"Soul Fight: RC Alliance" review: a devoid of feelings in a new perspective

Nowadays, it is not unusual for the game industry to use classic works to play the feelings card. Whether it is the reset or remake of various works, or the sudden announcement of updates to the long-dormant series of IP works, manufacturers seem to want to re-arouse the eyes of players from the perspective of feelings. As far as the players are familiar with the "Contra" series, K club first released the "Contra Series anniversary Collection" including the past works in May this year, brewing a wave of Contra players' feelings, and now four months later, it launched the sequel of the series of works "Contra: RC Alliance".

Since it is a sequel to the series, the plot content is linked to the previous game, and the time node is chosen to be the second year after the end of the Alien War. A new mysterious area "Cursed City" appeared on the battlefield of the decisive battle at that time, and normal humans would feel dizzy and uncomfortable after entering this area, but several "villains" led by Caesar were not affected at all. Perhaps for the sake of human peace, perhaps unable to control the desire for wealth, the group embarked on a new adventure.

The Contra series of works is not strong in storytelling, and this one is no exception. The story content of this generation can be simply summarized as a story of saving the world, perhaps the producer also feels everyone's transitional aesthetic fatigue for the theme of heroes saving the world, and adds some ordinary psychological characteristics to the shaping and motivation of the protagonists, which is also to show the different feeling of the plot content. From a functional point of view, this game is qualified to complete the task of supporting the world view of the game, which is enough for a "Contra" series of players.

After experiencing the familiar story content, the biggest change that players feel after entering the game is definitely the change in the perspective of the game, from the previous 2D scroll perspective to the 3D overlooking perspective. In an interview, showrunner Nobuku Nakanari gave two reasons for this change of perspective.

The first is that simply adding some new mechanics and gameplay to the series is not enough to impress players, so I want to bring a new game experience through more drastic changes; The second is to take care of the four-player co-op mode, in which the four-player online perspective looks very confusing and the game experience is poor. Based on these two considerations, the game's perspective was ultimately determined to be the 3D top-down perspective that is currently presented.

In terms of the actual experience of the game, the new 3D overhead view should be said to do more harm than good. Because this perspective of the game means that the player can only observe the information through the character's movement, and cannot actively shift the perspective to obtain the information on the map, there is a feeling of being constrained from the game experience. Moreover, in this perspective, the player cannot grasp the rhythm of the game process, and can only passively follow the advancement of the perspective to play the game, which reduces the experience of freedom in this game.

For example, there is an item collection task in the game, but the item will automatically explode and disappear after appearing for a period of time, which requires the player to quickly capture the location information of the item and immediately collect it. However, when the item is refreshed at a higher position, it is difficult for the player to find the location of the item at the first time in this 3D overlooking perspective, and the location information of the item can only be obtained after getting close, but at this time the item may have disappeared.

In addition to the poor experience brought by the game's perspective, the game's graphical performance is also unsatisfactory. The most intuitive feeling is that the character modeling and the screen are very rough, this roughness even makes the player have a feeling of playing the game through the Mosaic. Moreover, the description of the game scene also lacks a delicate sense, whether it is the road or various props in the scene, the thick texture is obviously showing a crude visual feeling, which makes the visual performance of the game is very bad.

The game brings players a total of four characters to choose from, each of which supports upgrades and modifications in terms of weapons and organs. The transformation of weapons mainly brings about the improvement of attack power such as shooting accuracy and critical strike, while the transformation of organs mainly brings about the change of defense properties such as shield treatment and damage cancellation. In addition, the game also supports different skin changes for the characters, which makes the game a richer experience in terms of gameplay.

Whether it is the modification of weapons or organs, these are undoubtedly injected some new elements for the player's experience, so that players no longer put all the attention on the game. The modified gameplay outside the game not only increases the attributes of various aspects of the game character, but also enricfies the gameplay content of the game, which is a rich experience for the game.

From the perspective of character skills, the main weapons are divided into machine guns and laser guns, while the auxiliary weapons and must-kill skills have their own characteristics depending on the role. In addition to these attack skills, each character has a teleportation dodging skill. There are no restrictions on ammunition, but the system adds an overheat system to make it impossible for players to mindlessly shoot. The kill ability can only be used when the enemy is dazed. In addition, this game has added a new full-screen second kill bomb skill, the acquisition of bombs in addition to entering the level comes with a need for players to obtain their own in the level.

No limit on the number of bullets in shooting can indeed bring players a more exciting shooting experience, although there will be checks and balances of the overheating system, but the addition of the main and secondary weapons switch also ensures the smooth shooting experience. The addition of must-kill skills and full-screen second kill bombs further stimulates the player's adrenaline, adds more exciting elements to the exciting shooting experience, so that players can fully enjoy the passion brought by the game, these are the excellent quality of this game in the shooting.

However, the advantage of shooting is only to stay in the simple and rough exciting level, without adding any new content to enrich the player's shooting experience in multiple dimensions. In terms of shooting feel, no new improvements have been made, and the blood volume is still reduced by the naked eye. In addition, the newly added teleportation function can both stun enemies and immune to damage, coupled with a skill CD as low as 1 second, the existence of this "magic skill" makes the difficulty of the game drop sharply, which makes the player's game experience reduce some challenging sense of accomplishment.

In fact, there are some careless situations in the gameplay design of this game, such as the monster's skill release order in the BOSS battle is completely released in accordance with the established rules. In a level called Investigating Strong Signals, the BOSS has only three skills: rocket bombing, train throwing, and car throwing, and there is no randomness in the order of skill release. The player can only shoot the BOSS with high damage after hitting the car, which makes it easy for the player to beat the BOSS with only repeated moves, and the boss battle lacks some exciting fun.

In terms of level design, the biggest change in the game is the change in terrain. Compared to the previous game, this game's combat takes place more on flat ground, this change in the scene reduces the chance of losing your life due to jumping errors, making it easier for players to learn. The disadvantage is that the player's combat experience is too simple, as long as the simple holding the gun on the flat without brain tutu, there is no satisfaction with the operation of avoiding bullets by jumping and flashing before.

In addition, the very low AI shown by enemies is also a major drawback to the game experience. The concrete manifestation is that the player walks in front of the enemy, and the enemy still releases skills according to the set interval, neither actively attacking the player nor pulling away from the player to shoot. This allows the computer to defeat the player purely by the sheer number of monsters, without a more interesting and memorable game experience.

It is worth mentioning that this game has some familiar scenes for players of the series. For example, when the individual game scene switches, the content of the previous lucky shooting is retained, although it is only a imitation of the form and no longer provides any rewards for the player, but this scene is definitely familiar to old players. Another impressive number of players to the signature rotating jump action, these are "Contra" as a classic old IP retained in the mind of the player's memory.

As a sequel to a series of works, the bold vision innovation did not bring the desired changes, coupled with the rough game graphics and careless game design, which make the overall quality of this game difficult to satisfy the series players. Although the game added some new modding gameplay to enrich the game experience, it could not save the game's poor core gameplay. Some classic scenes retained in the new work can indeed recall the feelings of old players, but attracted old players in the face of such game quality I am afraid that they can only choose to stay away.