with a CPU controlled ally. There are two options for this; you can have them cover your front or back. I didn’t notice a big difference with this because they seem to target enemies in all directions regardless of which you chose. Unfortunately having an ally on-screen causes the framerate to plummet. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to use the feature because the action slows down to a slideshow.

What’s also neat about the character system, and switching between them, is that they each have their own pool of lives. They all start with just two spare lives. If you run this down you can change to another character until they too get low. If any one character runs out of lives it’s a game over. Thankfully Contra Force does offer unlimited continues. Trust me when I say that you’re going to need them because the game itself is really unfair in difficulty. The fact that you die in one hit is crazy especially considering how many enemies are on-screen at once. There are also hard to see hazards in some stages that cause serious issues.

Contra Force also has some annoying technical problems. Sometimes the screen refuses to scroll when you’re too close to the edge. I thought the game had soft-locked at several points because of this. You have to backtrack slightly and then try moving forward again in order for the screen to properly scroll. Elevators also don’t return upon rising. This means that if you miss them they won’t automatically come back down. You have to scroll the screen away from them and return in order to make them respawn. There are also issues with destructible elements in the environment. Giant crates are found in several of the stages, and sometimes the game requires you to use them to reach higher areas. Unfortunately if you blow one up the way forward is blocked. You have to once again walk off the screen to make them respawn. This is just bad design.

The game is also full of strange design flaws and glitches. You’ll notice these right from the start. Selecting your character in the beginning is crazy because the directional inputs seem to highlight them at random. There is so much sprite flickering when the action gets hectic that it can be difficult to even tell where you are or what’s happening. This would be more understandable were Contra Force not such an unforgiving game. Even if all of the technical issues were solved there would still be major problems with how unfair Contra Force is. As it stands this one isn’t really fun to play because of how frustrating and messy the whole experience is. It’s especially disappointing considering how well designed the mainline Contra titles are.

Contra Force isn’t a particularly good looking NES game. It suffers from the all so common issue of having characters with too thick of black outlines. It makes the rest of the game look muddy. Furthermore the enemies are incredibly generic in appearance. At least the developers gave each playable character a different color because otherwise it would be nearly impossible to tell them apart from one another. Then there’s all of the technical issues. The framerate and flickering, as I’ve already mentioned, are a disaster in Contra Force. It feels like a first generation NES title. Unfortunately the music doesn’t make up for this. It doesn’t sound much like Contra at all. It’s all really forgettable to boot. It’s a shame because this franchise is well known for having legendary soundtracks.