
You can also counter most enemy projectiles with your sword by highlighting an enemy with your crosshairs, waiting until the projectile is about to hit, then press Z to reflect it back. However, the shoulder buttons will make your character jump, which are really only used for a handful of sections with pits. Since the game is auto-scrolling, you can only move left or right. It only gets more complicated from there.
#SIN AND PUNISHMENT BATTLE CATS FREE#
While this may seem simple, your shots are much weaker in this mode, so you need to get used to the free aim mode if you want to beat bosses within the time limit. The lock-on mode will automatically target an enemy once you’ve moved the crosshairs over it, so you’ll fire at it no matter where it moves. To aid with this, there are two firing modes – free aim and lock-on. In other games of this type, both the cursor and the movement are handled with the same input, so dividing up the functions alone takes a bit of getting used to. By default, the analog stick controls your crosshairs, while either the control pad or the C buttons controls your character’s movement, and the Z button fires your gun. The main difference is that you control human characters rather than dragons/starships, so you can’t fly around the screen. Sin & Punishment isn’t your typical 3D action game – it’s actually more of a rail shooter, similar to Panzer Dragoon or Starfox. It’s the brainchild of Treasure, the same guys who puts together Gunstar Heroes some seven years earlier – so it’s no surprise that Sin & Punishment does “ Contra in 3D” way better than anything Konami ever produced. But one of the best was Sin & Punishment for the Nintendo 64, developed during the twilight years of the system just as the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 were hitting the market. Sometimes they came from unusual sources, like ASC Game’s ONE for the PlayStation, development by a relatively unknown American team. Since Konami wasn’t up to task, it was up to other publishers to carry on the Contra name. The former was garbage the latter was better, but only in relative terms. It saw two installments – Contra: Legacy of War and C: The Contra Adventure – both outsourced to a Belgian development team, and produced solely for the Western audience. The 32-bit era was a dark age for Konami’s beloved Contra series.
