We opened stockings today, and I got more stuff!
1) An exorbitantly large candycane the size of a billy club. I don't even like candycanes though! Tragic.
2) Acne face wash...even though I don't have acne?
3) A reading light that comes with a pen. Why would they package these two things together?
4) A chocolate cookie in a tin. Arbitrary.
5) Hand sanitizer. I think I'll create a strain of highly virulent bacteria immune to conventional antibiotics, starting with those found in hand sanitizer.
6) A heating pack. These things are great.
I am annoyed that I got acne face wash and not Guitar Hero 3. I'll keep everyone updated on the status of this clerk situation; I'm taking a trip to the store tomorrow.
Anyways since almost everyone got games for Christmas, I say we all keep track of our progress through these games here and how we find them. That would be GREAT.
In Contra 4, I can clear the first three levels on hard fairly consistently. The first level I can breeze through without dieing, aside from something freak like getting stuck with a bad weapon, or dropping through a floor by mistake. The second level is only hard in the beginning really, but I keep losing lives there. Those lizards come onscreen too quickly to snipe them individually so the ground is dangerous, and you can't just hang on the ceiling while the zombies explode. The waterfall section afterwards is easy enough though; you just need the spreadshot and it's a matter of simple platforming. Level 3 is a base level, and those are always easy. Whereas level 4 is some insane level I can barely handle on the Easy difficulty. There's a section where you need to scale a catwalk while being attacked by a large swarm of bird robots, with powerups scattered throughout the area. Eventually you climb onto a nuclear weapon, and a robot starts trying to punch you off the rail you're climbing on. To dodge him you need to jump off the rail to the right, and move back quickly. His attacks are really fast though, and I can't beat him on hard since I almost always die and lose my weapon.
I've played easy twice; the first time I got a gameover on level 4, which has some absurd platforming section where you have to jump from rung to rung on the nuke while dodging missiles. I'm in the middle of my second run, and I'm on level 7 with 6 lives and 4 continues; iirc this is the last level Easy mode can reach. Normal I haven't touched, but it seems the next logical step.
As for the game itself, I have few complaints. It's a solid Contra experience...it doesn't arbitrarily differ from what made the games good to start with. I do have some nitpicks though. The default gun is too weak for my liking, and dieing removes your equipped weapon; if you die at the wrong time you're pretty much guaranteed a gameover since it takes too many hits to down things. I'm also not a fan of the weapon change system...there's a reserve slot for an extra weapon, but it starts off equipped with the default gun. To keep a reserve weapon you need to switch guns, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks. This wasn't a problem in previous games since the default gun wasn't balls, but now it's hard to defend yourself in the meantime. There's also the problem of not being able to fire while climbing, which has caused me a ton of deaths...but I think this was in other Contras too, so my complaint isn't exclusive to this game. And, and, and! It's very easy to fall through floors by mistake because almost every floor can be passed through, and the command to drop through floors is jump+down. I've had bad moments where I've tried jumping and firing straight down, only to fall through the floor and die.
However it is still a pro game and everyone else needs to get Contra 4 so we can talk about Contra 4 and how great it is.
EDIT: Magnum posted while I was writing. OH SNAP, YOU HAVE CONTRA 4 TOO! How far can you get and on what difficulty? Let's compare high scores.
