Contra Force

The third title in Konami's Contra series, and another of my favourites. It was originally named Arc Hound, and was to be released in Japan only. However, it was later renamed as "Contra Force" and released in 1992.

Here's the game's intro:

The game is set in NeoCity. Burns is the head of a Spec - Ops team, who are hunting the leader of a terrorist organisation who was threatening the head of intelligence, and murdered one of their friends.

There are five levels in the game; I'm posting two of them here:

Level 1:

 

Level 2:

The game differs from the original Contra games in many ways. You can now choose from four characters: Burns (Machine gunner), Iron (Heavy Weapons), Smith (Rifleman) and Beans (Demolitions). Each character carries different weapons; characters can be switched anytime by pressing the start key. Smith, for instance, carries a rifle and homing missiles, whereas Iron wields a bazooka and a flamethrower. The instant power - ups from Contra are replaced by power selection. The player can collect box - shaped power - ups from the level, and can use them to manually select their weapon of choice (by pressing the Select key). There are no one ups, but you can continue the game as many times as you want.

The game features a co - op mode. The second character can either be controlled by the second player, or can be assigned an assist mode from the character selection menu. This assist mode is controlled by the AI, and has various variations such as Back Cover, Front Assist etc. However, only two characters may be present on the screen at a time, and one has to be controlled by a human player.

Although it was released after Super C, Contra Force doesn't score too much. The game speed varies throughout the course of gameplay, especially if two characters are present on the screen (which makes the game frustratingly slow). Gameplay slows down or speeds up at random. (I have seen this, both on my NES console and emulator). Unlike many side scrolling games, Contra Force allows you to go back the screen. Sometimes, it is even possible to go back to the beginning of the level itself. Although that's really practical, but all the enemies and power ups respawn. It is a good way of building up the character's arsenal before facing the boss, and takes away the difficulty which has always been Contra's trademark.