E3 2019: Hands-on with Contra: Rogue Corps

Before E3 even began, Konami had reached out to say they had something new coming and wanted to know if I would check it out, I had no idea what it was, not a single scrap of detail was known, but I was intrigued and colour me surprised when they announced an all-new Contra title.

When I walked into the Konami booth, I was a little shocked to find replica arcade cabinets for the game, but given its history, perhaps it is not all surprising. Before I was allowed to play through, a small presentation was taking place, to provide some background on the title and the first piece of news from it, is that Contra Rogue Ops takes place after Contra 3 Alien Wars and that the director of that title, is now producing this all-new one.

Rogue Ops is set in the Damned City and features quite the cast of special characters, like Ms Harikiri who has an alien living in her stomach, or Hungry Beast, who looks like a panda but in actuality is a cybernetic, augmented creature. They then touched upon some of the customisations of the weapons, the platforming and jumping and most importantly, the shooting of everything on the screen, but with that over, it was time to play.

The game did present cutscenes, but as I had a short timeframe, I skipped past the bulk of them, however, I should note that the cutscenes are actually animated comic book stills, not from an actual comic book, but that style is reminiscent of what you would find in a comic book. With the story out of the way, it was time to play and there was not waiting around, I was dropped in and started shooting right away.

The thing you will notice from any footage you might have seen is that the game is a twin-stick shooter, now you can move around while firing, but that slows you down, what it does allow for though, is an absolute chaotic amount of enemies on screen at any given time and its fun.

As you run around and shoot enemies, you will pick up some items like rockets or grenades, but the fun comes in from when you roll through enemies, which is your dodge move, because if you do it, you can stagger them and when staggered you can let them have it with a massive punch. The stages that I played upon had similar themes, but they were very different in their layout, one was a lot more left to right, whilst the other was all over the place. There were some corridors, that took some shooting to unlock, which I suspect act as loading screens, but for the most part, the levels are open and ripe to explore.

Exploration is something you can do, as there are crates and such ready to be busted open, which usually contain health or such, but the path is pretty linear, at least in the early missions. While exploring is fun, the most fun you can have is from blowing up countless enemies who are foolish enough to walk in front of your gun. The gun has two modes, the first is your basic attack, the second can be activated when your specials bar is full, this allows you to deal out more damage and without the worry about overheating it. Should your gun overheat, you can swap to your secondary, in the first mission I had a pistol, in the second I had a grenade launcher, both provided enough support to help me get through the stages.

Between stages though, you return to base camp and there you can upgrade your weapons, characters and more, which will result in no two playthroughs, for no two players, being the same. Weapon upgrades consist of things like faster cool down times, more damage and accuracy and whatnot. As it was only a demo of the game, I did not spend a lot of time in these menus, as I wanted to get back into the shooting, but I can see there is quite a lot to learn in them, so I will have to wait for the release to delve into it more.

Contra Rogue Ops is going to be a divisive game, fans of the series will no doubt be upset at the new style, whereas newcomers may not be fussed. There is a lot of options with weapons and moves, with pickups in the stages being plentiful and satisfying, but perhaps the best news is that the game is not taking itself serious at all and that is the best thing I think it can do, because when your game has a cyborg panda, growling at a gentlemen insect, propriety has well and truly gone out the window.