Reviews - Sergeek

I knew about this mod for a couple of years, but I never dared to try it up until this point. Heard about that 009 patch long ago, which was supposed to be final, and decided to wait until it was done. Why not to wait, really? Awesome screenshots, neat renders, lots of news about various upcoming features - better later, but better, right? All in all, I waited for about a year to finally try this mod - and it was a huge letdown.
I can't say it is totally terrible, it just doesn't really meet all of those expectations, all of that hype around this mod. It has a spotlight in Generals community on pair with RotR, but it isn't even close to that in any regard. Contra is extremely unpolished, comparable to such broken hodgepodges of things like Chaos mod. Majority of new models and textures are nothing like those we saw in renders on MODDB. Moreover, it looks off putting, when some of the units are incredibly detailed, while others are on par with the original game. New animations are stiff, lacking any fluidity, especially on bigger units, like mechs. Clipping issues are everywhere - big units just ram through roofs of respective production buildings, for example. Effects are incredibly overblown to the point of being cheesy and eye-gouging, with various clipping issues also. Pathfinding is clunky and units often stuck, even more so that the base game. Poor AI, which is also broken (just loves to sit on bases with throngs of units doing nothing), suffers from it the most. And as you can guess, glitches, bugs and crashes are also prevalent. And don't even get me started on the art direction of this project. Loads of randomly ripped resources from other games just can't make anything coherent. Icons, unit responses and even names, which come from other franchises altogether, leave a feeling of a kitchen sink. And this was supposed to be the final version (I also played with the first patch). It even has fricking typos and broken English all over the place!
Now, all that being said - it doesn't really make this project outright bad. It is a mod, most of them are like that - made on pure enthusiasm by amateurs. This is what I'm trying to say - it is just *a* mod. It's not *the" mod, like RotR, far from it, hence the average score. Frankly, my only gripe with Contra is that buildup for nothing. It is my first score/review on MODDB, never bothered to rate before, but I just had to do this because of how unfulfilling the release was. Decade in development, huge score and my personal year-long waiting just to get an average stuff.