Contra: Shattered Soldier Critic Reviews

Just like the best Contra games before it, Shattered Soldier puts your gaming skills completely to the test, but can still be mastered.

Its combination of old-school shooter gameplay and high-end graphics makes it a blast to play.

Fine shooting action served straight, no chaser.

After numerous shoddy attempts to bring classic Contra gameplay to a next-gen system, Konami finally gets it right.

Old school in every possible way.

I really enjoyed Shattered Soldier and I highly recommend that you grab a best friend and tear through this game some Friday night.

Adding lots of enemies and huge bosses only makes the game more frustrating. Expect veins to pop out of your cranium, and a few broken controllers. Although I did have a tough time getting through the missions, I did have fun.

This game is excellent, although very frustrating. I only made it past the Easy difficulty, I am not even going to try the Normal difficulty even if the real ending is behind it.

Delightfully preposterous H.R. Giger carnage.

I sorely miss the old weapons that Konami decided to remove. Gone are the spray gun, missle launchers, laser cannon, and super bomb.

Does a lot of things right, but sadly it is mainly for the purest of pure hardcore gamers, as Shattered Soldier’s steep learning curve and INCREDIBLY difficult gameplay, this probably will not please a mainstream gamer too much.

Probably one of the toughest titles released for the PS2 and right up there with the other games in the Contra series.

The most faithful translation of a classic yet, but there's no denying that the difficulty will turn some off.

Make no mistake, you will die like a fly playing this game, very early and very often. But the pattern design is good enough that skill and perceptive analysis offers the possibility of mastery for dedicated players.

The simplistic gameplay of the series is not lost but refined to create a challenge that is both undeniably fun and not entirely impossible.

Pure Contra goodness. Most of the hallmarks that make the series great are here, including finger-frazzling gameplay, the indispensable two-player cooperative mode, constant shooting action, and giant bosses with well-hidden weak points.

No matter how many times you die in the same place, no matter how frustrated you get, it has that magical power to make you snatch that controller back and soldier on.

Die-hard Contra fans hoping for a pure Contra remake may find themselves a little disappointed that, for all its similarity to its classic predecessors, Contra: Shattered Soldier takes a few too many liberties.

While Contra: Shattered Soldier is a short game, fans of the original will eat it up. It’s also a game for anyone looking for a challenge.

You'll definitely get into it if you're into classic shooters, but if you've been reared in the modern era, it may simply be too frustrating.