Gamers born in the newer generation (1992 and up) or those who were too young at the time to have any kind of an interest in video games, like myself, are pretty much spoiled by today’s standard of games, which includes spectacular 3-Dimensional graphics. For the most part, games are actually considered scantly “easy” by old-schoolers as they may compare the difficulty of newer games to an old favorite called Contra. The game’s extreme difficulty was only for the most hardcorest of hardcore gamers because of its steep learning curve.
p l o t/s t o r y
As humans are now trying to recreate their society, a new threat has emerged, and is attacking the remainders of humanity. As ideas are running thin, the government finally makes one of the toughest choices they've ever made in their lives, when they call forth a hardened criminal, Bill Rizer, to save all of humanity. Now you must go forth to save all of humanity, and as you save the world, you'll learn more and more as to why Blood Falcon is doing this.
The story probably won't be up for much of an award like an Academy Award or something, or even win the Nobel Prize, but with gameplay like this, who NEEDS a long, deep, and boring story.
g a m e p l a y
After a long period of Contra fans crying out for a new Contra on a newer generation console, and also after finally getting tired of gamers being spoiled with easy games, Konami brings back the old classic and releases it on the PS2, with an update to almost every aspect of the game. Myself being born in the later eighties (86’), I never really got into video games until 1996 or so, so there were a lot of great games I had missed, including Contra.
Enough history, now about Shattered Soldier. Since there are a lot of Contra fans who wanted old-school Contra, Konami has given it to them in the form of Shattered Soldier. Contra’s old-school gameplay returns in Shattered Soldier with the side-scrolling, shoot-em’ up, complete carnage and mayhem. First off, there are only seven levels in the game, the last two of which have to be unlocked by beating the first five. Seven levels? I’m sure a lot of you are wondering why the heck only seven, but fear no more, I shall explain. When Konami said they were bringing back Contra old-school, they MEANT old-school, where the difficulty of games were sky high, and Shattered Soldier is no different which makes it incredibly tough to beat.
For each level, you have only two lives and three credits to reach the end of the level and defeat the boss. Some stages are fairly long, and could have 2-3 sub or mini-bosses for you to fight before finally reaching the end. Throughout all the stages, there will be hordes and hordes of enemies coming at you from both sides that you’ll want to eliminate without getting hit. There is no health bar or any kind of number that once depleted you’ll die, you either get hit and die or don’t die by not getting hit. It’s a hit or miss, win or lose situation, no exceptions.
When it comes to ammo restrictions, there are none. This isn’t no Resident Evil where you try to manage your ammo by saving it until you REALLY need it, this is classic shoot at anything that moves and keep from getting hit shoot-em’ up. There are three types of weapons; each one having its own special power-up, for a total of six possible attacks you can use. The first weapon is the usual machine gun, which is what you’ll most likely use the most, and its special attack is a spinning ball that shoots bullets out as it spins; a great way to thwart off enemies attack on foot and in the air. Next is the flamethrower, which is pretty self-explanatory, and its special move is a beam of fire that shoots out like a bullet leaving a gun and not like how the fire goes a certain distance with the plain flamethrower. Now for the last weapon, which is the Grenade Launcher, and it sends out capsules that roll on the ground before exploding, or if they make contact with something before then. The grenade launcher secondary move is a swarm of scattered rockets.
In the game, your goal is to make it from left to right, jumping and shooting like a mad-man out of jail (no pun intended). Before you reach the boss of each stage, you can pretty much use one weapon to gun everything down with jumping at a minimum, however once you reach a boss, you’ll be doing more than jumping. While fighting bosses, there is multiple stuff going on at one time, and so you’ll have to be on the tip of your toes to dodge and attack at the same time without getting hit.
One of the more strategic areas of the game would be switching between your weapons to find which one would be the best to use for different situations. Aside from beating the game, the whole point of playing is to get as good of a ranking as you can on a letter C-S scale, C being the worst and S being perfect.
During actual gameplay, there is a destruction meter called the Hit Rate at the top of the screen, which determines how many enemies you destroyed and how many back drops like towers, trucks, etc. that you destroyed. The whole point is to destroy EVERYTHING in each stage that can be destroyed so you can get a good ranking. Other percentages that factor into your final ranking includes how many times you died, and how many continues (or credits) you used; so if you used any, depending on how many of each, you’ll lose percentage from your total ranking, and you could be ranked lower. There is an individual ranking for each level, but there is also an overall ranking that combines your percentages into one big fat score, so don’t go screw up.
This is where the difficulty in the game comes in, because not only are you trying to finish the level, but also trying to not die and to destroy everything ups the difficulty by about 100 notches.
g r a p h i c s
For those who were a little worried about the graphics turning out bad, there’s nothing to fear. The game is still pure side-scrolling, shoot-em’ up n’ blow em’ up action, however it’s all in 3-D. If you’ve played Super Smash Bros Melee, Shattered Soldier is like SSBM, only about 10-20 times more detailed. First of all, the graphics of the backgrounds are really cool and detailed, and the overall feel of the game is kind of dark. But the darkness really suits the game quite well, and each of the stages has their own unique look and feel (not to mention difficulty).
Every other aspect of the graphics are also top notch, and from the simplest enemies to large and complex bosses, the design is absolutely amazing. I was nothing short of being astounded at how cool the bosses looked, from the just plain coolness of how they were designed, right up to the sheer size that some of them are. I’m sure the graphics in Shattered Soldier was the last thing on Konami’s agenda to think about, because the gameplay alone completely outweighs how good the graphics are (even though they’re still good).
s o u n d
Right when I first booted up the game, I knew I was going to love the soundtrack because I was first met with a hard rock theme with beating drums that sounded like some kind of ancient ritual was going on. Then I got into the actual game, and I was absolutely amazed at the background themes. Shattered Soldier is definitely a game you can play to let off some steam (well, it depends actually...).
The music isn’t the only thing that’ll keep you entertained, because there are some awesome sound effects too. There are a ton of explosions and other sounds of mayhem as you cause utter destruction throughout each stage. Whether it be the constant “burning” sound of the flamethrower as you’re using it, to the constant rattle of your machine gun as you shoot wildly. No disappoints here, Shattered Soldier has an EXCELLENT soundtrack.
o v e r a l l
Contra: Shattered Soldier does a lot of things right, but sadly it is mainly for the purest of pure hardcore gamers. Shattered Soldier’s steep learning curve and INCREDIBLY difficult gameplay, will not please a mainstream gamer too much. The game is hard, the damage is unifying, and the destruction will complete any part of you that you may think you’re missing; I wouldn’t see it any other way. Warning, this game can (and probably will) raise your temper VERY fast. Old Contra fans will probably enjoy the game, and if they’ve got enough patience, I’m sure that anybody who thinks it’s interesting could probably get in to it enough and have enough determination to complete it.
