I thought I would try out a review, and see what people think of it, so here we go.
A couple of weeks back, I expressed to my brother a desire to play a side scrolling shooter, something you don't see all that much of any more. I quite like the Metal Slug series, they are quirky and fun, but really not worth 1200 microsoft points in my opinion. Then shortly after I came across Hard Corps: Uprising, and my wish was granted. With that in mind, I wish Sony would release Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 for the PS3... *waits expectantly*
So I bought Uprising yesterday and have been playing both solo and co-op. Visually I found the game very impressive, it has a great style, with lots of stuff going on on-screen at any given moment, movement in the background, rustling bushes in the jungle, and so on. The almost anime style graphics stand out from a lot of other games, with a lot of depth and detail, I was pleasantly surprised for a side scrolling arcade title. The animations are clear and expressive, the enemies, though faceless, convey emotion in deaths and little background comedy scenes that are highly entertaining, deliberately like an amateur dramatics Shakespeare production.
The sound works well, effects and ambient all fit well within the gameplay, and are very apt for each level. Nothing really leapt out at me, it is very much background noise really, but that is more than enough for this type of game. The only thing that did stand out for me, is when you are causing damage on things like turrets and bosses, when they sound for some reason like an electronic dinosaur...
Gameplay is the key feature of any game obviously, especially in an arcade action heavy offering like this. Side scrollers all tend to be very similar, move steadily right, pick up weapon upgrades, and shoot all the enemies running left, and the odd few that come from behind. At its' heart it is nothing you haven't seen before, but Uprising adds quite a bit to this formula. I haven't played the old Contra games really, aside from a few brief attempts many many years ago, so I have no idea what features are new for this. Uprising features two weapon slots, allowing you to switch back and forth between two different special weapons, rather than just being able to carry one at any given time, and it makes a big difference. Many of these games suffer when you lose your special weapon, resorting to the default weapon can make the game incredibly difficult, and not always much fun. By carrying two special weapons, you can take a hit, lose one, and still keep blasting away with over the top wargear. It really helps with the pace in my opinion, and lessens the chance of you being stuck against screenfuls of enemies with only a basic weapon.
The weapons themselves include a couple of genre standards, machine gun and spread gun, as well as a few more esoteric weapons like the very short ranged missile launcher (crash gun), and the ripple gun, which looks a lot like a pressure washer.
The enemies are nicely varied, with basic grunts that run across screen taking the occasional shot, to instant death snipers, robot alligators, and bats. The tension is kept high as there are usually quite a few different enemies on screen at any given time, giving you a range of different attacks to overcome at once, jumping, ducking, and shooting your way past leaping frogs, arcing artillery, and lasers of doom. Having a health bar comprised of several boxes does away with the traditional one hit kill gameplay style and gives you much better odds, eliminating some of the incredible frustration games of this type can cause.
As well as the basic arcade mode, there is also Rising mode. In Rising mode, you earn Corp Points, which you can then spend on your character between levels, or from the title screen. Upgrades range from having more health boxes, lives, and continues, to starting the game with a special weapon, and can also purchase special abilities. These abilities are context sensitive, activated with the B button, and include the ability to reflect incoming bullets, or vaulting over low obstacles when you are dashing.
The various upgrades are really well balanced, and make you think about what you want, there are no obvious choices, and no wrong options as you spend your well earned points. It makes the game significantly more replayable as you grind levels (you can replay any level as many times as you like) to earn points and buy cool stuff.
It is a tremendous amount of fun, and in my opinion well worth buying, but there are a few issues. Firstly, some of the checkpoints mid level can be a long way apart, if you die against a boss, you can often be pushed back half a level, having to battle your way through all over again. The levels aren't too long, so you never have more than a couple of minutes of ground to recover, but if you die a few times, you will find yourself cursing, and I stopped playing a few times at the thought of having to do the same section over and over again, just to defeat one boss.
The other big problem I have encountered was playing co-op with my brother. We played through the first two levels in rising mode, but I was the only one to earn any Corp Points for upgrades, he just had a default character and didn't earn anything. When we relaunched the game from his account to check, he could earn points, but I couldn't. This makes local co-op a bit of a waste of time, as one of you will always be the basic, un-upgraded character. My brother does not have a gold account, so whether or not there is some way around this problem if you have two gold membership players, I don't know. Hopefully there is some way for two local players to have a proper game together, presumably if you play online with someone you both earn points for playing? It is a real kick in the teeth for anyone wanting to play local co-op, and seems to continue the unfortunate trend of ignoring this aspect of gaming.
Initially there are two characters available to use, Bahamut, and Krystal. They have the same weapons, but Bahamut has 3 starting health squares, to Krystal's 2, making him easier to use. If you are playing Rising mode, the points you earn can only be spent on the character you earned them as, and stages you unlock can only be played as that character too, each character is entirely separate in that regard.
The other two characters you see in the opening intro sequence (a very cool animated intro story showing you the protagonists) are available as DLC. They are 200 points each, and whether you think they are worth it is of course entirely personal. I downloaded and tried them both, in order to give you a thorough analysis. Sayuri is an assassin, and has no gun, her standard attack is with a samurai sword. It does significantly more damage than any of the guns, which offsets the problem of having o get in close to attack. She does also have a charge up range attack, by holding X down for a few seconds, which is very useful against many of the ranged enemies, and for keeping out of trouble. Harley though is less unique, he starts with 4 health squares, and apparently his weapon and health upgrades are cheaper than the other three, but he has nothing special aside from that, so I probably wouldn't bother spending 200mp's on him, unless you really want to play as a 70's rocker.
Between the four characters, there are two male, and two female, which I think is a good way to go, and each one has a very brief backstory (very very brief). Given the separation of each character, you probably don't want to play too many, I am using Krystal and Sayuri, as they play very differently, but you probably wouldn't want to have games going for both Bahamut and Harley, for example, as they are so similar.
If you are a side scrolling shooter fan, this is definitely the best of them out there and I highly recommend it, it is colourful, much deeper than you might imagine for this genre, and loads of fun to play. It is pretty hard, and can definitely give you many many hours of gaming, retrying levels over and over, upgrading until you can try that next challenging mission.
9/10
A couple of weeks back, I expressed to my brother a desire to play a side scrolling shooter, something you don't see all that much of any more. I quite like the Metal Slug series, they are quirky and fun, but really not worth 1200 microsoft points in my opinion. Then shortly after I came across Hard Corps: Uprising, and my wish was granted. With that in mind, I wish Sony would release Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 for the PS3... *waits expectantly*
So I bought Uprising yesterday and have been playing both solo and co-op. Visually I found the game very impressive, it has a great style, with lots of stuff going on on-screen at any given moment, movement in the background, rustling bushes in the jungle, and so on. The almost anime style graphics stand out from a lot of other games, with a lot of depth and detail, I was pleasantly surprised for a side scrolling arcade title. The animations are clear and expressive, the enemies, though faceless, convey emotion in deaths and little background comedy scenes that are highly entertaining, deliberately like an amateur dramatics Shakespeare production.
The sound works well, effects and ambient all fit well within the gameplay, and are very apt for each level. Nothing really leapt out at me, it is very much background noise really, but that is more than enough for this type of game. The only thing that did stand out for me, is when you are causing damage on things like turrets and bosses, when they sound for some reason like an electronic dinosaur...
Gameplay is the key feature of any game obviously, especially in an arcade action heavy offering like this. Side scrollers all tend to be very similar, move steadily right, pick up weapon upgrades, and shoot all the enemies running left, and the odd few that come from behind. At its' heart it is nothing you haven't seen before, but Uprising adds quite a bit to this formula. I haven't played the old Contra games really, aside from a few brief attempts many many years ago, so I have no idea what features are new for this. Uprising features two weapon slots, allowing you to switch back and forth between two different special weapons, rather than just being able to carry one at any given time, and it makes a big difference. Many of these games suffer when you lose your special weapon, resorting to the default weapon can make the game incredibly difficult, and not always much fun. By carrying two special weapons, you can take a hit, lose one, and still keep blasting away with over the top wargear. It really helps with the pace in my opinion, and lessens the chance of you being stuck against screenfuls of enemies with only a basic weapon.
The weapons themselves include a couple of genre standards, machine gun and spread gun, as well as a few more esoteric weapons like the very short ranged missile launcher (crash gun), and the ripple gun, which looks a lot like a pressure washer.
The enemies are nicely varied, with basic grunts that run across screen taking the occasional shot, to instant death snipers, robot alligators, and bats. The tension is kept high as there are usually quite a few different enemies on screen at any given time, giving you a range of different attacks to overcome at once, jumping, ducking, and shooting your way past leaping frogs, arcing artillery, and lasers of doom. Having a health bar comprised of several boxes does away with the traditional one hit kill gameplay style and gives you much better odds, eliminating some of the incredible frustration games of this type can cause.
- the levels are very varied, and can change significantly within a level too
As well as the basic arcade mode, there is also Rising mode. In Rising mode, you earn Corp Points, which you can then spend on your character between levels, or from the title screen. Upgrades range from having more health boxes, lives, and continues, to starting the game with a special weapon, and can also purchase special abilities. These abilities are context sensitive, activated with the B button, and include the ability to reflect incoming bullets, or vaulting over low obstacles when you are dashing.
The various upgrades are really well balanced, and make you think about what you want, there are no obvious choices, and no wrong options as you spend your well earned points. It makes the game significantly more replayable as you grind levels (you can replay any level as many times as you like) to earn points and buy cool stuff.
It is a tremendous amount of fun, and in my opinion well worth buying, but there are a few issues. Firstly, some of the checkpoints mid level can be a long way apart, if you die against a boss, you can often be pushed back half a level, having to battle your way through all over again. The levels aren't too long, so you never have more than a couple of minutes of ground to recover, but if you die a few times, you will find yourself cursing, and I stopped playing a few times at the thought of having to do the same section over and over again, just to defeat one boss.
The other big problem I have encountered was playing co-op with my brother. We played through the first two levels in rising mode, but I was the only one to earn any Corp Points for upgrades, he just had a default character and didn't earn anything. When we relaunched the game from his account to check, he could earn points, but I couldn't. This makes local co-op a bit of a waste of time, as one of you will always be the basic, un-upgraded character. My brother does not have a gold account, so whether or not there is some way around this problem if you have two gold membership players, I don't know. Hopefully there is some way for two local players to have a proper game together, presumably if you play online with someone you both earn points for playing? It is a real kick in the teeth for anyone wanting to play local co-op, and seems to continue the unfortunate trend of ignoring this aspect of gaming.
Initially there are two characters available to use, Bahamut, and Krystal. They have the same weapons, but Bahamut has 3 starting health squares, to Krystal's 2, making him easier to use. If you are playing Rising mode, the points you earn can only be spent on the character you earned them as, and stages you unlock can only be played as that character too, each character is entirely separate in that regard.
The other two characters you see in the opening intro sequence (a very cool animated intro story showing you the protagonists) are available as DLC. They are 200 points each, and whether you think they are worth it is of course entirely personal. I downloaded and tried them both, in order to give you a thorough analysis. Sayuri is an assassin, and has no gun, her standard attack is with a samurai sword. It does significantly more damage than any of the guns, which offsets the problem of having o get in close to attack. She does also have a charge up range attack, by holding X down for a few seconds, which is very useful against many of the ranged enemies, and for keeping out of trouble. Harley though is less unique, he starts with 4 health squares, and apparently his weapon and health upgrades are cheaper than the other three, but he has nothing special aside from that, so I probably wouldn't bother spending 200mp's on him, unless you really want to play as a 70's rocker.
Between the four characters, there are two male, and two female, which I think is a good way to go, and each one has a very brief backstory (very very brief). Given the separation of each character, you probably don't want to play too many, I am using Krystal and Sayuri, as they play very differently, but you probably wouldn't want to have games going for both Bahamut and Harley, for example, as they are so similar.
If you are a side scrolling shooter fan, this is definitely the best of them out there and I highly recommend it, it is colourful, much deeper than you might imagine for this genre, and loads of fun to play. It is pretty hard, and can definitely give you many many hours of gaming, retrying levels over and over, upgrading until you can try that next challenging mission.
9/10
