Get Played - Get Played Remastered: Contra: Rogue Corps with Colton Dunn

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Originally Released July 11th, 2021 Colton Dunn returns to the show to discuss Contra Rogue Corps with Nick and Heather! They talk about gaming habits as a parent, how the game diverts from what makes Contra fun, and more! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd where we're saying goodbye to Get Anime'd! New Patreon episodes coming in January go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash get played for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's QINCE.com slash get played. free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash get played. Well, guys, the Contra anniversary is coming up, and I know we are all coming in hot at Konami.

We've got a new game on the horizon. We're going to do some new stuff with this one. We've got those two dudes maybe and a 3D environment so that they can fire the guns in all directions. But I want to hear your biggest impulses for this one. I want to hear the things that you think this game needs. needs to elevate that Contra experience. I mean, I'm thrilled and honestly a little nervous because fans love this franchise.

They love the Contra games. They do. And we're doing a modern reimagining of it. We've got to get things right. Yes, we absolutely do. And so, you know, the main characters, Bill and Lance, that everyone remembers from their childhood, has such fond memories of. Yeah. Get them the fuck out of here.

Get the fuck out, Bill and Lance. No, thank you. Um, yeah, they're done. You mean the guys from the cover, from the actual logo of the NES game? You want to get rid of those guys? Is that true? Yeah, the playable characters. Start digging your own graves, Bill and Lance.

You're out of here. Okay, you know, that's cool. Maybe I feel open to that. What are you looking at for Contra? What do you think? It's a, oh, do you want to incorporate, like, a woman? You are going to make this, like, woke Contra? What do you guys think?

Bug. A what? Yeah, it's like a bug. A bug. You want a bug? Yeah, big bug. Yeah, bug. Oh, like an alien that joined the contrast.

No, no, no. She doesn't get it. You want a bug? Let me make it perfectly fucking clear. Read my lips. Bug. You want you just, okay, you know what? I'll put it on the board.

I'll put it on the board. What else we got, guys? We got it, call them the gentleman. Though you have to call him the what? A bug called the gentleman You, okay, you want a bug firing guns and he's called... She doesn't get it.

Isn't, I don't want to... This is contra. Did I make that clear? It's contra. Yeah, you made it clear. You made it clear. Yeah, we understand. You mentioned a woman

will get a female character in there. Great, great. Okay. She's got like a, uh, a fucking quato in her stomach like to roll recall. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, she hates it. Like, she wants to kill it.

So she's always jamming a sword into her stomach and she's in constant pain. I feel like. And also she sucks. That's the key on the character. She sucks. Guys, I feel like maybe I gave you too much pressure on this deadline. I know we talked about it on Friday. It's only Monday.

Maybe you're just coming up with this stuff off the top of your head. No, okay, I see, you've got a full document there. You've got a full, crap. I have a whole, like, four book series based on the gentleman. Like, just what he thinks. A diary. Nobody wants that, is there anything else we can do to, there's got to be, is there an army guy? Can we put an army guy in?

Uh, yeah, as a fucking army guy, sure, whatever. We'll throw her a bone. We've got an army guy in there. Okay, thanks. And, and you know what else we got in there? What? Check out this full back tattoo of our new character, A Panda. You got a back tattoo of a character you're pitching today to include in-

First off, I do think- And he's got giant balls. Yeah, get big balls. What? He's got catchphrases like, fuck you, I'm a panda. What? And suck my giant panda balls. Fuck you.

where's my favorite friend the bug known as the gentleman you know what I fine it's all in the game just put it all in the game what? Wait wait this has to be playable

oh oh boy I don't know how to do that we get unnecessary organ replacement surgery and massacre interminable waves of boring ass enemies and baffling modern attempted a Contra game, Contra Rogue Core, this week on how did this get played?

Welcome to Out of the Skip Play, the show where we discussed the worst and weirdest, and why did I create a Twitter account just to submit this third W-est video games of all time? that third W was by at Heather and Matt are cool Wow Who indeed seemed to have created a Twitter account Just for this purpose Submit yours at Get Played Pod hashtag WWW I'm Nick Weiger along with the feather

Very cool Heather Ann Campbell Holy shit I am Heather Ann Campbell Along with our producer Matt Apodaca Hell yeah baby and hello everyone Hello everyone and welcome back Bucket Edge I can't know

You know, Heather's delighted by that. That's really sweet. You didn't have to go to all that trouble, Nick. I know you made that. I didn't just lie about making the account. I actually made the account so I could say it. And no, it was true. We have a really, really bad game we're talking about today.

It was not fun to play. And I think this is maybe the one that broke me, which I was not expecting. But it's really, it's really, truly was a, was a huge waste of, of all of our times. We, we had, this game was so bad that we had a conversation about the podcast itself. Like, there was a, there was a conversation we had where it was like, okay, what are we doing? Like, let's, like, seriously talk about, like, what we're doing on this show and, like, is this sustainable? Like, what are we doing? Yeah.

So it was pretty rough. And we got a great guest, and I'm really excited. Very, very excited to talk with our guest about games. Before we do that, and before we get into this hellish experience, that is this week's game, it is first time to briefly touch on a game we're enjoying by spending 70 seconds in gaming heaven. Matt, start us off. Go for it. You know, I started Horizon Zero Dawn back in the day when it first came out, and I think

Breath of the Wild came out at the same time. And so there was just, I just sideswiped it and moved on. about an hour of it back, or an hour of it back in the day, hour of it into it, hour of my life into any way. So I'm, I'm like 20 hours into a horizon. And it's, wow. I mean, it's pretty good. Like, I mean, nobody was wrong about this. Wow. It's pretty good. It's, it's weird what we've come to expect from AAA games, because like, it's weird to me that the faces are all like human masks where the mouth just flaps. Yeah. Because we've become so accustomed to like, oh, it's full motion capture on somebody's face.

But the fucking lore is great. It's also, and I'm going to say, I'm going to say this. And it's going to come as a little bit of a shock. Maybe I'm playing on too high a difficulty. I've died a lot. Wow. I've died a lot in this game. I see a fucking robot and I'm like, I want to kill this thing.

And you can't, you can't. It's like, it's like Dark Soul. Okay, well. yeah time's up i hate to hate to do that to you but the time that's cold dude did it did it make you more excited did it make you more excited did it make you more excited for the upcoming sequel hugely so i i went i mean look nothing is ever going to dethrone valhalla for me which was really an incredible experience that i felt like i was in quicksand and couldn't get out of And now that they've announced new modes, I'm fucked.

It's over. I'm going to go back into that game and I'll never come out. But I, there's some really good mythology. Like, here's, I didn't, I know you love Mass Effect. Yes, I'm playing through the trilogy right now. I really like a very, very, very dense world. And this is like Dune level density. Like everybody you meet has a culture that has to.

to be introduced to you. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. And fighting those robots is hard. Hey, wish we were talking about that game today. We're not. I'm talking about something else.

But we do have a tremendous guest returning to the show from NBC's Superstore, Voyage to the Stars, and Fairfax. A new cartoon coming soon to Amazon Prime. Colton Dunn is here. Hi, Colton. Hey, what's up, guys? How you do it? Colton, even playing this game, I feel bad that we made you do this.

But also, you went to the trouble of, like, setting up your, you have your rig behind you, so you have the game, like, you can play the game as we're doing the show. Well, yeah, I figured if we, there might be some things I want to point out. Colton, thank you so much for coming back. You know, obviously so much as transpired since your initial appearance, including this, you know, lockdown we all experienced. Did that change your gaming habits? That weird 2020 we all experienced? You know what? It did, but not because of the pandemic. It was more because I have a kid now.

Right. It has changed my gaming habits. I don't get a chance to play as much, which is why you see this screen here on my desk. It's normally sitting on the floor and both of my counsels are disattached and just kind of sitting there. And every once in a while, I'll reattach them and, like, play a game for, like, 15 minutes and then have to change a poop diaper. But where my games used to be is right there, where now my Ethereum mining machine is. Holy shit. Wow.

What the fuck? Just an array of GPUs behind him. God, damn it. Yeah, I got three, I got four graphics cards in there. Wow. Yeah, so I apologize to all the gamers out there for that. wow you could i was not i mean like of the things you could have gestured to you saying and this is my ethereum mine like was so low on that list just keeps going baby also because the setup

the setup was that you have a kid so i thought it was like and this is the kid's toy chest and instead you're like no i'm no this is a kid's college fund yeah hopefully So you have limited time for games now, and I know you're someone who really like shooters. Like, is that still what you hop into when you have like a half hour? 100% man. Yeah. I'm playing, I'm playing Halo. You know, Destiny was a big game that I was playing before, but unfortunately, you know, it's a little tougher to get in it.

Because Destiny, you got to do a lot of, you know, farming and stuff like that. So a little harder to keep up with everybody in that. But Halo, yeah, I can just jump into a game of Halo. Call of Duty, I've been doing a lot of that, Warzone. You know, I'll play that. But, you know, I actually have found this game that's really fun. Sorry, I got away from the mic. It's called Overland.

It's an Apple arcade game. And it's kind of like, it's kind of like a post-apocalyptic game where you have to you're trying to drive across the country and there's like monsters and shit but it's really fun and you can like and it's one of those kind of games

where you sort of like choose the morality of the group that you're with and so like you get to like these places that are a little like trading posts where you can like trade for goods but you could also just attack and kill the people who are selling the stuff, who are just other, you know, travelers like yourself.

But then once you do that, then progressively people hear stories about you. So as you go further through the game, if you run into like another trading post, they're like, hey, we don't, we're not, we can't, we're not going to trade with you guys because we heard about what you did, you know. And then if you kill them, like eventually you just start showing up and people just attack you as soon as you show up because they know you're a fucking monster. And you can kick people out of your group, which is fun. You kind of build your group together.

Yeah, you kind of build your group together. But sometimes, like, shit goes down on a level or whatever, and you're like, we've got to get out of here. But, you know, Lisa doesn't have enough moves to get back to the car. And you just have to be like, sorry, we're leaving Lisa here. But then Lisa will show up again later. And, like, at a place where you're at, like, you're fighting. And then all of a sudden another car will, like, drive.

in and crash into your car and Lisa will jump out and be like, I'm here for you now. You left me back there. Like trying to get her back. Overland. I highly recommend it. It's great. Cool. That's rad. I'm looking at it right now in the Apple Arcade store. Yeah, it's kind of got like an isometric

perspective. It looks like it's described as a post-apocalyptic road trip. Yep. Right? So basically, yeah, interesting. It looks cool. I love, man, that's the thing I really love when there's like kind of some, it's kind of an emergent like story generator in a game. You're just sort of like, I'm not just going through the prescripted cutscenes, the prescripted

cutscenes I'm going through like, like, oh, this thing can happen because of my choices. That's right. One of my other favorite parts is in between, like, so I say you go and you kill all these like traders or, you know, the people who are trading stuff. And then you go to like this sort of a little middle scene that they'll have is where all the characters are out of the car, just kind of sitting and resting and you look at a map. But like little like, you know, talk bubbles appear as. your characters are talking with each other,

and it'll be stuff like, I'm not so cool with what we did back there. I was like, well, I did what I had to do. You know, like, it'll just be like, it'll talk bubbles like that, which is very funny. That's awesome. Do you have, you said, like,

obviously, FPS is something that emerged in, you and Heather and I are about the same age, Matt is a child. But we, but FPS is a thing that emerged like, kind of as we were, you know, I feel like as we were teenagers, you know, 3D gaming becomes a thing. Before that, and I guess also these genres still exist, although it's more of a niche now, like your top-down shooters, your twin-stick shooters, your smash TVs, or your side-scrollers,

like the old-school Contras. Was that ever a genre you were into? 100%. Love side-scrollers. It was all about them. Contra was a huge game for me. you know like and you know Heather knows this too like like we're from where up up down down left like that's not like people have that on shirts and like I talk to people who like know that but they don't even know what the code is for I had to like learn that code and I used it on a regular

basis for Contra like I was I straight up loved Contra that side scrollers you know Contra double dragon bad dudes you know any any game with like guys. Guys just fucking shit up, you know, from left to right, it's my gun to sham. I like that the Konami code is now so ubiquitous that there are like children's toys that, like, are fake video games. And if you enter the Konami code into like a fake Game Boy that you give to your like toddler, something will happen. Like it's like now, it's like the secret code for life now. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the, you know, they carried it through with, so the Konami code up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B.A. start, which I had, as a kid, like, written in colored pencil on, like, a sheet of notebook paper next to my, where my Nintendo was, because it was, like, used in so many games. The first one I remember experiencing it was Gradius, which was the, you know, like a space shooter. But yeah, Contra, I never got through Contra, the original without the Konami code, because it gives you 30 lives as opposed to three lives. And it's a game that's, you know, not the most punishingly difficult game, but like a game where you can die a good amount. Like 30 lives is kind of what you need to get through it unless you've really, really figured it out. Am I of the correct impression that Contra was essentially your Vietnam type dudes and you're in an alien war? It's like, what if regular military dudes were suddenly like, oh shit. There's rambos.

There are two rambos, right? It's so clearly like predator inspired, I feel like. which is the same sort of thing, yeah. Super Contra, same thing. Regular dudes fighting the alien war. Like, really, like, that's, it's, the sort of fantasy of it is, oh, what if, what if dudes had to do this? Yeah, I mean, these guys can't do, like, multiple jump spins. Yeah.

They're not that regular. They're kind of, you know, they're really good soldiers, but yeah. Yes. I like that. Also, like, if we're going to just take it, like, literally, the bullet. bullets are the size of your chest in this game. If you could hit, you die immediately. Oh, yeah.

Which, I mean, there's a lot of complaints to level at the game we're about to talk about. But one of them for me is, why would you take that away? Why would you take away regular dudes fighting a thing? Because people want to see a panda bear do it. Yeah. It really does, you know, you talked about like a double dragon or something. Colton mentioned like a double dragon or a bad dudes, or I think of like final fight. And like this is a stylistic choice to be like, we're going to take this existing old IP

and we're going to reboot it in a way that's kind of like, it's kind of cheeky and self-aware and poking fun of itself. We see that happen with movies all the time, like the Brady Bunch movie or the Starsky and a Hutch with Ben Stiller. It's like, that's like a choice, but you have to honor the original. and this one feels like it has no connection to that. It's not like, hey, here are the two guys being the broiest dudes ever. It's like, here's one that kind of reminds you of the original Contra guys and then three completely new characters with their own lore and backstories. It's just a very convoluted, it just is a Contra game.

It doesn't even feel like a Contra game. It feels like its own thing. Yeah. Which is a shock because it was overseen by the director and senior producer of Contra 3. and Contra Hardcore and Contra's Shattered Soldier. Like, it wasn't like this was outsourced to some other place. Like, this was a Konami game by the Contra people who were like, I don't know, forgot. They forgot their game.

It's almost like when Street Fighter 3 came out originally and there was no Ken. And you're like, well, you've got to have Ryu and Ken. How can you not have Ken? Like, you've got to at least put Ken in the game. like you can make a bunch of other choices and then sure enough immediately they were like okay Ken is back in do you guys because I think the

original Contra is the one that people think of the most that's certainly the one I put it the most time into but also you know Contra 3 was the Super Nintendo one there's also Super C I think was a was the NES sequel but the one you mentioned

Contra Hardcore that was the Genesis one right I didn't play that one well some of us didn't, that was the only contra we could play. So. Right. Right. So.

Right. Exactly. No, all good. All good. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. And we host the show,

what's our podcast here on HeadGum? But we want to make sure you heard about a very special episode with a very special guest that we just released in the field. Yeah, it's in the feed. It was sponsored by Squarespace because they were appalled. We didn't have a website for our show yet. They were like... You don't have a website?

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No, it's not. It's Finn Wolfhard. But Finn had a bunch of great ideas for the website. Like, you had some amazing ideas for the website, too. Thank you. You had some amazing ideas for it. Well, I was sort of driving the thing. I was sort of, like, clicking and. And I was like, let's put a little, let's put some widgets in there.

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The link is in the podcast. episode description box. Contra Rogue Core is a isometric run-and-gun video game, although I guess it does change perspective a bunch. You kind of go behind people, you go above people, et cetera. The worst. It's so bad. Published by Konami in 2019.

Other games. 2019. 2019. It was a different time. The president was Trump. I looked, when I looked it up, after I started playing it, and I looked it up on my phone. Yeah.

I thought my eyes were bad. I was like, oh, my phone, the writing is too small. And I threw it away and got my computer out. And it was like, 2019. Yeah. It looks so terrible. It looks like an RTS game for the mid-2000s. It looks like a Warcraft 3 or something. It looks so dated. The textures in particular are so low quality. It's just a very, very ugly game. I won't even say, because I mean, like, I feel like we got a point across about other games from 2019. We're good. Like, I don't even have to list them. It's set in the fictional damned city Two years after Contra 3

The Alien Wars and Contra 4 But unlike the The former games Where you just play these little soldier guys You've got four Contra series characters Who are Kaiser A cyborg from the Alien Wars

Mrs. Harikiri Who's an assassin with an alien in her stomach gentleman who is a highly intelligent bug that speaks with like a British accent and Hungry-C-3PO. He's a 3-PO, yeah. He's a 3-PO. And Hungry Beast, who is a cyborg giant panda,

the fighters are known as Yeagers, which is just ripped off from... It's like, oh, Aaron Yeager, he's in... He's in... we should just name our stuff Yeagers. It's really and also there's like some real weird Nazi vibes to the

fact that that dude's name is Kaiser and you're Yeager. Come on guys. And and the only two humans are two blonde white humans. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely Nazis.

Yeah. It's Yeah, Kaiser in particular like Kaiser I like I hated all these characters. characters. Kaiser, I feel like, was the one I played with all of them. And Kaiser was the one I had the most fun playing with just because his weaponry was like the most conventional. I feel like some of the ones, the other weapons were so situation. But Kaiser is such a Duke Nukem rip off. He, down to the cigar, the same haircut, the same cigar. But he's just like a Duke Nukem with none of the sense of

fun. So it's just this sort of bland, I don't know, man. It's, all the characters are a bummer. For characters that should be inventive and fun. a lot also about how bad this game is that you would refer to Duke Nukem as fun. Like this guy, all the characters in this game swear, but none of them are either so bad at it, nor good at it, that it is ever welcome. Like, it's not like the panda's like, all right, let's fuck shit up. I'm going to take a dump on this guy's chest. Like, it's just like, it's like, what are we fucking doing here? Oh, no. Fuck. We're fucked like it's not it's bad it's bad game gentlemen so there's a bomb attack there's a

you know which is kind of your screen clear and gentleman's screen yeah it turns to dr strangelove is that attack you have a bomb and shoots up the air and then you ride it into the ground yes yeah so you get no damage but when other things explode right next to you you get a ton of damage it's really inconsistent but gentlemen's like the like you were talking about the quips Heather. Gentleman's quip when he does that is sorry, not sorry. And I, like, I hate it's like, oh, God, this is such a groaner. This, like,

fucking 2014 internet joke. You're just reusing. Here's what I, as far as playing the game, here's my main issue. There's a fundamental design issue here, which is that the twin stick shooter necessitates one, you know, you've got one stick for moving the character

or one stick for aiming your gun. So that's by necessity, those two your analog sticks are used for those purposes. But there is also a 3D camera in this game. So you have no control of your camera so you can't look at what you want to look at. It's a baffling choice. Why not just make this like a top down

or an isometric perspective? Yeah. It's 2019, dude. This is what everybody is doing. It's so upsetting. Yeah. Like the amount of time, you know, in a game's like that too,

I go, what makes me mad about it, is I go, I start going, I must be the one with the problem here. Sure. You know, like, I'm playing it and I'm like, okay, let me just relax. All right, I'll have another sparkling water. All right, now let's try it again. And like, oh, nope, still is not working. So fuck these guys because they're games.

Yeah. It's a game so bad that it gaslights you as a game. Yeah. Like you're like, you're like, I must be doing it. I'm crazy. Yeah. There's a point where, like, so I picked, you know, it's got a girl. So I pick the girl first to be like, oh, what's the girl like?

And she's got the laser gun, which is in the original contra, your least favorite weapon. Almost always, everybody fucking hates the laser. And I was like, God damn it. But the way the laser works in this game is that it just extends the length of the screen. And then you just sort of wave it, like almost like a, a. wand and wipe out the screen over and over again. It's so fucking bad and doesn't feel it doesn't feel like a shooter. It feels like you're waving a broom around.

It's fucking weird. It sucks. That also ties into another thing that's very frustrating about this game. There is a weapon overheating slash cool down mechanic. So you can only fire your gun for so long. There's no ammo, but you can only fire your gun for a few seconds before it overheats and then you have to wait for it to cool down again, to fire again. So you either have to toggle to your other weapon, which is more of a situational weapon.

So in her case, she has a chainsaw. So it's a very close range. So if you switch over the chainsaw, you can't really, like, you basically can't use it for shooting targets at distance. So you just have to basically like, like shoot for a little bit, stop shooting and then wait out. But then also what's fun about Contra is that you just have a bullet storm constantly. Like you're playing Contra 1. That's what's fun. You just love holding down the B button.

whole time. You don't get to experience that. Yeah, it's like, it's like if Sonic had to catch his breath

once in a while. Like, you know, three more second, Sonic. And that's just, but it's like a,

like aesthetically and tonally, it's very annoying. But then also like there's so many gameplay annoyances on top of that, including here's another one.

There's no way to pause this game. I don't know if either of you any of you figured this out. Yeah. Well, it's a multiplayer game. So in theory, you should be playing with other people, but these lobbies are empty. They are empty. It's a single player. Let me see. I'll load while we're talking, I'll go ahead and have her load up this lobby and see if anybody shows up. It's, it's, it's baffling. How, it's weird

when a game like this with such a big IP, now that Contra is is, you know, a fucking Assassin's Creed level IP, but it's a big IP. Contra's a big name. And it's baffling to me that at no point in any of this process was somebody like,

this is not fun. Like, you can tell if something is fun. Why wouldn't you just be like, okay, the fucking, the mechanic where the gun has to like chill is not fun, let's take it out. And then they would be like, oh, it's, well, it's too easy.

Okay, then put more enemy. on screen or add more damage. Like you can up the risk while still allowing you to play the game. But this is built in unplayability. And managing the heat on your gun sucked. It's such a bad mechanic that it's in Mass Effect 1. You mentioned this, Heather. It's in Mass Effect 1.

And then they remove it for Mass Effect 2. Basically, like, we're sorry. Guns just have ammo now because this didn't work. yeah it is i don't know i guess we should maybe talk more about the we kind of touched on how um we we kind of touched on the tone and the bad comedy in it but maybe we should we should dig into that a little bit more i have a little clip from the intro that i put in the chat mat uh this this will just give you a sense of like what the dialogue that's in this game sounds like it looked like our troubles were over until an entire city pump

out of the ground. We called it the damned city. Maybe a little on the nose, but what else would you call a metropolis that looked like it was shot out of Lucifer's asshole? All right. All right. What else would you call a metropolis

that looked like it was shot out of Lucifer's asshole? I don't, it's just such a, like, it's like, what's fun about the Contra is not that it doesn't take itself seriously and it's kind of like a winky or whatever. It's not the Marvel Cinematic Universe tone. What's fun about Contra is that it's dumb,

but it takes itself so seriously. Like lean into that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah. It also, the sassy, like the, I mean, there was a point where I got out of, like, a notebook so I could be like, I got to write down this stuff so I can talk about how much it sucks. But it sucked so much that I didn't want to write it down. Like I was just like, I don't even want to track any of this so that I can talk about it on the podcast.

We're all going to fucking talk about how much. much this sucked. It's also, it's not challenging. It's just unfair. No. Yes. Yes. Like it's not,

it's not, and it's not a game that maybe if you played with a bunch of people and there were bullets all over the place, it might be different. But like, as a solo campaign game, this is no. Can we talk about the music for a sec?

Yes. Or you want to keep, you want to keep, you had more to say, Nick. Well, I was just going to ask, did you have any luck in that lobby? Is anyone online? Let's see.

We're still waiting for players to join. I want to play a sound sample from the original contra, limited as fuck in both its orchestral palette and also just the length of musical phrase. This is the full. first level for, you know, people who are Apodaka's age who probably weren't born when this came out literally.

This is the music from the original Contra. It's fucking great. Yeah, that rock. So good. fucking good. We're all popping along in the Zoom meeting. Devin, our engineer, is banging his head. So I would like to contrast that with the opening music from the first level of

Contra, what's the name of this one? Rogue Corpse. Yeah. Contra Rogue Corps. This is the opening, the opening music, which simultaneously references the original contra music and also takes. takes a dump in its mouth. That's two dumps today, guys.

That's... We're going for three dumps. Yeah Oh fuck Okay stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop Yeah, you might recognize that music If you were interrogated by the CIA In the early days of the war on terror

Yeah, or if you were David Koresh Hiding out inside your Oh my God, it's so, it's Every facet of it is bad it. Like, that music sounds terrible. It sounds terrible. And you know, normally I have a lot of guilt trashing on a game because I'm like, I'm like, oh man, you know, this game is probably for somebody and I'm just not that

person. Not for this. Man. No. All you needed to do is shoot. Yeah. This is so bad. And I don't know what, you know, like, like just so, like right here, you kind of see them moving around. But in the, in there's a lobby where you hang out in, where there's, There's these little robots that are there to help you. And they're, like, dancing around for some reason. I don't know why they're dancing, but they're just dancing and shaking their

booties. Yeah. Then there's sort of the comic book art that they, like, cut into it. That's sort of weird. It just reminds me that other game. What's that game with all the comic book art in it? Comic Zone? What's that?

Borderlands? Borderlands. Like, it feels like they just were like, okay, we're going to. We're going to try to put some borderlands in there. And, you know, like, and it kind of to what Heather was saying, like, just do what work. Like, you don't have to change. If you're going to make a multiplayer, like, okay, cool, let's make a multiplayer, but still have it just beside scrolling, you know, shooting at stationary things. Like, you don't have to try to do all this other weird shit.

Yes. Like, it's, you know, like, it's destiny or something. You can like change your weapons and shit and like there's all this stuff that like I'm just like what is what's happening here? You mentioned destiny and and borderlands and yes it definitely has it definitely feels like

there was maybe a top down decree that this needs to be kind of like a looter shooter. It needs to have like a bunch of randomly generated loot and like you mentioned an upgrade system. So you can customize your guns. It's very it's way too obtuse for an arcade shooter. It's really complicated hard to figure out what each item does.

There's also a surgery room where you can upgrade your character's organs, which should be fun. Hey, that's cool. Like, I can, I can put in a new brain or a new skeleton into my body, and let's see what happens there. But here's, here's what I experienced with a surgery room. So I got an LED brain. I found this as loot.

And here's what the LED brain does if you implanted into Kaiser, the Duke Nukem ripoff. Cool down reduction during combo level 14. Reduce damage, object, minus 3.5%. Reduce damage, crab, minus 3.2%. Heat reduction during combo, level 17. It's like, oh, I don't, like, this is an arcade game. I don't know what any of the shit means. This is just a bunch of nonsense you gave me,

and these are such incremental improvements in my character that it's like, there's nothing fun there. Like, maybe I put the LED brain in, and maybe that just makes items on the screen be highlighted automatically or something. I don't know. Or maybe it makes enemies explode when I shoot them. Just give me some tangible effect that gives some joyous game.

Or you go, hey guy, with the surgery idea. That's a great idea. Go find another game to put the surgery idea in because we're playing Contra here. And you don't need to do that. Man,

I really like the idea of a side-scrolling sprite-based four-player shooting game. Like, that would have been so much fun. Like, if it just, like, if you, hell, you could just redo the original levels, but add more fucking

enemies and stuff on screen and like, I don't know. It would have been a win. It would have been a win. It would have been a win. Like Sonic Mania. That's my second Sonic of the day. Sonic Mania is just like, okay, well, Sonic was good, so let's just make it again.

But more. Yeah. Yeah. If you're keeping track, that's two Sonics and two dumps from Heather. And we still got nobody in this room yet. That we still. There's times where we pick our game And I like do like a quick Google search

And I just like, oh, what's the meta-critic on this? And generally our bad games hover around like the 60s or something, this one is at 42 on Metacritic. So, like, there weren't enough positive reviews of Contra Rogue Corp to get it above 50. Like, you rarely, also, you rarely see a red score, like a red warning score on a game. And this one, like, there aren't even enough contra-ary opinions. I mean, what was this for sale for?

It was, I mean, it was like slash, like, 88%. or something. I feel like I bought this for $9.00. Yeah. Yeah. I bought it for $9.9. And I want a refund. There's also like, it's just, so there's parts of it that you mentioned not wanting to, not necessarily feeling bad for these

developers, Heather. And I mean, I agree. It's just like a really poorly executed game. But there are elements that make me feel like this was a rushed project. One of it, one of them are just like, there's just weird UI errors. Like there's just typos and, uh, you know, and missing spaces in a lot of the text. Here's something that happens.

If you select Basecamp, which is this hub world that Colton mentioned, when you exit a level that you're playing, the text that pops up is, are you sure you want to delete this item? It's just like, that's just the wrong text. That's just meant for something else. Get it out.

Can't be fixed. Get it out. There's also, there's also errors on the website for the game. So like even like whoever because the people who design the game aren't the people who build the website, right? No.

Whoever that guy was or person was so rushed in the making of the website that even that is problem at or like has problems in it. It's like, oof, oof. And it's hosted on Angel Fire. We should just spend

the next 30 minutes listening to that contra music, that original kind. That's so good. stuff. So good. So good. I mean, is there anything, I guess we've really trashed this game a lot? Was there anything that anyone enjoyed?

Was there anything at all, any redeeming factors at all in here? I was struggling to think of anything. I, uh. I mean, I can't think of anything that I like. I like the idea of, okay, outside of Contra. The idea of a woman who's got a parasitic alien in her stomach. that the only way she can control it is by jamming a sword into it to mostly kill it is like kind of a cool comic book character if you exercised it from this game.

Like that's not so bad. That's essentially the Naruto theory of heroism, which is like, oh, you've got a main character and he's got a bad guy inside him. And then if you unleash the bad guy, they become very powerful, but they might lose everything in the process. I like that kind of game. I should have saved this for my review crew because now I'm realizing

this is normally what we do the review crew kind of screwed us here. Even that though, I feel like the face likes it too much. Am I wrong? Did I misinterpret that? Yeah. Yeah. It feels like you should be more pain.

It's disgusting. It's like they have one, they have two female characters, right? Main characters. One, you don't even play with. She's just there to fucking tell you the story, I guess. She's a child soldier. She's a child soldier who flies a helicopter.

And then the other woman isn't even, is a mutant. Like they don't, you know, like they put this monster in her belly. And she sticks a sword in it. So, yeah, I don't think that there's, I mean, I think it's it. Yeah, you're right, Heather. I do think it's interesting. But I guarantee you that is stolen from something. I bet like we'll guarantee you at some point we'll see some.

anime or something will come up and you'll be like, oh shit, they totally just rip that off from that thing. Because nothing in here seems, even that big, that I feel like I've seen that big panda bear before. Oh, definitely. Yeah, the panda's become kind of a trope in games and just sort of random internet stuff. Well, hey, I guess we should get to our final thoughts on Contra Roadcourt because what else are we going to say?

It's time for our review crew. So we'll do our best to say something positive, maybe even just in general, not necessarily about this game, and give it a numerical decimal rating. Here's my positive thing. You know, when I was finding this game in the PlayStation store, Contra Anniversary Collection exists. So, hey, maybe you want to play some old Contras, pick up the anniversary collection. You can play some of those classic ones. I haven't read any views of it, but I assume it's just a, it's a straightforward port.

Boy, it's just such a, it's just such a fuck you to the franchise. And it's just, it just doesn't honor anything cool about it. It feels like it was made by someone who didn't like it. It's like some of those early comic book movies where it was like, wait, this person isn't even a fan of comic books. This person isn't even a fan of superheroes. They think this stuff is stupid, so they're trying to change what they don't like about it and make it into something else, but still keep the original title.

and it just frustrates fans. It's for nobody. That's the main issue here. This game is for nobody. It's one of the worst ones we've played. And honestly, I had so little fun. My positive is that you can play the Contra Anniversary Collection. But as a game, this is one of the worst ones we played and one of the most joyless experiences I've had.

So I'm going to give this a point to. Heather, what do you think? Fuck. Well, you know, what I said earlier is the fucking the crang, the woman who's crang, but also stabs crang in the face. There's something there, I guess. Man. Fuck. I mean, there's, I get, that's it. Like, I got nothing else. Like, I'm really drilling down on this game and being like, well, maybe it was. fun if you had four people like maybe it would be fun if the four of us got on there and like shit talked to the game while playing it and yeah and the whole screen was full of bullets and lasers and chainsaws and stuff maybe that was fun maybe that's why the cool down mechanic works is because it complements like a um a multiplayer experience where people are all taking charge you know like

it's not just one person dominating the game right it's that everybody has to to cool off at different sequence. It's just, but it's really, it's bad and the music is bad and the graphics are bad. And the main character is cross-eyed. Like he's, he's fully cross-eyed at the end of a level. You zoom in on his face and he's cross-eyed. And it's not that, not that that- He wouldn't put his face up to the camera, making the face of the character.

And it's not that that that's, that's, I mean, like, I'm not trying to judge anybody's real-world experience of life by that, but it is such a hard choice to make on your main character. So, yeah, I'm giving this a 0.0. Wow. Yeah, I think what you, to your point, generally, Heather, is they're just like aggressively unpleasant character designs throughout. Like, they're just not fun to look at.

Matt, what do you think? Something positive of your score. I feel like we didn't talk a lot about the game's aesthetics, and I want to just truly one of the ugliest games I've ever seen in my life. Like all of it, just frame for frame is dog shit. It just looks so bad, I hate it looking at it. But, you know, when you finish a level, you get three grades. And I can't remember what each or four, but you get like,

you get three different letter grades. And the first level, that I cleared, I happened to spell out ass. I got an A rank and then two S ranks. Nice. And honestly,

that may have been the only time I enjoyed myself in this game. And I like barely liked that. Like I was like, okay, that's all right. Yeah, no, this sent me and all of us into a crisis

and I can't wait to delete it off of my PlayStation. A flat zero. Just awful. Wow, I'm the high man with a point two. Colton Dunn, something positive, anything at all

you can think that's redeeming about this game and your score. Okay. All right. So, here's the deal, guys. I, like, don't have a lot of time in my life. I have a child. My wife's in nursing school. I'm trying to hustle. My show's been canceled. I got to make money, you know.

I have a large overhead. Pay child support for my other kid. My life is fucking packed, man. So to get a moment to play a video game, I was so excited. I could not have been happier. I'm like telling Jessica, my wife, I'm like, hey, I got to play it because it's a,

you know, I'm doing the podcast. And I know it's not going to be great. But you know what? I haven't had a chance to play a game. So how bad could it be? I had given myself like, whole night to play. I played this game for 15 minutes, and then I

stopped. It is so, so bad. Every piece of it, you know, and much to what Nick said, like, it left me going, like, who the fuck is this game for? If it's not for the contra fans,

and if it's supposed to be pulling in new people, why are they coming to this? Because this is trash. And, yeah, and like what Heather said, I don't like to disparage games even when they're bad, You know, a lot of people work in games. You know, there's a lot of people who are involved in it. It takes a lot of talent to get into that field of work.

So at the end of the day, even when I play a bad game, I'm like, well, you know what, I wouldn't be able to program a game either. Well, neither could the people who made this game. They couldn't program a game. They couldn't pull it together. The game is trash. The only redeeming quality about it is that I'd never have to play it again. And, you know, yeah, that's it.

Wow. It's a horrible, horrible game. Don't play it. Don't even, like, as like, oh, man, they really trash it. Let me check it out. Don't do it. Just don't. It's a waste of everybody's time.

And it's only going to add another nine bucks to the coffers of some idiot. Wow. I give this game, 0.000,017 doge coins. That's how low I think of this game. No, you know, it's not Doge Kho. It's Shiba Inu. This is like a point-tripple-0-10 Shiba Inu. Wow.

I'm not even giving it Fiat rating. Wow, we clearly hated this game, Heather, but maybe we're wrong. Maybe we were wrong. I mean, we're not wrong. We're not wrong in this one. We've got reviews from all over the internet. And if we had a positive experience, these will be negative reviews. And if we had a negative experience, these will be positive reviews.

It's maybe we were wrong. You know, I've got a review here from metacritic.com. It's a user review. It's a 10 out of 10. Riger Belmont writes, great game that combines all the best things from all the other contra, multiple characters with unique weapons. like hardcore, run-and-gun action with multiple points of view like Contra Legacy of War, and C, the Contra Adventure, and of course you have the aliens, mutants, and other aberrations

just like Shattered Soldier, except not that disgusting. Nacazano, the original producer of the Contra series, really outdid himself. This is the real Contra evolution. Give it a try, at least, before judging. I'm sure if you look beyond the nostalgia goggles of the classic Side-Sroller Contra games, you'll see an amazing game. 10 out of 10. What?

I thought his whole thing was that it was nostalgic, and then he said, look beyond the nostalgia? There's an element I feel like sometimes with these where it's like the one game that someone got for like their birthday, and then they're trying to, they're like, this is the one thing I have to play. I'm going to try to make the best of it. And they put enough hours into it.

They start to find redeeming qualities. Like I kind of feel like that. That's like the, that's what's operating here. Because I don't see how anyone could, I feel like you have defined reasons to like this game. I don't think you could start from a standpoint of like, oh, I'm having fun with this immediately. It's certainly not that. Here's one from Dude. This is someone who put 16.4 hours into this game, according to the Steam Store.

Recommended. Here's the entire text of the review. Konami's back, baby. Oh my God. All caps. Based off of this. Wow. Wow. Wow.

This is bad enough that they should like shut their doors. Like they should just be done. You know, I saw, I saw a review on the Steam Store for somebody who has played this game for 40 hours. Oh, my God. And it's a positive review. But the one that I, the, the, this, I can't, looking at this, I can't believe it. Yeah. 246 hours played of Contra Rogue Corps.

It's a pretty good game. And that's being said by a person who played a lot of old Contra classic games. There's a few issues regarding the PC port, but nothing that'll prevent you from having fun playing the game. Most people who hate on this game do that only because of nostalgia, because it's not classic 2D Contra. Does that mean it's bad? Of course not.

Like I said, pretty good game. 246 hours. 246 hours. Come on, bro. You don't get to do that and say, pretty good. For those keeping score, that's twice, almost twice as much as I was in Valhalla. And when I would be like, you know, fuck, I played Volhalla for 150 hours or whatever, like, that's a lot of fucking time to spend in a video game. Yeah.

Fuck. I think I'm double-downing on my theory. I think this is like the one game this person had for a while. And they're just like, I'm just going to put a bunch of hours in this and start to, and I'm going to start to see the bright side of it. I think they're shills, dude. I think they're fakes. Can you imagine being paid by Konami to just keep playing Contra for 246 hours?

Oh, man. This will be your full-time job for six weeks. Wow. Jesus, all right. This one's also from the Steam store Recommended Batsu Gun 5.5 hours on record What an underrated game

All day long people praise The 8-bit retro style of games I think is overplayed already Here comes Contra Rogue Corps With its PS1 retro style graphics and gameplay And everyone poohs all over it Wait This isn't intentionally a PS1 retro style graphics

No That's not retro They're trying to make a modern game And they just didn't have the resources The review ends with, This game is totally 90s, dude. Oh, my God. Did Bart Simpson write it?

Eat my shorts if you don't like this game. Wow. Fuck. Hey, on that note, it's time for the question block. All right, this runs from At That Does Not Rock. And they write, we all know that. classics like BFG, but what's your favorite off-the-wall video game weapon? Ooh, great question.

Great question. My mind goes to the cerebral boar from, I think, Turok 2. Do you remember that? It was a gun that you would shoot and it would land on an enemy's skull and it would dig into them and just like explode their brain. It was basically like a homing drill that would go into someone's skull. But also, I think, you know, we mentioned the Duke News. Nukum franchise earlier.

There were a lot of fun ones in Duke Nukem 3D. There was the shrink ray. You'd shrink someone and they could step on them. I thought that was fun. And also the freeze gun was also similarly fun. You freeze something and kick it and shatter it. I know I've talked about this game on the podcast before, Rise of the Triad, which is like an old, old, old Duke Nukem slash Wolfenstein style game came out, I think, around the time

of Quake. But there was a weapon you would get where. you would just have a single hand on screen that was glowing and you would point it at people it was like a god weapon you'd pointed at people and they would explode so it was a little bit like just having the force for a few moments

that's a pretty that's a pretty good weapon yeah I like that and also I really loved back in the day the first time I don't know what game it is for me I think It might have been perfect dark.

The first time you could dual-wheeled pistols. Just like, just have two pistols on screen. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Great times. Great times. Yeah, all the, you know, you guys remember Dead Rising. I just remember that game just had so many weapons. It was just like literally everything you could turn into a weapon.

And that was fun to just sort of like be going around. And you just, you have a bowling pin or something. You're just clobbering zombies with them for a bit. Yeah. Colton, any notable weapons, any favorite weapons from, from video games, especially someone who plays a shooters? I have two. The Black Spindle sniper rifle from Destiny was always one of my favorite sniper rifles.

And then from Halo, it would be the BR battle rifle. Wow. Nice. Nice. Classic. Good classic times. Yeah. Matt, you got any weapons you like?

I immediately thought of the Rhino from Ratchett and Clank. and they reiterate on those for every game and those are always so fun I don't know if the key blade counts but I'm in Kingdom Hearts work right now and I love I think a sword that is a giant key rocks I love that

and I mean it's too real I guess but I don't know how realistic it is really I mean it is a video game after all but the exploding arrows that you get in The Last of Us 2 are OPE they fucking rock they're so fun just to just snip somebody in the face with an exploding arrow,

you're done. The farther you get from that game and the more disconnected you become from the narrative, the more fun just the set pieces are, like to just drop yourself off in the town and like go on a rampage and be disconnected from like the lesson you're supposed to be learning, like hitting somebody

with an exploding arrow next to somebody who yells, Gary, no, no! it's great yeah um yeah i had that i had that happen in the the final mission of the game where i think i told this on the show but uh i just like uh there was a guy with a dog and i just exploded his dog and he was just horrified i didn't even mean to oh my god that that you the keyblade and you're absolutely i Mitch the Mitch, Matt, the key... Whoa!

Don't worry about that. What the fuck? Paging Dr. Freud? Oh my God. Like, I'm recording two podcasts at once. Get a busy schedule. Matt, the Keyblade, you're right, is so... It's so gloriously stupid from Kingdom Hearts.

It's so dumb. Yeah, great. It's like, you can, you see a, you see a little. doors with it. You do, it does so much, but you hit people with it. It has like unlimited power and you use it to smack people in the head with it. It's like beating somebody with an iPad. Yeah. Hit us up on Twitter and Instagram at Get Played Potter. Send us an email at Get Played Pot at gmail. Or leave us a voicemail at 6162 played. That's 616275-2933. Our music and engineering are by the great

Devin Bryant. You can follow them on Twitter at Baffle Gabs. And our guest has been the great Colton done. Colton, thank you so much for giving us some of your very valuable time. Oh,

of course, man, I love it. I hate this game, though. Yeah, our apologies again. Anything you'd

like to plug, Colton? Yeah, just check out Fairfax coming out soon on Amazon video

and also Middlemost Post, another cartoon I got coming out on Nickelodeon. Cool. Awesome. Check all that out.

Thank you so much for being here. And Matt, tell us next week's game. Next week's Games, TBD. Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye, Bucket.

Edge. Bug.