Contra Shattered Soldier?

Is Contra SS not as difficult as other Contra games? I haven't actually played it, but I saw two of my friends play through it and they're not really having trouble with the game at all. They're OK game players (not necessarily 'casual' but not 'hardcore ninja gamers' either), yet I saw them blaze though the first set of selectable levels on three credits. They died in the 'jungle' stage (with the snail mid-boss and the propeller obstacles). I wish I could run through Contra 3 or HC with that much success.

So how does Contra SS stack up versus the other Contra games (ignoring the PSX games)? What's the verdict on its difficulty, and the game in general?

the game's frustrating, but not necessarily difficult once you have the whole damn thing memorized.

Well, Its pretty hard to me :)

It does require you to memorize and learn enemy patterns, and you need to adjust to the controls, if you hope to beat it.

That's what it looks like to me. You can't go into Contra SS without knowing the patterns. Which, now that I think of it, is what Contra games are all about for the most part. Still, there seems to be someting less 'ferocious' about SS's challenge.

And oh yeah, the game's macabre enemy design 0wn3s, especially the T-Virus-infected Seaman.

I would say it's easier than Hard Corps but on a similar difficulty level with the rest of the series.

Harder by a considerable margin than any of the previous side-scrolling Contras. Anyone who suggests otherwise has either not played the 8 and 16 bit games recently enough or has not finished Contra:SS. Once you've done both, there can be no question.

The NES Contras were both dominated by the Spread. With the spread equipped and an awareness of what situations were coming up, a no-miss clear in either game was fairly straightforward. One would occasionally get a surprise death, but the games were generous enough with extends that you could afford such deaths easily. The only danger was losing the spread right before a particularly hairy section and dropping a series of lives quickly. If you picked either game now, after years of not playing it, it should take no more than a week or 2 of casual playing to clear either. A more serious approach would bring you to a no-miss victory.

Alien Wars goes out of its way to be easy, so it hardly seems worth mentioning. 2 weapon slots, smart bombs on a separate button, and the same old liberal extends? Pfft.

Hard Corps has an undeserved reputation for being tremendously hard. One can make it a more challenging game by selecting a non-Browny character and a difficult route, but a clear is not at all daunting with that double-jumping little rascal and some familiarity. There are only a few spots in the entire game, given the easiest path, that require notable twitch efforts, and those can be bombed past.

As for SS itself, it gets a bad rap because of the first 4 stages. None are hard. A no-miss run through any one might come within the first day of play, and a no-miss through all 4 at once is only a question of consistency.

Stage 5 is where things really begin. With familiarity, no section is terribly daunting, but twitch skills are required in several spots. Note the variation in Lance's bouncing fireball attack, or the thin margin or error in dodging his aimed fireballs. Note how a poor job disassembling the final form of the stage 5 boss can leave you with quite a lot of dodging to do.

Stage 6 is just plain hard. A no-miss run will not come easily. Several sections are quite twitch-heavy and feature strong variation.

Stage 7 is actually a bit of a cool-down period, though survival is not assured. If you snuck past 6 with just a single life left in stock, you'll be awfully tense in the Final Boss Battle.

The difficulty of SS is magnified by its length. It's easily twice as long as any of the other games. More so, I imagine. This means that you have to maintain solid execution longer, with more opportunities for error. A no-miss run, required for an S-rank completion, is a daunting challenge, which just is not true of any of the previous four.

Again, like so many analyses one sees of older games here on TNL, I think the error comes from the passage of time. If one played and beat NES Contra at age 12, it was indubitably quite challenging. But to say 10-15 years later that it's harder than a modern game, without replaying it, is just inaccurate. I've gotten 1 credit clears on 4 of the above 5 games in the last year, so I can take a balanced view.

-Dan

Well said, Dan. It's all about memorizing patterns, which is what alot of old-school games were all about. I don't know of too many people who, the first time they played any of the levels in Contra:SS, went through the levels w/o dying. After investing the time, you will see progress. As far as I'm concerned, it's much harder than the previous ones. :D

Dan goes above and beyond the call of duty . . . nice breakdown.