Contra: Operation Galuga Review

Incontrovertibly, Contra is still hard. It was hard thirty years ago and it's still hard now, but at least Contra: Operation Galuga has a few ways to alleviate the difficulty, should you find it a little too brutal. We've come a long way, baby. During my pre-teen years in the '90s, Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (aka Contra III: The Alien Wars) for the SNES and Probotector (aka Contra: Hard Corps) for the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis was a permanent fixture, hammered over and over despite a lack of save states and a maddening difficulty level. Hours were spent attempting to get further and further, often to no avail. It was always frustrating. It was always fun. Operation Galuga captures that old magic, but with a few features to better suit the modern palate.

While there's nothing stopping you from playing through developer WayForward's new Contra game in the usual fashion, with one-hit deaths and no perks, players less amenable to punishment can play with a health meter to absorb several hits before losing a life, and earn points to spend at the in-game Perk Shop. Here, you can purchase extra lives to permanently add to your pool, additional cells for the hit meter, special weapons to start a stage with, and bonus attributes for each character, whether it's a slightly longer period of invulnerability when respawning, a slide that goes a bit further, or a hover ability.

Operation Galuga has a story, too, in which Contra commandos Bill Rizer and Lance Bean are sent into the eponymous island to weed out the Red Falcon military faction, which inevitably leads to aliens and stuff, as is always the case in Contra. Bloody aliens. The story doesn't really matter all that much, but what does matter is that WayForward has successfully returned Contra to its roots, delivering unadulterated run 'n' gun nirvana, with the core Story Mode joined by a pure Arcade Mode, and an enormously taxing Challenge Mode with various parameters to overcome (never has a Challenge Mode been so aptly named).

In Arcade Mode, co-op supports up to four players and is every bit as chaotic as you'd expect, especially once you've all geared up with special weapons flying about the place. It's brilliantly bonkers, and a real dose of proper arcade-style fun. Tackling Operation Galuga solo is not without its appeal, too, facing down the odds with your two weapons, a dash and a double jump. From your basic machine gun, you can upgrade to iconic Contra classics like the spread shot, homing missiles, laser beams, flamethrower, and explosive crush bomb launcher. You can double stack weapons to make them more effective (by collecting two of the same weapon pickup), or, in the case of the crush bombs, create huge neon purple black holes. Special weapons can also be Overloaded, generating a temporary shield, handy drones, ricocheting projectiles, a fiery barrier, or temporal slowdown. There's no shortage of options when it comes to the arsenal you'll pick up during each stage.

As you progress through Story Mode, you'll also unlock new characters, some of which have different fire functions, like Lucia's spread shot being a single charged missile rather than a three-pronged cone of projectiles, or Stanley's machine gun special weapon trading bullets for whizzing balls of energy. Experimenting with different characters encourages repeated playthroughs, and some require unlocking via the Perk Shop for a few thousand points, which will take some doing. But then, in all probability, you'll want to play through Contra's Story and Arcade Modes more than once, especially if you can rope in some pals to enjoy the mayhem with you in local co-op.

Dialling into nostalgia for Contra's old-school run 'n' gun thrills with classic boss battles against iconic screen-filling foes, while providing a selection of modern trappings to cater for players of (almost) all skill levels, Contra: Operation Galuga does a fine job in bringing back an arcade favourite. Serving as both a full-blooded sequel and reimagination of the original 1980s Contra, Operation Galuga is gameplay at its most undiluted – a dose of raw arcade fun that demands to be played and thoroughly relished.