Volteccer_Jack wrote:I don't consider that even slightly deprecating, unless of course the auto-scrolling is very very slow a la stage 3 miniboss.
Or Hard Corps' Jungle Boss! Whose accumulated transition phases are several times as long and don't even have the decency to threaten you.
The utter repugnance of CIII stage 3 prevented me from ever bothering to clear the game's hard mode, but I did play through the first stage, and I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. It was the Hell of the Fixed Snipers but otherwise unremarkable.
If the snipers are giving you hell you're playing terribly - the idea is to rush in and shoot them. But this also means you've got to play whatever hand the RNG crowd spawner deals, which is exciting, which is why st1's streets is the best free run of the entire JP series next to st6's hive. You could slowly and methodically pick off the snipers, but then the crowd would be
even more liable to swamp you.
I don't believe CIII has good speed at all, and I believe the variety is entirely negative with a total of about two stages worth of the stuff I'm actually looking for in a Contra game. The second half of stage 1 is pointless, for example, and as I said stage 3 is utterly repugnant barring the brief vertical platforming section right before the boss. It starts with nothing happening excepting dumb rolling things that encourage me to halt forward movement every time a new enemy appears.
Assuming we mean free-running action/platforming (as all three games are pretty even on minboss duelling/general setpiecery)... III is calculatedly sparing, but particularly since this post is comparing Hard Corps (and
especially) Shattered Soldier favourably to it, I'm gonna say it's a triumph of quality over quantity. The latter two games, less so. HC's runs are satisfying rampages, but vanishingly rare and brief,
and overall nowhere as lethally volatile as III's bookending masterpieces. Rocket Base is the technical best but it's
too damn short! Shattered Soldier's M3 opening firefight with air+ground troops is superb, but it's the only run even approaching the deadly intensity of streets/hive, distantly at that. The rest is always agreeable and enjoyable enough, but lacking truly dangerous enemies or platforming.
I'm not okay with the reaction speed and shot velocity of III's snipers in its third stage run (here they can't be rushed, due to terrain). But the methodical sweep-through is easily more involving than all but HC/SS's best stuff; it absolutely
isn't stop/start when you know what you're doing, least of all because of the rollies (they're sluggish to attack, much like in Shattered Soldier - where they're unfortunately made totally useless by a lack of enemy or terrain support).
The we get those flying grabby things and I honestly have no idea what the point of that bit is.
Same as its direct lift in Shin Contra. Rampant upshotting destruction for massive kill count, with just a hint of danger via the risk of getting a bit too frisky and being grabbed at your jump peak, or torching one that's holding you over the pit. It's fun, try it!
Then the 3-phase miniboss where all three phases are tedious and dumb.
I've got to ask here if you mean you only saw st1 Hard, or if you made it to st3 before giving up. Regardless,
Phase 1? You wot m8?
Animated GIF "Notorious Bum Driller" Rad speedkill. Nervier than it looks, you gotta smash his face in before he can drag you into the drill, and escape isn't without risk either.
Phase 2 is no design masterclass, but it has enough economical, persistent danger that I'm mortally affronted to hear it called tedious
or dumb in a post rating HC+SS over III. It's shorter and deadlier than many of their clunkers - like HC's momentum-killing st1 Cyclops, or that highway tank I deliberately let spawn all its jetpackers so it has
something going for it, or the infamous Jungle walker, or useless Wacky Professor Experiment Arena... or SS's god-awful m2 biker troupe, or that limp m3 eel, or the paint-drying first phase of m3's crawler tank, or the m4 "learn to speedkill it with charged flamethrower or so help me god, replayers" ski-mech). There's an absolute smorgasbord of HC/SS bosses that fall below the modest bar set by III's transitional climb.
As for
Phase 3: if you have some means of making the feinting, chasing, multi-hitting Hard variant of this guy tedious
or dumb, the entire Contra III Hard Mode Fanciers community is waiting for your expertise. And so am I! Post strats/replays/insights pls.
Anyway ultimately C4 and Shattered Soldier are the best, even though you are hideous in one and have a pulled hamstring in the other. In that sense, Hard Corps is the most "complete package" even though it's not as solid as those two.
I will
always and forever believe that were a talented, perceptive editor to reassemble Hard Corps' best material, the result would be a game at least as good as CIII. With a little weapon tweaking, undoubtedly superior. Unfortunately Nakazato
was going for replay via "cool stuff to see," not "deadly stuff to master," and the game's best stuff was scattered among others of wildly varying quality. Generally okay... more than occasionally questionable... at a few spots, astonishingly poor by any standard let alone III's. Shin Contra ditched the sightseeing but ended up in roughly the same place, for reasons (this post has gone on long enough already, will elaborate if asked).
I WONT FORGET 
makes me think of Neo Contra's Mission 2 building climb, and its window snipers' comically guttural roars of anguish as they're picked off and sent tumbling down... I feel bad shooting the ones armed only with potted plants!)
