Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica.
It’s safe to say Contra passed on its crown as run-and-gun royalty a long time ago. The last truly great entry was 2011’s—an unrecognizable-as-Contra game which doesn’t even bear the series name—and even before that point, Contra had muddled through multiple halfhearted reinventions in between quality games.
These days Contra has stiffer competition than ever, with modern masterworks like Cuphead, Blazing Chrome, and Huntdown building out the run and gun formula with more extravagant setpieces and more varied combat. But even amidst those games Galuga has some novel ideas. My favorite is the new overload mechanic: You pick up special weapons as you go like in most other Contra games, and you can only carry and swap between two at a time.
The perk store offers similarly powerful boons: character-specific special moves, extra lives, free weapon upgrades, extra hit points, and so on that you can buy with credits earned by playing. If you enjoy run-and-guns for the tough-as-nails difficulty, this might all sound like the sort of stuff you’d find on a Game Genie, but the customization goes both ways. From the very start you can up the difficulty, make every enemy attack a one-hit-kill, and even deactivate 360 degree aiming .
And with Project Galuga’s high degree of customization, you can really dial in how you choose to self-flagellate. I’m not sure it reaches the eye-straining highs of the very best Contras, but it’s a thrilling return to form for a long-dormant titan, an accessible entry point to the genre it helped define, and a rich playground for veterans to test their mettle.Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.
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