New Contra - Tencent Mobile

[Skykid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQwT7U1XDdY

Spoiler

Tencent is one of China's largest mobile phone APP companies. They own the We Chat messaging service (weixin) and releasing mobile games through the interface. I mentioned some of their shmups, like Thunder Raid in this thread.

At the moment this is only coming to China in 2016, but Tencent do operate in the west. The game will 100% be free to play with microtransactions, and if you want to get it your best bet will be to download We Chat on your smartphone. I'll try to figure out later how it can be played overseas and update here if it's possible. At best it may require me to send some invitations to the game to your phone or something, which is how I got Thunder Raid.

Otherwise it looks far superior to Contra Evolution, which was also by Tencent and was an awful mobile Contra remake released on phone and arcade simultaneously with no discernible differences. Basically it was a phone game running on an arcade machine. I took some video of it in the local arcade and it's truly horrendously bad.

The biggest problem I see with this game is playing Contra on a touchscreen, and I have no idea if it will respond to micro-USB pad setups. Otherwise it looks kind of ok... except lifebars?

[cave hermit]

Why are there ammo counters and RPG elements?

I have a bad feeling about this given it's Tencent... Will probably be stuffed to the gills with arbitrary IAPs...

[Skykid]

Why are there ammo counters and RPG elements?

I have a bad feeling about this given it's Tencent... Will probably be stuffed to the gills with arbitrary IAPs...

Oh for sure. I know IAP are confirmed and the way other games have been handled is heavy on the micro-transaction front. The thing is with Thunder Raid and other games is that you can actually work your way up to better ships and later levels with hardcore grinding - which some people actually did. Those who want to leapfrog it just paid to unlock the ships. But the grind is ridiculous after a while, I couldn't be bothered.

I have no idea how to execute IAP in Contra unless you make it furiously hard and offer some kind of character strengthening, weapon purchasing available through grinding for in-game currency. But everything points at the game being the opposite of furiously hard, so purely based on the way it looks (kind of decent) I'm interested to see how it turns out.

[Durandal]

is 2 or 5 bucks for a mobile port of some arcade game with native touchscreen controls WITHOUT any of that upgrade shop microtransaction bullshit too much to ask?

[Marc]

Contra Evo was passable on the crapper, I've played much worse on 'proper' consoles. I'd make a joke about the 360 game, but I did get into it eventually, though it wasn't a Contra game.

[Some-Mist]

touch screen controls :[

I love contra so much. 3 was my favorite (still one of my favorite game soundtracks) and 4 was beautifully crafted, but I probably can't get behind this.

[Skykid]

Contra Evo was passable on the crapper, I've played much worse on 'proper' consoles.

Really? I thought Evo should have gone in the crapper! Perhaps it works better on a phone - on an arcade machine it's horrific.