Review: Contra Rebirth

Sep 11, 2009

Contra Rebirth arrived on the Wii this week to do two things: run, and shoot. Sometimes there is jumping.

For those of you who play Contra games for the engrossing story, there’s probably not a lot for you here. In fact, you might even come away insulted. On the surface there’s not a lot going on – series hero Bill Rizer, joined by Neo Contra character Genbei Yagyu, is called upon once again to fire thousands of bullets into hordes of alien creatures led by the alien Colonel Salamander. It gets pretty silly as you play through, but I don’t want to give away the surprise twists.

But for everyone else, people come to Contra for the running and the shooting. And one can rest assured that there is a lot of each, along with fanservice for long time Contra fans, and oldschool 16-bit style graphics and arranged music from Contra games of old.

Gamers looking for the classic formula need look no further. There’s all the running and shooting that you want here, with some clever throwback level design and elements that get some older gamers nostalgic.

Also – this game is hard. It’s not unforgivingly hard, like say, Mega Man 9, but it is certainly a challenge. Fortunately, Konami throws today’s gamers a bone in the form of limitless continues. And they WILL get used.

Downsides to this game, it’s short. Almost pathetically short. There are five levels to the whole thing – and while there are unlockable characters, and the game is fun enough to play through a couple of times, you can do that in a sitting and not think about it. Most $10 releases in recent memory have had a bit more bang for the buck.

The default controls are also a little iffy. The game supports any Wii controller you can throw at it, from a solo Wiimote to the Classic Controller to a Wavebird, but the default configurations will have you scrambling to change them.

Ultimately, if you’re a Contra fan however, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than this. This is a game that would have felt at home on any console during the 1990s, and is a welcome addition to the game systems of this generation as well.