C: The Contra Adventure (PlayStation) review "This Adventure is one to sit out"

After playing C the Contra Adventure I realized just how bland it is. As in watered down drink bland. You can barely taste the coke on this drink and it gives you that disdain look on your face as you gulp it down, yet you still drink it for what its worth since you decided to do so in the first place.

As it is, the Adventure starts out in a traditional way of running and gunning enemies down in a 3D mapped environment while earning power-ups and confronting a boss at the end. Then it moves to various point of view stages that make your head spin just by thinking on how much this game changes around while you are about to get comfortable with just one way to play it. I do realize this has been a trope of the Contra series, but in here it’s done just awful to the point that you wish you could just play the game from left to right instead.

Another faulty tone to the game is that it isn't 2 player co-op, something that in my opinion would had benefit a bit more of it if given such feature. Then again, the 3D pseudo free roaming stages might have been a whole lot harder with having two characters instead of one on the field, making the game a whole lot worse to play with.

The positive aspects of this game is that you get some hit points before you die, something that can be considered a saving grace on any Contra game save for the fact that you die of a single hit from most bosses and other hazards like fire spewing from the ground, making this feature a bit useless overall. Another aspect of C the Contra Adventure is that you are able to have up to 4 different weapon power-ups in stock, being able to change them on the fly when dealing with enemies and bosses. You also get a smart bomb which clears everything onscreen and does a great deal of damage to boss characters but you only get one use per life and seemingly, it stops giving it after you die a few times.

The soundtrack does its best on giving you that action feel to keep you pumped up during gameplay, but it sounds as average as the entire game is overall. Explosions do sound nice however, and even manage to muffle the soundtrack long enough to stop the pretense if only for an instant. The grunts your character gives out as he gets hit are quite humorous in addition.

The story is shown in a badly designed CGI kinda way even for PSX standards as an alien entity crashes on Earth via meteor express. The ant-like creature then blasts inside a Mayan ruin to begin its nefarious world domination conquest and its up to the hero to once again deal with said alien shenanigans.

The graphics on the game suffer greatly but you don't even notice such things while you play stages that resemble older Contra titles, once you are on further stages however, you will indeed notice how badly designed they are, and it starts messing with head as you try to ignore it while playing through. I at times found myself pausing the game just to look at the TV to distract me from such horribly bland designs before I resumed the game to play a bit longer.

As for the difficulty it is safe to say that you can get past the initial stages with ease, in fact, it seems this game is just easier than most Contra titles to the point you might stifle a yawn or two as you march on.

Quite simply, The Adventure is not a fun one but something of an average walk to the grocery market instead of the adrenaline-pumping action marathon into danger of old. Still, the game does indeed get points where it counts, if you manage not to pass out of boredom with the rest that ruins said positive aspects.

Community review by CptRetroBlue (February 16, 2019) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.