I will say first that Contra 4 is the first Contra game I've played minus 2 minute of Contra 3, and 90% of this post is about me playing the game, skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to read it.



I got Contra 4 on Christmas a few weeks ago, and had been playing little else ever since. I got offers to play Halo 3 and CoD4, but I couldn't see myself caring for such games when I had such awesomeness in the palm of my hand.

In fact, the first time I put it in my DS and played it was when I went with my brother to play Halo at his buddy's house. While he was recovering some Live accounts I decided to play it for a bit. I wasn't up for being a pansy, so played it on hard, and was met smack in the face with AWESOMENESS. I must have died 50 times on the first level, but I couldn't put it down!
By the time I completed the first stage my brother told me they were done playing Halo and was ready to go home. He was a bit pissed that I didn't play with him, but Halo would have been boring in comparison.

A few days later this exact conversation happens between me and the same buddy I went to play with.

Buddy "yo, want to play some CoD4?"

Me "no thanks, im playing Contra, why would I was to play Call of Duty?"

Buddy " 'cause it's got better Graphix!!1!"

Me "nah man, I don't think so. The waterfall level in this game is AMAZING!"

Buddy "ehh.... good rebuttal!"

LOL


I played it for days content on going through the same levels over and over again on hard, until I finally get to stage 8 and say "screw it, I'll just destroy the lesser difficulties real quick and get back to hard".

First I raped easy, not much more to say about that. Then I ran it on normal all the way to the final stage which was new territory going in, I died a couple of times when figuring out the environment and used up all of my continues on the final boss (probably wouldn't have beaten him if I didn't have a lvl2 Flame gun).

Then I played through twice on hard dieing on the last stage, on the third I made it back to the final boss and died a bunch there. Until I finally figured his pattern. After that it was a cake walk to beat him, and then realized that I beat it without using a continue.

Now I just play the game to feel like a bad ass, which I can't say about most games that come out these days, Halo 3's campaign felt brain dead repetitive, and I can't touch Call of Duty without thinking "this is a PC game, what the hell is it doing on a console?". I guess that it could be that games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry and God Hand you have to be un-fuck-touchable to get anywhere in the game and by the end you'd feel like you've accomplished the impossible. Where as Assassin's Creed, Halo, and a million other FPSs give you rechargeable heath so you can go cower in a corner somewhere, and if you actually do die you just start up 5 steps from where you were. These games just end with a "whoopty fucking do, I'll never play that again".
Where are all the games that are actually games and not just interactive movies with Halo game play?

P.S. I also beat all 40 challenges in Contra 4, I'm awesome like that.