Bullet Points – Contra Shattered Soldier

Digging for my copy of Contra 3 and playing it for the 10,000th time has been foremost on my mind since Tiny Cartridge posted Mikael Orioto Aguirre’s “Dogs and Bullets” a few days ago. The first stage of Contra 3 is incredibly bleak, as they noted. In fact, it may be the most desolate opening to a videogame I’ve ever played. The entire earth is destroyed before the game even begins, and the only native inhabitants left within the city are rapid dogs eating out of garbage cans and looking to take a bite out of your ass, depending on the difficulty setting.

Everything is either a smoldering ruin or still on fire, and those 16-bit flames still burn hotter for me than anything in recent memory. The game is entirely about the singular need for revenge, because those alien bastards have to die. For those reasons, along with the greatest bike and missile roller coaster ride ever, it remains my most re-played SNES title.

Since I couldn’t sleep last night with the weight of real life on my shoulders, I went searching through several stacks of games for my copy, but was fated to find Shattered Soldier instead, which turned out to be a very good rediscovery. In many ways the game feels like a pumped-up remake of Contra 3 – it references nearly every significant point. Except now you ride into the city with a pack of dogs, which attack those soldiers while you fill the screen with lead. Or you’ll burst through the side of a wall on a hover bike, or crash through fortress defenses in a plane – the game knows how to make an entrance.

There’s this incredible temptation to declare Shattered Soldier the greatest game ever while playing it. Reason returns when I shut the PS2 off, but having a bridge blown out from under me and falling onto a snowy mountain side to suddenly begin snowboarding while shooting, as if that should be completely reasonable, is entirely awesome.

The game also remixes that strange relationship Contra has for throwing mechanical and organic enemies at players without going completely deranged in either direction – not an easy line to walk. Most importantly, the game provides solid control, and enforces the sensation that the player can get better with each play-through. It never kicks your ass beyond reason, instead choosing to hurt players with the goal of making them better soldiers.

Selecting between three weapons that are always available, each gun has a specific place within each stage, creating a series of bullet puzzles where there is an ideal firing solution to be discovered and increase the odds for survival.

The only time I ever hear this game mentioned is when someone is putting together a brief list of “hardest games ever.” It certainly is a merciless game in many ways. The bitch of the game is that it doesn’t ever overwhelm you with enemies or bullets, it’s just incredibly effective with what it does use.

It’s worth the patience, replaying, and effort, because it’s probably the most interesting Contra game I’ve ever played, specifically for the mix of ridiculous scenarios that show a side of humor, meticulous pattern designs worthy of speed running, and the last installment of the series that felt like an earnest evolution versus something that sinks back into the safety blanket of nostalgia to win us over.

It’s also incredibly cheap anytime I’ve seen it around, so its got that going for it too.