Hard Corps: Uprising Review

I'm old enough to remember when videogames were really hard. Yes, there's the occasional Demon's Souls or Super Meat Boy to test the modern gamer's mettle, but the vast majority of today's games lack the thumb-numbing frustration of the old school. So, when Konami announced Hard Corps: Uprising, a spiritual prequel to 1994's Contra: Hard Corps, I expected a brutally challenging game with insane boss battles and frenetic pacing. What I didn't anticipate is a game so difficult and exasperating that only the most masochistic gamers among us will even marginally enjoy it.

Let's get this out of the way first: Uprising is a Contra game. Short of actually placing the word "Contra" in the game's title, developer Arc System Works has positioned Uprising well into the Contra universe. You'll choose to play as either Bahamut (who appears in the original Hard Corps as a villain, strangely) or female protagonist Krystal. Both of the heroes are members of the Union rebel faction, attempting to overthrow -- well, it doesn't really matter. In typical Contra tradition, the game's barely existent plot is hardly even acknowledged, only conveyed through paragraph-long text displayed on each stage's loading screen. Regardless, you must run-and-gun their way though eight side-scrolling stages, fighting huge bosses throughout and at each level's end.

Jill Arrington Tami Donaldson Padma Lakshmi Sarah Mutch Gabrielle Union