Contra

Yeah. I remembered that I made this and was all like "Yeah! I'm gonna do something with this!" So... I should probably do something with this... Right?

Anyway, I wanted kick-start things back into high gear with a good review. For those of you who follow me on Facebook at all, you know that I recently came into possession of an old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), complete with all the cords and a controller. Once I got my hands on some actual games, I tested it out, and a few peroxide-coated q-tips later, I was stompin' Goombas and using the Warp Zones to speed through Super Mario Bros. Fast-forward to December 16th, my birthday, where my roommate bought me a game she knew I would kill someone in front of their own mother for. That's right, Contra!

Without a doubt, Contra's one of my favorite games for many reasons. For one, Contra is a great example of how different video games were then than they are now. Today, (counting the directional pad as one button) the Playstation 3 controller has fourteen different buttons, two of them doubling as joysticks. Games today require extremely complex button combinations and various button input patterns in order to complete to long, drawn-out, cinema-like sequences and battles and whatnot.

Then there's a game like Contra: minimal plot, basic actions, and a rockin' soundtrack. And the result is bad-ass.

In Contra, you play as Bill Rizer (or Player Two can join in as Lance Bean), part of a special ops force sent in to destroy the evil Red Falcon organization, who has occupied a small South American country. Armed only with your rifle, you must infiltrate the enemy stronghold and return peace to the area. The game kind of sounds like the Schwarzeneggar/Stallone 80's movie that never happened, but would be totally awesome if it did. 

Controlling the character is one of the best parts of the game in my opinion, namely because of the simplicity. Basically, all you do is run, jump, duck, and shoot. Bill and Lance have a few tricks up their nonexistent sleeves, though. A new concept at the time, Bill and Lance can actually aim where the shoot, being able to aim in 8 different directions. Also, shooting special capsules and boxes will give you emblems, which can upgrade your weapon. These upgrades vary from adding rapid fire, shooting laser beams, temporary invincibility, and the infamous "Spread Shot." But more on that in just a second...

One can't mention Contra without referencing what might be its most memorable trait: the difficulty level. Put simply, the game is enough to make someone who's started playing video games within the last 4 years weep in the fetal position. The game is 8 stages of constant enemy bombardment. Enemies run straight for you, bombs are thrown from the trees, and alien birth-pods spew face-huggers right at you. To make things worse, you have very limited stamina: one hit, and you're done. You're given three lives and a gun. Have fun on your way through Hell!

Again, you have a few more tools at your disposal. Like I said earlier, one of the secrets to success in this game is the Spread Shot. This gun fires shots in an expanding pattern from your gun, spelling certain doom for whatever enemies happen to be in its range (which tends to be all of them). I often say to myself that, when playing a game with multiple weapons, that all of them could be great, depending on how you use each weapon. They all have their ups and downs, their pro's and cons, their strengths and weaknesses. Bullshit. The Spread Shot has no weaknesses. Until you do something stupid and die, you're a walking death-game of flashlight tag.

Also, this game is notable for making the "Konami Code" famous. Konami, the games developer, had a habit of putting the same code into all of its video games. What exactly the code produced varied from game to game, but chances are it's there. When you start up a game of Contra, press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B. A, B, A, and Start, all before the logo makes it to the center of the screen. If you did it right, you'll start the game with thirty lives instead of the paltry three the games actually gives you. Good luck, 'cause you're gonna need all of them.

In the end, Contra is one of the most iconic and enjoyable NES games ever made. While some may view it as torture, I see a golden opportunity to relish in late 80's radicalness.

Kingdom Hearts II: Atlantica

In 1989, a little film called The Little Mermaid premiered in movie theatres across the nation. The film, based off of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, chronicles the adventures of Ariel, mermaid princess and daughter of King Triton, who falls in love with a human. After difficulties with her father over the subject, Ariel seeks the helps of the evil sea witch, Ursula. The witch transforms Ariel's fins into legs, giving her access to the human world in exchange for her beautiful voice. Ariel has to endure three days of silence and win the heart of the handsome Prince Eric in the process. If she cannot win Eric's kiss of true love by sundown on the third day, she returns to her mermaid form and belongs to Ursula. As Ursula succeeds in her plan of usurping Triton's magical trident, Ariel and Eric team up to do battle. With Ursula a thing of the past, Ariel returns to a human form with her now-accepting father's help, and she and Eric are wed.

The original fairy tale was a little less cheerful. It follows the movie up until Ariel visits the Sea Witch, who really has no intention to usurp the throne. Instead of taking Ariel's “vocal energy,” the Sea Witch goes right for the throat (almost literally) and takes Ariel's tongue, instead. Ariel's fin is split in twain, though it feels as if a sword is passing through her. Also, walking on her newly-formed feet feels like Ariel is walking on blades, and it just so happens that Prince Eric loves seeing women dance. Despite the excruciating pain, Ariel dances for the prince she loves. When Eric's father tells him that he's to marry another princess, Eric tells Ariel that he cannot love another princess, because he's sure the priestess that found Eric after his shipwreck is the woman he loves. Surprise! That princess IS the priestess that found him. Eric weds the other princess and Ariel is heartbroken. Ariel's sisters find her and give her a knife, saying the Sea Witch told them that if Ariel kills Eric with the knife, she'll be able to regain her mermaid form. Ariel cannot bring herself to commit the deed and falls into the sea, dissolving into sea foam.

Needless to say, this film was a pretty big deal for Disney. It pretty much kick-started the “Disney Renaissance,” when Disney returned to making profitable animated movies and switched from endorsing their live-action and amusement park ventures. This ars nova for Disney resulted in making the Broadway musical style of animated films a standard, a style still found in other movies such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. As if setting the stage for those movies wasn't enough, a spin-off television series was produced, as well as two straight-to-video movies and plenty of Disney World attractions. Yeah, The Little Mermaid was that important.

Fast-forward to 2002. A little game called Kingdom Hearts comes out, a joint venture between Disney and video game giant Square Enix. The game follows Sora (the game's protagonist), Donald Duck, and Goofy as they travel to various worlds inspired by Disney movies. One of those world's is Atlantica, home to Ariel, Sebastian, and a host of other characters from The Little Mermaid. Ariel teams up with Sora and the others to kick the crap out Ursula, Flotsam, and Jetsam, as well as various other monsters. Ariel fights alongside you, and the world features a control system that utilizes swimming, as Sora's now a merman. Overall, it's really super bad-ass and cool.

That's right. Ariel will FUCK YOU UP.

Fast-forward to 2005, when Square Enix announces Kingdom Hearts II. This game does what all sequels should do, yet few actually accomplish: take everything great about the first game, make it better, and get rid of all that crap that didn't work. This being the case, Atlantica, one of the first game's coolest worlds, is sure to make a comeback and is destined to overshadow the action and enjoyment of the first game, right? Right?

Let me put this nicely: Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts II sucks balls.

From the outside, you look at Atlantica and think “Awesome! I'm gonna fight under water, just like I did in the first game. THAT was awesome!” Then, you look at the data the game presents about the world. There's a number called “Battle Level,” which tells you how difficult the enemies in the world will be. Previous worlds have shown battle levels of 5, 10, 13, etc. Atlantica gives you a big, fat “0.” That's right. You don't fight. At all.

Well, that can't be all bad, you think to yourself. I did fight a battle earlier that was completely dependent on Reaction Commands towards the beginning of the game, after all. Clearly, you've missed your own use of the words “fight” and “battle.” Anyway, you've entered the world, and you see the introductory movie where Ariel greets you and says how good it is to see you again. It's good to see you, too, Ariel. Can't wait to whoop some ass with you!

That's when Goofy speaks up. He notices that there doesn't appear to be any sign of the Heartless, one of the game's main enemies. You mean there's no one here to fight? Wait a minute, this is an action game! What am I doing here unless I'm gonna kick the crap out of something, ANYTHING! What am I gonna do, SING my enemies to death?

Sorry, folks! That game's coming out this fall!

You guessed it. That's what you do. You sing. Because that's what Ariel does in the movie. Sing.

To be fair, it isn't really fair to compare this part of the game too much to the first one. While you do fight the main antagonist of the movie in the first game, you mainly take this detour to help Ariel out and learn about your weapon a little bit, the enigmatic Keyblade. Prince Eric doesn't even show up in the first game. That being the case, it's natural to go back to the meat of the film, which didn't feature as much ass-kicking as the first game seemed to let on.

Pictured above: Needed Ass-Kicking

Instead of fighting, the game takes a more Dance Dance Revolution-like approach. The actual gameplay takes place during songs, either made especially for the game or arranged versions of ones taken from the film. At key moments in the song, you have to take certain actions. Sometimes you press the X button when the screen tells you to. During one song, you have to pressed the X button when it shows a picture of Ariel, but do nothing when it shows a picture of Sebastian. You have to meet certain goals in order to progress within this world, and if you don't, you're subjected to further musical torture. And one or two songs isn't enough. You've got FIVE songs to work through. Even the epic fight where Ursula is IMPALED WITH THE SHATTERED PROW OF A SHIP is reduced to pressing a button at just the the right moment. 

So, you brace yourself and work through the shoddily written songs (or, in my case, mute the television). Glad that's over! Suddenly, Ariel talks about how she's not feel great. It's not like she's sick or anything, it's because she's just too sad to rehearse for Sebastian's musical. As someone who's performed in front of people for a long time, I can tell you my suspension of disbelief is already long gone. If I had a nickle for every rehearsal I wanted to skip just because I didn't feel like it, I'd be a rich man. If I had a nickle for every rehearsal I didn't actually go to because I didn't feel like it, I'd have maybe fifteen cents.

Anyway, I digress. Flounder has a great idea! There was a shipwreck not too long ago, and it's got a lot of human goods, the kind Ariel's been collecting as of late. Wouldn't that be great to get some of those for her? So you follow Flounder to the shipwreck site and find the statue of Eric. Try as you might, you just don't have the strength to lift the rock it's buried under. The screen turns black, and you're back outside the world. A message comes up that says “You need the spell Magnet to lift those rocks! Come back when you have that spell!”

That's right. The game won't even give you the satisfaction of just plowing through this horrible, horrible experience. You have to come back every now and then, dragging the awful experience throughout the game.

In the interest of decency, I'll stop my review right here. As someone who graduated with a degree in music and spent most of his time in that respect performing vocally, I can attest to the power of singing and everything it's given me throughout my life. However, I've also spent a lot of time playing video games, too. Enough, anyway, to tell you that this little musical adventure has NO place in an action game. Kingdom Hearts II is one of the greatest games ever made, but it's not without its blemishes, this being the worst blemish of all.

Posting the First: Kingdom Hearts Series

I remember the first time I heard about the game that would be Kingdom Hearts. I had heard that some of the beloved characters from past Final Fantasy games would be making a comeback, working together to solve a major problem that almost eclipsed their previous adventures. Not only that, but they'd be forced to side with a new ally, one that would put their power to shame. This unstoppable for could only be... Mickey Mouse?

I'll admit, I was REALLY skeptic about the game at first. At the time, I failed to see how any Disney character short of the Horned King could kick any amount of ass. However, I saw new screenshots in the magazines (Yeah, people actually read about upcoming games in magazines back then), read about how you'd be able to fight in Olympus Colosseum, and found out you could even visit with Winnie the Pooh. I gradually got more excited about the game the more I found out about it.

Finally, I found out that you could fight Sephiroth. That clinched it. I was buying this game.

Overall, these games are great. It introduced a fighting style that is now semi-standard in Square Enix's action games, and weaved an epic story that, though I was skeptic at first, found a way that actually worked and made you root for the main characters. I'll focus first on Kingdom Hearts, then I'll expound upon it's numerical sequel, Kingdom Hearts II (there's a sequel set between the two, Chain of Memories for the GameBoy Advance. I tried playing it once and couldn't get the hang of it, so forget it).

Here's the premise of the game: You play as Sora, a boy from Destiny Island who one day comes into contact with a mysterious weapon called the Keyblade. He uses this Keyblade to battle the Heartless, dark creatures who feed on the hearts of the innocent. He travels across different world based off of various Disney movies alongside Donald Duck and Goofy, who are looking for Mickey themselves. As Sora, you must stop the onslaught of Heartless, find your friends, and save the worlds from complete destruction from your mysterious foes, which include several memorable Disney villains.

Game Play

Square Enix knows how to control a character. This knowledge was very present in Kingdom Hearts. Controlling Sora, the game's main protagonist, is fairly natural, but at the same time, new. From my perspective anyway, you use what's normally the “jump” button to attack, and you use what's normally the “dash/extra action” button to jump. You move Sora around with the L3 button (yeah, that's what that joystick's called), and you make mini-menu selections with the D-Pad.

Of course, if you make an action game, you've got to have fluid combat controls. The good thing about these two games is that you can force your way through most problems by constantly attacking the enemies, but every now and then you have to actually think about how you're fighting which enemy. That gives both ease of access to the game, but also something that makes you think and alter your strategies.

Sora has a number of attacking options at his disposal for an eleven-year-old armed with an oversized key. Pressing the attacking button in succession performs physical attack combos, and the combos differ if you're on the ground or in the air. Want to attack with fire? No problem! You learn magic spells and upgrade them throughout the course of the game. Need help in a pinch? Summon up a Disney character like Genie or Tinkerbell to come and kick some ass for you!

One interesting aspect of game play is Abilities. As you fight and level up, you learn different abilities that add to your performance in the game. These abilities have various effects, including drawing in nearby items, making attack combos longer, or double-jumping. You equip different abilities on a point-system; each ability requires a certain number of points to equip, and if you don't have enough Ability Points (AP), you can't equip that ability. While this somewhat constricts what the player can and cannot do, it also allows them to alter the controls to suit their playing style best.

Kingdom Hearts II takes things further with the Drive Gauge and Reaction Commands. If you press the Triangle button at an opportune moment, it could trigger a special attack. These are called Reaction Commands, as you have to react quickly to prompting in order to pull it off. Some Reaction Commands play big roles in certain battles. For instance, in the Tron-based world, Space Paranoids, the only way to damage the MCP is through a Reaction Command that shoots a beam using both Sora's and Tron's power.

The Drive Gauge also plays a huge role in Kingdom Hearts II. Sora is now able to combine his power with those in his party, resulting in “forms” that heighten Sora's abilities in combat. Combining with Goofy results in Valor Form, which increases Sora's physical abilities. Combining with Donald results in Wisdom Form, which heightens Sora's magical abilities. Combining with both available party members results in either Master or Final Forms, which both kick tons of ass in general. Sometimes, merging with party members fails, resulting in Anti Form. Sora becomes more feral than anything and attacks like a savage beast, unable to pick up any health power-ups.

The Drive Gauge lets you use these forms for a certain amount of time. Using these forms requires a certain amount of Drive, and the more you use a given form, the longer you can stay in that form. Leveling up forms allows you to use certain abilities from that form out of that form, like increased jumping height, double-jumping, and gliding.

The thing that makes Kingdom Hearts II a great sequel is that it does what all great sequels should do: take everything about the first game and improve upon it. The controls are tighter, the action is more stylish.

Graphics

If you know anything about me, you know that I could really give a damn about graphics. I'd sooner take a good ol' NES game with shitty 8-bit graphics than some first-person-shooter with an unheard-of number of polygons. However, I know when to give credit where credit is due. The game looks really good. I don't know if it comes from Disney's animation labs or Squeenix's knowledge of how the Playstation 2 work. It's probably a combination of both, as both games push the graphical capabilities of the system to its limits. Overall, the animation is extremely fluid, dynamic, and generally just fun to watch.

However, I can be really picky about graphics when I want to be. There aren't many instances, but you can really see where Squeenix cut some corners. Occasionally, you'll notice during cutscenes where they just stuck in general mouth movements that don't sync up with what's being said. The chandelier in Beast's Castle (Y'know, the one that won the movie a few Academy Awards?) is more or less like a paper craft someone would make a your fourth-grade art class. These are really small things but you end up looking at them like “Really, Square Enix? You couldn't fit that one last thing in there?”

While I'm on the subject of cutscenes, there are a lot of those in the game, almost too many, and far too long. While the two games are action-heavy and there's loads to actually do, pretty much everything you do triggers a cutscene at some point, and a lot of the time, it's little, unnecessary stuff, like Mickey looking at a building and saying “C'mon, you can do it, Sora!” This stuff adds up quickly and almost makes the game feel more like an interactive DVD.

Sound

Yoko Shimomura took charge of the music for this game. While a lot of it comes from arranging popular Disney songs, she's also composed some great music for the games that not only fits in with the cartoony Disney feel, but is also incredibly epic when it needs to be. The battle music is riveting, exciting, and new, which is a big thing for me. Shimomura delivers, and in spades. Conversely, I find myself humming the Winnie the Pooh song along with the game when I'm in the storybook.

The one downfall is in Kingdom Hearts II, in the Little Mermaid world, Atlantica. The inclusion of missions like the ones here is the single greatest downfall of the game, and in my opinion, one of Square Enix's biggest mistakes ever. But I have an entire post about that in the works, so I'll just kind of skim over that for now.

Overall Presentation

If you look at how video games are being produced nowadays, it kind of goes back to what I said earlier. As technology advances, video games become more cinematic in quality. If left unchecked, as these games sometimes do, they become much more like interactive movies. This becomes extremely apparent as video games use more orchestral scoring, voice acting, and motion capture.

That being the case, the Kingdom Hearts games combine what both companies are known for: Disney's dramatic, yet cartoony approach and Square's sometimes excessive cutscenes. The cutscenes look very good, but it can really slow down the action at times. What I'm impressed with more is Disney's ability to draw in big-name vocie actors. Haley Joel Osment voices Sora, Christopher Lee voices Ansem the Wise, and Mandy Moore voices Aerith in the first game. Disney also tried to pull as many strings as possible in order to have actors reprise their roles from their movies: Robbie Benson as the Beast, James Wood as Hades, and Jodi Benson as Ariel. In cases where the original actors would not reprise their roles, Disney went with actors who voiced the characters in the straight-to-video sequels, like Dan Castalenetta as Genie.

My one complaint about the game's presentation is the tutorial sections of the game. They're far too long for a seasoned video-gamer like myself. The games kind of treat you like a child, most likely because that's who the games are aimed at. My complaint is that for people who play video games frequently don't need a three-hour-long tutorial that explains how to play a game I already know how to play. Granted, some of the important plot details are set during these scenes, but that's the only reason I've legitimized the length of these parts. It sets the episodic story structure of the game, which almost makes you want to play the game more in itself.

Overall, I'd have to say Disney took care of the game's presentation, while Squeenix took care of the gameplay aspects. The result is the best of both worlds, which comes together quite well.

Final Thoughts

Simply put, these games are the awesome love-children of the Disney-Squeenix Odd Couple. For someone who grew up watching Disney movies and playing Squaresoft's games, these games are a must-play. The game is fun to play, fun to watch, and fun to take in as a whole. There are a few shortcomings here and there, but the pro's heavily outweigh the con's. If you're a fan of either company, get a hold of these games stat!

Rating: 9/10