Lots of video game franchises have histories of developer shifts, switching publishers, bad games in the series, etc. etc., but none of them really seem to also be a lesson in game design the way the history of the Contra series does. Contras one and two were, even for their time, brutally difficult, but still managed to attract a fan base. Why? Because they were zetta awesome. Contra three is an undisputed classic because it was even more zetta amazing, but after that, the series started to decline when the developers left to form Treasure and program Seven Force. With the exception of Shattered Soldier, none of the games were much fun, relying on innovative gameplay like 3rd person elements and health bars rather than good design.
Just recently, I played the Contra game that marked the start of the series' decline, Contra: Hard Corps. Just from reading the title I know something was wrong because all Contra games are hardcore. You don't need to advertise it in the factoring title! But after starting to play, I realized the developers weren't complete idiots. Sure, they took away the difficulty select and the option to give yourself more than three lives, but they gave you different characters that had different upgrades, a gameplay change I'd actually call progress rather than a marketing gimmick.
Now then, Hard Corps saw that Contra three had taken advantage of the new technology brought along by the SNES to make more bosses, some of which were zetta epic. The logical step now that you've transferred to the Genesis would be to go all the way and make the game 80% bosses, right? That may have been a good idea, but what wasn't a good idea was not doing a good job making these bosses. Contra three had the kind of bosses that shoot lasers, whereas too many of the bosses in Hard Corps were the kind of bosses that you needed to have faced before to have a chance to beat, which isn't good when you only have three lives, plus maybe two bonus lives, and lose your power-up whenever you die. For example, one of the bosses spawns on the ground on the right side of the screen, but waits until you've had enough time to walk over to the right side of the screen before spawning. It's a timer, so if you've faced the boss before and lost a life because you were so arrogant as to walk towards the end of the level (you factoring hectopascal!), you'll know what to do. But on your first playthrough, you suffer a cheap death.
Other bosses are an exercise in standing still and pressing the shoot button, while some are just plain easy. Don't believe me? Go onto youtube and watch anyone's playthrough of the first level. In that level, there's a boss that cannot attack the spot right under his hitzone until after you've had enough time to kill him with the starter weapon. It really just wastes my time when I want to be having fun.
On the other hand, this game was quite graphically impressive for its time. The opening was amazing, and a lot of the bosses have zetta cool animations. The soundtrack was also amazing, especially for the genesis. Anyone who's into synthetic video game music should check it out. I will, however not lie; the synthetic "voice acting" really did annoy me. It worked for Brownie since, you know, he's a robot, but was otherwise a fail.
The storyline and writing, on the other hand, I must attack with extreme prejudice. The villain's hiding under a garbage dump! What the factor? Iz are evil cause I talk like a villain! I trying to overthrow government that could be stabbing puppies to entertain selves! I evil! Now, not many video games had good storylines at this time, but considering how they actually have periods where the game stops for dialogue, it annoys me that they can't at least try to make it interesting.
What I guess really went wrong with Hard Corps is that they were trying to be hard for the sake of hard. The first three Contras and Contra 4 were hard for the sake of being fun. Making games hard isn't a good idea if you're just doing it because you can. You need to pair it design that isn't factored, or your game is going to suck.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment