Hard Corps: Uprising Review

You assume the role of Colonel Bahamut who has taken a group of elite soldiers through the resistance to take on Commonwealth.  For those that have played Contra: Hard Corps,  you will remember Bahamut as he is the main antagonist from that game.  The other playable character from the game is a female warrior named Kristal who rocks an eye patch over her right eye.

Sometime after the game was released Konami did offer up three additional playable characters via Down Loadable Content.  Sayuri is a female Samurai character who uses blades and swords and does a huge amount of damage and has exceptional attributes.  Harley Daniels is a soldier who comes with an extra health bar.  The last character is named Leviathan who is a cool looking character with some unique abilities that make him very fast however he takes the most skill to use.

Uprising has two game modes,  the first is the classic Arcade Mode.  In this mode you have set abilities and a limited amount of health and lives.  This is the throwback mode to the classic Contras.  You will die and you will die often.  This mode is filled with cheap deaths,  unforgiving Bosses and difficult checkpoints.  It takes an amazing amount of skill to complete this mode.  You will need to play the levels hundreds of times and memorize the enemies patterns and still require some luck.

The second game mode is titled Rising Mode and it adds some Role Playing Elements into it.  This mode converts your score into currency.  You can then purchase permanent upgrades like more health,  extra continues,  faster movement and powerful weapon upgrades.  This adds excitement as each upgrade makes a significant difference.  You can replay any level as much as you want without going through the entire game.  For example if level 3 is putting a whopping on you.  Go back and play level 1 over a few times and earn yourself some upgrades.  You can then take on level 3 with your new abilities and beat the level.  Rising Mode really adds to the replay value and cuts down on the frustration of the difficulty.  This mode should have been added to the Contra franchise years ago.