This Is the Run: Contra: Hard Corps - Part 15

This is the run!!!

Filed under: feces?

Oh, you stand inside the crosshair.

I watched this live and the very ending is something special. Those types of moments will never get old.

Spoiler in thumbnail: now I know that Dan will have died at least once!

Stand in the crosshairs. You know, Video Game rules.

I miss Sheena, Ray sux

...actually those rockets are incredibly cool

It definitely seems like playing as Brownie can give players bad habits. I wonder if that was intended by design. "Yeah, you can double jump, but you'll be gimping yourself in the long run" seems like a real Contra-ass thing to do.

Also I'm kind of blown away that after soloing Deadeye Joe in the Forest, Vinny felt like changing characters. That would have solidified Sheena as the choice for me.

It was very bad strategy to bring up Ed Sheeran - instant demoralizer

Man this game is NONSENSE

Big Mechanical dumps!

I think we've discovered Dan's residual self-image.

This game's bullshit is somewhat more forgivable when you remember it was designed with a life meter in mind

"You get in on him, right?"

I can't wait to watch a compilation video of this once they're done.

BEAT THIS F***ING GAME

Lance's missiles seem effective.

Official dad-mode is when you only remember songs from your teens/twenties and children's show songs from current era.

Also, Ray's D missiles are one of the better weapons in the game all around. Only thing they don't do well is large amounts of small enemies like the monkeys in the jungle area (C spread is best for those).

Dan ate it hard on the pterodactyl, otherwise I think they woulda finally got past that boss.

Dan and Vinny trying to figure out Pop Culture is my favorite.

Uh, guys, if you were watching the intro demo you would have noticed that you can just jump the baseball slide from the first robot.

Dan was just off this episode..."he swoops four times right?" while moving all the way to the right of the screen while Vinny is on the left.

Not sure about the switch to Ray, he's definitely weaker than Sheena. Ray seems only better for Noiman just because Vinny doesn't have to worry on the helecopter bit but if he had Sheena and her homing laser it'd be the same thing.

This game seems like complete bullshit

Vinny is carrying Dan.

I suddenly find myself curious where Dan gets "Dumb dumbs" from. The only two "characters" I've ever heard use it are that green alien from The Flintstones... And Dan Ryckert.

Just like every video game ever.

Vinny finally switching it up!

People today call that "challenging" with great pride

Good effort!

Ingenious logic on behalf of the enemies, actually. It's the exact opposite of what players would expect.

Yeah, especially since he finally made it a point to use Shot II. Sheena should feel cheated.

Sheena's homing lasers are far more versatile, though.

Watching Dan die at the end so many times to the same move was frustrating. I don't think he should be taking Vinny's lives at the end. Vinny seems to have that fight down on his own... Sorry Dan!

Man I thought this unnecessarily difficult game would be a slog, but now that they are figuring it out I'm hooked.

Dan totally avoided saying "Your D is better."

Another good practice run, we'll get them next time.

It's against the spirit of the feature, and would be boring as hell to watch, but could you farm for lives during the eternal monkey parade?

I love how Dan has been trying to get Vinny to use Lance (Ray) for awhile, and when he finally does he starts thinking its him.

Well it's certainly longer; It fills the entire screen. Dan's D just kind of slowly sputters out these weird gumball things.

...What?

I love when games condition you to use a certain technique, for example, sliding and then take it away from you during big boss fights.

This game's brand of magical hot bullshit is truly something else.

What a silly concept to avoid getting hit

I mean it'd be cool for Vinny to at least explain what his thought process is behind swapping to Ray out of the blue.

Didn't he say a couple of times that he wanted to at least try Ray, and that he didn't like most of Sheena's weapon?

It's strange to watch this series since while I initially thought Dan was better at Hard Corps I can't say that anymore. I feel like overall in any given action game that is new to both Dan has an advantage because his base skill is pretty solid (he has that kind of intuition and reaction time you get from playing lots of games on and off work) but Vinny is definitely a much better learner and doesn't repeat the same mistake as often as Dan. He's starting to really shine at the game. It's getting really interesting to watch the two!

Sure, and he did try Ray earlier on when he wasn't so sure about Sheena, but it didn't seem to stick then, and he since got comfortable with Sheena, which I imagine is kind of important to get to the end of the game, because the instant they aren't doing the DPS they expect and beating boss phases before certain attacks come out they get, at best, confused, and at worst, panicky.

Plus, Vinny also said that a big part of not liking Sheena's grenades was his inability to use Shot2 properly, and now that he is accustomed to Shot2 he gets a lot of hits in from safer places, like against Noiman's Gemini form or the second damage phase of Deadeye Joe Round 2. So it's really just the laser that he doesn't see a use for (seems to me it pierces enemies, so it could be good for clearing enemies in a line, maybe even getting behind the barrier the Voltron tank puts down?).

He really likes her upgraded machine gun, which makes sense since it's beastly, he understands how to use her grenades effectively, and when terrain makes it hard to get hits in or he just really needs crowd control or to hit a fast-moving target he gets decent usage out of her homing laser. Swapping out for a less-powerful machine gun with a much smaller hitbox, grenades with no arc that he's used to, a spread gun that looks weak and only effective on groups, and a homing shot that is also weak, slow, and can only hit one target at a time, while also having to adjust to the weapon quirks and longer boss fights, is just a weird decision to me.

@tevor_the_third: Had to say your comment about dumb dumbs made me happy with laughter.

@spacebacon: I agree, the learning dynamic over this series has been cool. Vinny's improved a lot these past few episodes, if they're both on good form next time we should see good progress!

So for those out there that have played this game before... how much does this boss have left in the tank?

That's its last form. I don't think it has much more health than the other forms. Problem is, Dan and Vinny need to learn how to dodge the other two main attacks in order to survive long enough to deal the damage.

@00:45 A wild Abby appears!

In Super C if you stood on a slope and shot diagonally you'd shoot at the slope's angle instead of the 45° that you normally do. Seems like a step back that this game doesn't do it.

The same thing happened in Vectorman. While it makes sense for some games, and it would probably improve things here, I do think that using the weapons correctly in Contra: Hard Corps gets you around minor inconveniences like this.

It's literally better to not shoot bosses at all than to shoot them with Sheena's homing laser. I'm pretty certain it triggers short invulnerability frames on the boss to make Dan's shoots less effective while doing extremely terrible damage itself.