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Contra: Operation Galuga – A Glorious Return, and It Will Kick Your Ass With a Smile
Let’s be clear right out the gate—Operation Galuga is not here to hold your hand. It doesn’t care that you’re older now. It doesn’t care that your reflexes ain’t what they were back on the SNES. This game comes screaming out of a 1980s action fever dream, sprays the screen with lasers, missiles, and alien guts, and dares you to survive the first five minutes without dying like a chump.
And you know what? It’s fucking glorious.
Visuals – Retro Juice, Rewired
The devs nailed the look. 2D side-scrolling roots, drenched in slick, modern polish without losing that old-school Contra DNA. There’s just enough 3D thrown in to keep the stages dynamic—camera pans, terrain shifts, mid-stage flexes that make you go “okay, that was cool.” Explosions feel loud, bullets pop, and death? Death is beautiful. You feel every hit. You see every enemy coming—and still die anyway because you're too busy drooling over the background lighting.
The Squad – Classic Testosterone With a Couple Badass Women Thrown In
Lucia is the MVP here. Her Spreader with a charge blast? Chef’s kiss. She’s not just fanservice—she’s functionally top-tier and fun as hell to play. Ariana’s got that “don’t fuck with me” energy and brings a different flavor to the chaos. And seeing Bill and Lance again? Straight dopamine hit. Pure throwback testosterone with voice lines that sound like they came out of an ‘80s bootleg dub of Predator.
The robot guy? Eh. Didn’t vibe with him. Not bad—just not for me. He’s the tofu in a buffet of meat.
Gameplay – Shoot, Jump, Die, Repeat (And You Will)
Operation Galuga is the kind of hard that laughs in your face while lighting you on fire. It’s not just hard—it’s old-school arcade hard. Projectiles fly in from everywhere. One wrong jump and you’re toast. Bosses don’t just hit hard, they eat your firstborn and then start the second phase.
And yet—it’s fun. Addictive. You keep coming back because the controls are tight, the movement is fluid, and when you finally beat that stage after thirty deaths? You feel like a god.
Custom loadouts are a killer addition. Starting a mission with your preferred spread or homing weapon? Genius. Perks that tweak the chaos just a little in your favor? Welcome additions. It doesn’t make the game easy—it just makes it fair...ish.
Story – Just Enough Plot to Explode Things With Purpose
It’s Contra. You’re not here for Shakespeare. You’re here to shoot alien bugs in the face with a gun that looks like it belongs on a spaceship. That said? The story works. It’s fast, just enough to connect the missions, with a few twists that keep things interesting. They didn’t phone it in, but they didn’t let it get in the way of the explosions either.
The Pain – Difficulty Isn’t Just a Feature, It’s the Whole Package
Let’s be real. This game is brutal. Contra has always been a meat grinder, but Galuga ramps it up to “pray you mapped your controls right” levels. Sometimes it’s not even about skill—it’s just about surviving the screen. There are moments when the chaos is so thick you lose track of where you even are. And yeah, the ability overload on modern controllers doesn’t help.
If there’s one knock? It’s that they could have made the onboarding a bit more intuitive. You’ve got cooldowns, weapon swaps, charged specials, perks, and you’re expected to juggle it all while dodging a literal bullet storm. Not impossible—but it is a baptism by napalm.
Final Verdict – Contra Is Back, and It’s Still Got Balls
If you’re a Contra vet? Buy this game. If you love side-scrollers with challenge, flash, and that arcade-crack flavor? Buy this game. If you’re looking for a soft, gentle modern game with checkpoints every ten feet? Run.
Contra: Operation Galuga is the real deal. It’s loud. It’s brutal. It’s beautiful. And it makes you earn every win. Just the way it should be.
Final Score: 9/10 – May cause mild controller breakage and extreme satisfaction.
This is the Contra fans have been begging for. Loud, dumb, deadly, and damn fun.