Last night was my best night of gaming yet with the Contra 4, got past the jungle stage, through the laboratory stage and then it happened. They have a damn waterfall stage!! With very familiar music to the original game, this is the best damn remake of all time!!

Strategy: One of the few things people think of when they think of Contra is strategy, but yes you need it. The laboratory stage is nearly impossible without some sort of specialty weapon, I found the short range missiles to work the best for those lanky exploder guys, and you can simply jump over the Hills Have Eyes Guys if they get too much to handle. The waterfall is best dealt with, like almost anything with the Spreader.

Yes I call the Spread Shot the Spreader. I may refer to it as the Spreader gun even, but one of the things I loved about Contra was how everyone who plays it has their own little names and ideas for what is happening on the screen. For instance I have forever called the spiked boards that you run into on the Hangar level as Pop-Tarts. To me they resemble the Acme versions of non-frosted coated pop tarts, so I called them that. Little known fact is that you can actually jump on them with enough skill.....

Once I was playing Contra in college with Matt Lucuski and he was an amazing player, described the guys who shoot you from behind on the later levels as Backdoor Assholes. That was one of the things that everyone had was their own way to refer to the enemies that nobody pays attention do. The reason for this is you have to communicate with your friends while playing and tell them to watch out for the backdoor assholes or the Strydor, cannot remember what he was referring to but still, you come up with stuff to save your lives so the other person cannot steal your hard-earned award medals which represented the lives you had remaining like a badge of honor.Well I could, and will, go on for days about Contra, and this Contra 4 is great because it forces you to be the best Contra player you ever could be, otherwise you will not survive.

Labels: Contra, Contra 4, DS