Blazing Chrome

Blazing Chrome. This one is a run&gun like classic contra games from NES/SEGA/SNES. I started to play it on normal difficulty, got around two stages till I quit and restarted on easy. Beat on easy, and started again on normal, this time I got through four stages. Decided to take a break and read what people on Steam say about this game. As expected there were both praises and complains. Many people compared it to Contra Hard Corps on SEGA. Same people said as well Blazing Chrome is “we have Contra Hard Corps at home” type of game. I do agree with that. After that I decide to refresh my memory with Contra Hard Corps and played through couple of stages. And just like Blazing Chrome it had cheap bullshit death BUTT there were differences in bullshits.

But let’s start with the plot as I usually do, pattern is such a thing that will occur to you to make thing easier for you so you can give you brain and reaction reflexes some rest. Anyway, instead of aliens as it was in Contra Earth was attacked and conquered by robot. So Terminators plot, but we don’t have time machine so humanity just fights back in hopes to fix their place to live on this planet. Or I should say to take back what’s rightfully ours since we evolved to walk on two legs and used thumbs to hold tools properly. Humanity has resistance camp over the planet but we are still few. So dire situation calls for dire action, humanity sent two (technically four but other two characters are locked till you beat the game once) fighters. Blond girl, not Sheena, this one is called Mavra and one robot who was either reprogrammed or decided to betray Skynet on its own. Sorry forgot his name. There are also a ninja and a girl with bionic arm. 

Gameplay. Since it is run and gun you know the basics of it. We run from point “A” to point “B” and while we run we also shoot at enemies. There are platforming elements and but they are not difficult but combined with hordes of enemies both melee and ranged ones makes it quite hard. And if I compare the amount of enemies in Blazing Chrome compare to regular Contra or Hard Corps then BC wins by having hordes of enemies that don’t die with a single shot. There are way too much enemies even on easy and they all have way too much HP for regular grunts. You are supposed to counter it your melee attack, but it doesn’t work as it intended all the times. You will be overwhelmed even if you decide to take it slowly. Once again comparing two games BC spawn enemies in less numbers and with slightly higher cooldown time compare to Contra. Still imo it doesn’t help that much. I’ve never felt like I’m in control of a situation compared to how I felt as kid playing HC but guess that’s what aging does to you. Plus Contra did not have this much crates and jumping over it enemies like BC has. Seriously those choke points are what usually kill you or force you to slow down to a crawl and still manage to kill you. You I do feel slight scent of “South American romhack touch” as I say it in review of Fight’n’Rage. In situation where contra would not press you like an officer that urgently needs a promotion, BC will add just enough extra bullshit to kill you. Be it extra HP on an enemy or slight change in attack pattern or one extra attack that you didn’t expect. Just an extra bullshit to piss you off.

Anyway back to gameplay. Your arsenal is not big just four weapon and shooting characters have the same guns unlike HC. And those guns are “meh” at best. So you have your classic rapid fire machine gun. Grenade launcher, very strong but very slow fire rate. Flamethrower/extend arm yes that a mix of what Fang has as flamethrower or Browney had as morning star weapon. Charge Beam this one is from classic Contra, you can either tap it or charge shot it. Melee characters just use their swords to attack, but they throw a small slash wave with each hit or they can charge it for a big long range sword wave. To be honest I haven’t played as Bionic girl yet maybe she has something else. Back at it, you can also do a slide move by pressing down and jump.  It gives you short temporary I-frames but you’d need to get used to it to have it for your advantage. It most likely will mess you controls when you need to shoot at downward angle. Right there is also lock in place button for you to aim. But it doesn’t work well with keyboard control as I’m not able to shot in north-west direction but can shoot in north-east direction. I blamed my keyboard first for being a cheap plastic crap but as I played CHC I noticed that I can actually shot in north-west direction. Guess I owe my keyboard an apology.  

Right, level length also feels extended, could’ve sliced a stage of each level to make a couple of extra levels. But I guess since game respawn you at the beginning of each stage without making you replay previous stages in doesn’t matter that much. You also have infinite continues except for hard difficulty. Right amount of lives are also different, on easy it’s 7, on normal it’s 5 and on hard you have 3 lives. Funny that in HC you can pick between having 1 live or 3 lives.  Obviously I’m not going play on hard difficulty feck this shit I’m too old for this. What left, right apart from weapons you also have support drones and occasional mecha suit to ride. There are three types of help drones. Attack drone, Defense drone and Speed drone. Attack capsule spawns a drone that will fly near you and shoot as you attack just like it was in Shaterhand. Defense drone will protect you from two hits. Speed drone will make you walk speed faster. As for mechas, there are three of them in total. First one has rapid machine gun attack, second one close combat drill and third one has charge beam. There are achievements if you manage to keep them intact through the stage.

So in the end I would like to say it is ok contra clone. Graphics and pixel art looks gorgeous just like in HC. As for the OST… yeah, not a banger, definitely not a banger. And good OST in a contra game is big part of it. As for the difficulty: Be prepared for some cheap bullshit death as well as long stages. It’s not a must play or definite skip so it is in the middle. If you going to play it then play it for good pixel graphics.