Ah, I remember the good old days of 2D, side scrolling shooters. There were those that saw you flying around in a spaceship, such as the magnificent R-Type and Project X, and those where you were on foot, wiping out everything and everyone in your path, such as the classics Green Beret and Midnight Resistance. However, as with most things, nostalgia tends to be more rose-tinted than reality (don’t revisit your childhood shows folks, most of them aren’t as good as you remember!) and this is also the case here. In a world of sophisticated first person shooters and 3D action shooters, is there really room for a retro revival?

Contra: Shattered Soldier is a 2D scrolling shooter, identical in style to those you could find in arcades 10-15 years ago. These kinds of game used to be great fun, but they did have their flaws and unfortunately Contra has all the flaws of the genre, as well as the good points. But that’s not to say it’s all bad news.

Despite being a side scrolling shooter with a tiny on-screen man shooting at loads of enemies ranging from the tiny to the immense, this is a graphically stunning game. All of the backdrops, scenery and sprites (that’s what they used to call your characters and your enemies back in the glory days, you cheeky young whippersnapper!) are brilliantly rendered in 3D. They really do look lovely. In fact, the graphics engine is totally three dimensional, allowing for some great 3D moments at key points in the level. For example, at the start of the first level, your plane flies in and lands clumsily on the ground, scraping along the runway as the camera pans around it, then it comes to a sudden halt and our hero smashes through the cockpit glass and lands in front ready for action! It’s a very stylish start to the level and the graphics don’t disappoint throughout, with some truly awesome transforming mechanised foes, sprinkled in with hideous mutations that, on occasion, are enough to send Resident Evil screaming to its mummy. Whilst the game’s designers could have scrimped on the graphics, they have gone out of their way to present a super stylish and slick game and it works very well. As well as the baddies, the explosions (and pretty much every baddie explodes) are superb, looking very fiery and realistic, with mutant foes squirting green blood from their bullet-riddled corpses as they collapse or melt into a pool of disgusting slime.

The other advantage of this 3D engine is that the action periodically changes between horizontal and vertical scrolling action, with the changes mixed flawlessly into the action through brief cut scenes. In the first level there’s a nasty section where you’re snowboarding down a mountain dodging a giant mutant worm (think Tremors) and in the second level another cool section where (on your jet bike) you are blasting away at a military train, taking it out one carriage at a time. Both of these sections use a vertical style into the screen mode that works just as well as the horizontal one.

The story of this game is non-existent and there the attempts made to expound it in the game are very lame. You are a soldier who the government have sent to stop a mysterious terrorist organisation and you live in a badly damaged future world with a seriously messed up environment (hence the mutants, I think). There’s a really nifty FMV intro to the game that looks totally superb, but sadly there is none of that in the game and in fact the cut scenes that occur at the end of each mission are done in the game’s engine, looking poor in comparison. There isn’t even any voice acting, it’s all text and it just doesn’t work. It’s all nonsensical, minimal and out of context and really they should either have not bothered with a story or done it properly, but as it is this in-between attempt is a pointless intrusion to the game.

Another area where the game is hit and miss is in the sound and music – some of the heavy metal and techno is very hectic and irritates whilst the rest complements the game quite well, although that is down to personal tastes. The sound effects are good and fit the action, but they’re not as impressive as the graphics.

Sadly though, despite the retro feel and awesome graphics, the gameplay (or complete lack of it) is what makes this game so average. I mean, how much fun is there really to be had from running along, shooting and dodging enemies? At least in 3D games you get some variety, but here there is little to no variety in the action (other than whether you’re going across or into the screen). Sure, each level has a different theme and the scenery and enemies vary greatly, but the action is, I’m sad to say, pretty tedious.

You have three weapons; a rapid fire laser gun, a flamethrower (lovely fire effects and most enemies go up a treat!) and grenade launcher, each with a secondary function if you charge up the weapon and there are certain times when each weapon comes into its own, but it’s hardly much in the way of strategy. All of the bosses, whilst being quite tough, are very predictable and it’s a case of using trial and error until you’ve memorised their attack patterns and can perform well enough to survive long enough to kill them (and some are very tedious, taking several minutes to defeat.

The game’s other main problem though, is in its archaic life system. One shot kills you and you only have 3 lives. When you run out of lives you must use a credit and it takes you right back to the start of the level (or the middle if you’ve managed to get beyond it). This is incredibly boring for tough end of level baddies, as every time you mess it up you must redo the whole second half of the level. Only 3 lives to defeat a big boss is not enough and you only have that many if you managed to complete the second half of the level perfectly without losing any lives.

There are only 3 credits too, meaning you have 12 lives for the entire 5 missions (yep, there’s only 5 levels, so the game isn’t really long enough either). This means that it is almost impossible to reach the end without hours and hours of practice until you know every level back to front. Even then, if you take a couple of careless stray shots or have a bad level all of your hard work is ruined. That’s not what I call fun. You can stick it on Easy mode, where you have 8 lives and 99 credits, but then you’ll rush through the game in a matter of 3 or 4 hours tops and you get no end sequence. That’s right, it just tells you to complete it in Normal mode! Cheeky beggars! Normal should be called Impossibly Hard mode and Easy should be called Ridiculously Easy mode, meaning that an in between with, say, 5 lives and 10 credits would have been much better than these two extremes. There is a 2-player co-operative mode where you and a friend can blast it out together, with a good system so that when all your lives are used up you can if you want use your companion’s lives until all lives are lost and a credit is needed. Even so, this doesn’t serve to spice up the action much.

Contra: Shattered Soldier is a 2D shooter that’s about a decade too late. Despite its gorgeous, up to date graphics, the gameplay is shallow, predictable and dull whilst the frustration and repetition factor is compounded by a choice of either hardly any or far too many lives and continues. Take a look if you’re feeling really nostalgic, but side scrolling shooters aren’t half as great as you remember them to be and in a sophisticated new generation of games and gameplay, this just doesn’t have the depth or content to compete.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).