The title screen of this has stamped on it the words "for deep action gamers" and they mean it. If you think the NES contra games were toughies, well this a whole other level. But if you've got the guts this is one of the top 3 greatest run n guns ever made and you're seriously missing out!

The story for this kind of sets the mood for the whole thing: dark, gritty, and a real one man vs the world. After defeating the aliens in the previous game, Bill was wrongfully accused of destroying 1/3 of the earth's population by messing with alien technology. Also his partner from the first game is dead. Bill is thrown into prison and stripped of glory, but when the aliens come back he's the only one who can stop them and he is unleashed onto the battle field once more. Replacing Lance Bean as player 2 is Lucina, a sexy android made for battle.

This time around Bill Rizor brings his full arsenal with him everywhere. There's no power ups, he's armed to the teeth at all times and boy does he need it. He's swapped out his old weak rifle for a new gun with 3 firing modes he can access at any time: machine gun, flame thrower, and grenade launcher. All of them can be charged up which gives them totally different firing modes: a piercing fire ball, a homing spread shot, and a mini turret that fires bullets in all directions. And it will take total mastery of when to use each weapon to advance as the enemies are aggressive and fierce enough so you will need that type of fire power. You might use 3 or more of them on a single screen

The visuals are dark, dystopian and heavily industrial. And the sound track is a mixture between killer techno and heavy metal. The sounds and visuals are so memorable I can still recall them in detail more than a decade after touching it.

The environments are gritty, grotesque, awesome and will remind you of the coolest scifi action movies/anime. The start of one level has you going through a decimated city filled with attack dogs and patrolling air ships. Than you head underground and fight a grotesque push spewing alien who gets dropped into a shredder and his meaty bits end up get devoured by an even bigger alien who tries to vomit acid on you. Another level has you riding by holding onto a missile with one hand while fighting off a 6 story tall mecha. There's a point where you snowboard down a mountain while shooting down bad guys. Really the entire game is one awesome scene after another.

The margin for success is tight. The game is roughly an hour to beat (and boy it really wears on you) and you've only got 3-7 lives and 3 continues. Actually it's even less that. Because to unlock later levels you need to get a high rating on each level and continuing/dying costs rating, you can't even win if you continue. You'll get a bad ending where a death-star blows up the planet. What's more to get the necessary rating you basically need to not let any enemy live, and you need to blow up extra pieces of the bosses which trigger harder, longer phases. You can mis a few but this is a very slim margin of error. This would be totally impossible if the game were not designed with perfect controls and extremely well adjust levels/enemies. Once you develop a good technique for a certain screen you will rarely die on there ever again.

Let's also be clear that this is a boss-heavy game. Remember the last boss of contra 3? He had 2 forms right? 3 if you played on hard mode. That's Red Falcon, the alien supreme commander. He's back and this time he has 6 forms. But there's a guy out there even scarier than Red Falcon who has even more forms. He's the reason you lost your partner, were framed for crimes against humanity, and were thrown in jail...and I still haven't beat him!