Uprising Mode on the other hand is relatively more forgiving. Players are allowed to resume play from any stage they have previously cleared, and you can buy a variety of upgrades that provide extra health, bonus lives, more firepower, and so on. The game is still hard even with all these perks, but nonetheless far more reasonable. Playing co-op with a friend either locally or over Xbox Live might help as well. A trip to the Options Menu may also be in order, since you’ll have several actions to keep track of (including the ability to ’strafe fire’ and ’stationary aim’ as in some previous Contra games), and it can get a bit daunting until you’re familiar with all of it.
While Hard Corps: Uprising does a good job of capturing the Contra feel, Uprising does have a few issues. Its incredible difficulty is arguably not one of them; the game’s title outright tells you this is a hard game. More significant would be the inclusion of a few segments where it’s virtually impossible to clear them on your first run through, forcing a few repeat sessions where you know about the cheap shots the game will take. Enemies being tossed into the middle of your jump path so you fall into a pit, floor traps with only very subtle warnings, and more are used fairly often and are not particularly fun. The loading times for each stage are also quite long, easily upward of twenty seconds per level (and they are mostly of reasonable length, not excessively long). There is also something to be said for its file size; a nearly one gigabyte download is a bit much for a 2D platformer with about eight stages, and I cannot help but imagine a good chunk of that is in the game’s anime intro sequence.
Yet in the end one has to ask: is it Contra? Despite the very stark change in visual style, yes. Yes, it is generally true to the classic 2D shooter series. Hard Corps: Uprising is difficult by design but has good controls, and while it has the occasional snag it is very fun overall. 1200 Microsoft Points/$15 USD is reasonable for what you get, and fans of the series (or challenging 2D action games in general) should pick this up. It is very difficult, but the game is at least being honest with you up front by including ’Hard’ in its title and making more progress into its stages is very satisfying.
Post-Release Edit: This article was written from a pre-release copy, and the author was thus unaware of the ’day 1 DLC’ for it until after the review was already published.. The 8.0 rating in this review still applies and I would gladly recommend it to Contra fans, but it’s nonetheless troubling that two additional characters (with meaningful differences in play from the default characters) were posted on release day. Halving the game’s roster on purpose to make them launch-date paid DLC certainly doesn’t look very good, and I hope Konami will reconsider such behavior in future games.
