Iron Meat Review – Relentlessly punishing, relentlessly retro

When I say the word Contra, many of you who grew up with older games will likely remember it as an intensely challenging series of side-scrolling shoot ‘em ups that required quite a bit of dedication to complete. Iron Meat, inspired largely by this illustrious franchise, more or less does the same: it gives you guns, it gives you fancy pixel art, and it gives you... no mercy whatsoever. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t played a Contra game in many, many years, but what I can tell you is that Iron Meat immediately made me feel like I had just booted up something from back in the day. In short, it’s good. But is it for everyone?

Lock & load

Well, obviously not, but that’s to be expected. If you want a challenge, you’ll most certainly find it here – adhering to classic rules, the game has a 1-hit death system, which means that not only is everything out there to get you, they will also kill you in one hit. Get caught by a projectile? Death. Accidentally touch an innocently floating bubble? Death. Walk into an enemy? You guessed it: DEATH. That said, the game doesn’t gate off further content if you’re struggling, as the adjustable difficulty settings make it fairly simple to get through each zone without having a rage-induced breakdown – on a lower setting, you can expect a significantly higher amount of lives/continues, as well as adjustments to each map, with weaker (and fewer!) enemies populating the stage. And yeah, I’ll just go ahead and admit it: I did occasionally switch down to Easy when I simply wanted to progress, but the Normal difficulty is the one I would recommend if you’re looking for an authentic retro experience. Or you could even try Hard for some real pain. It’s up to you, really.

Now, the aforementioned one-hit death mechanic plays a key role in Iron Meat’s basic gameplay loop, because the biggest penalty of dying comes in the form of losing whatever weapon you had equipped at the time. Collecting weapons and power-ups throughout the level is immensely important, because you’re absolutely going to need all the best laser guns and rocket launchers to have a decent chance at defeating the boss at the end of the stage. And so, much of the game revolves around learning enemy placements and the general layout of each map so you can make it to the boss without getting hit and thus losing your rare, fully-upgraded guns. A few deaths here and there aren’t the end of the world, mind, as you can always just keep moving and find new guns and power-ups to bolster your arsenal with, but you may not always get the exact ones you want. In short, it helps to play reasonably well.

Pixel perfect

As for Iron Meat’s visual presentation, I think the screenshots and trailers do a good enough job of illustrating this, but I have to further emphasize just how great the game looks. Its pixel art pops out of the screen and is filled with all kinds of nice little details – every location feels busy, but not to the point where you can’t tell what to shoot at. The game also stays true to the hybrid art direction advertised by its title, as each map is filled with a host of nightmarish fusions between meat and machine. This, of course, includes bosses as well, so in case you were hoping to see a mutated truck with insect legs and a massive jaw filled with rows of demon teeth... well, let’s just say you won’t be disappointed. As for the soundtrack, it’s filled with intense heavy metal riffs that are guaranteed to get you pumped, so no complaints on that front, either.

A retro treat

I have to say I’m quite happy with what I got here, even if the extremely “retro” difficulty did make me shout an expletive or two from time to time – all in all, though, Iron Meat absolutely delivers in terms of offering punishing gameplay that rewards precision and practice, presenting it with a healthy dose of deliciously nightmarish pixel art. If you’re looking for a nostalgic trip back to Contra-land, you’ve come to the right place. Just make sure you’re sufficiently prepared.