Review – Contra: Operation Galuga

There used to be a Konami arcade machine down at the local takeaway shop when I was a kid. We would get fish and chips every Friday, and I was allowed to play a few games while our order was being prepared, this was my only experience with the Contra boys Bill and Lance. So, when I saw there was going to be an updated ‘remake’ I thought this would be the perfect chance have a proper go at the series without it costing me 20 cents a life.

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Way Forwards addition to the Contra franchise, Operation Galuga is heavily based on the original 1987 release with updated graphics, some quality-of-life upgrades including new levels, enemies, and bosses. New weapons and upgrades, and a brilliant 80s style action movie soundtrack.

The story is simple, Bill and Lance (voiced by Steve Blum and Alejandro Saab) are part of an elite task force called Contra, your objective is to eliminate a mercenary presence on the island of Galuga.

Having never played a Contra game I thought I would play through the Story mode solo so I could experience everything it has to offer at my own pace. Contra is a side scrolling run and gun action masterpiece. Its fast, and action packed, switching weapons on the fly blasting your way through platoons of mercenaries.

I did find the default controls a little hard to master. I’m playing on console (Xbox Series X) so your movement and aiming is the left analog stick, this took me a while to get used to and as Contra is a side scrolling run and gun action game there is a lot of moving and shooting, I can see they wanted to keep the original arcade feeling to it but having the moving and shooting tied to the same button meant it was hard to aim and avoid the enemy fire, also you can only be hit 3 times before its game over . You shoot by pressing ‘X’ (it can also be held down) jumping is ‘A’ and there is a dodge assigned to ‘B’. There is a lot of jumping and dodging so unless you play ‘claw’ which I do not, I found all the aiming, jumping, and dodging very difficult. I resigned my shooting to the right trigger so I could jump and dodge without having to stop firing.

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There are 6 different weapons you can collect throughout the 8 mission story mode, ranging from your default rifle to homing missiles, a gun that can only be described as a shotgun which shoots out a cone of bullets. There is a flame thrower and a grenade launcher. Each weapon can be upgraded to level 2 which in turn changes the way the gun operates. The biggest change is the grenade launcher changes to launching black holes! Each weapon can be consumed to detonate a special attack like spawning turrets or covering the screen in bouncing projectiles.

Each level you complete you are awarded points which can be spent on upgrading your experience, like starting the level with different weapons or adding health bars and extra lives. The story mode took me a little under 2.5 hours to complete

Arcade mode is exactly the same as story mode except you are awarded extra points to spend on upgrades and it’s 4 players instead of 2. Unfortunately, there is no online multiplayer, it’s only couch co-op. I found this to be a very weird choice as I thought playing this multiplayer would be a big drawing card. I had a couple of fiends who have been hyping this up and we wanted to play it together and we couldn’t. Missed opportunity there.

I have a joystick controller for my Xbox so I plugged that in and played through arcade mode, and it worked perfectly I felt like I was my 10 year old self smashing the buttons trying to avoid the chaos on the screen. What a blast. I managed to shave a whole hour off my arcade mode play through. There is no chapter select but you progress is saved so you don’t have to start again every time you want to play.

There is a challenge mode as well, which gives you different objectives to complete. Like speed running levels, finishing a level without shooting, things like that.

I had loads of fun with Contra: Operation Galuga. It is a fantastic place pick up the series, hopefully you will have a few friends you can play with to enhance the fun.