Blazing Chrome Review

At one point in time, the Shoot’em Up genre was one of the hardest genre of games you’d be able to find in the arcade or home console. They required a dedication to noticing patterns and attack call outs with fast enough reflexes to dodge and attack your way out of whatever situation you were in. No game highlighted this better than Konami’s Contra.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a proper new entry in the Contra series, and if the latest entry looks to be any indication, it’ll be a while yet. While Konami has released a collection of classic Contra games, those looking for something new should definitely turn their attention to Joymashers and The Arcade Crew’s Homage to the genre with Blazing Chrome for PC and Nintendo Switch.

Blazing Chrome has a simple setup that is borderline the story to The Terminator. Humanity is on the break of losing a war against a Machine enemy, affectionately called the Toasters, and two members of the resistance are the only members left alive after a suicide mission to destroy a power core. It’s just the right amount of exposition to set you up for destroying a robot army filled with mechs, creepy Eldrich Horrors, and plenty of Robot Spiders.

Like most of the 2D Shoot’em ups of their time, this is where Blazing Chrome shines, but it is also where the game owes much of its thanks to nostalgia as the game looks and feels like Contra III: The Alien Wars. It is a perfect recreation of the 16 bit era with over-the-top run and gunning against some fantastic looking larger than life bosses.

Throughout the game, you’ll be taken through a communications tower, a bio-lab and jump onto a speeding munitions train in order to stop the robot army. Featuring 6 missions, with each level offering their own challenge with a variety of baddies and sub-bosses to mow down, reaching to the climatic final boss of the level, basically an old school game through-and-through.

That old school feeling somewhat comeback to the game’s difficulty as well, but it isn’t unfair. The game comes with three difficulty which limits how many lives and continues that players can use. It was interesting to see that the Normal Difficulty gave 5 lives with an unlimited amount of continues that allowed us to continue from specific check points after getting wrecked by a boss, this changed when we unlocked the hardcore difficulty after beating the game, which gave a limit to the amount of continues forcing you to start the game over.

One major complaint that I had during my playthrough was the lack of variety in the player weapons. The game gives you 4 different weapons to be able to pick up and swap between, this includes your base machine gun, an electric whip, a grenade launcher, and a powerful Laser Beam that requires a charge. Players also can get a helpful bot which can add a second machine gun to their attacks, or a three hit defense shield, or a speed boost.

While these boosts and special weapons are a welcome feature, it feels limited when you compare it to games like Contra and Metal Slug, some of the weapons also felt they were more of a hindrance than reliable in most situations except for boss battles. For the most part, most of my time was using the base gun as it provided more control and a decent amount of damage.

Another drawback was that the game is short short, as our playthrough took about two and a half hours but those who die significantly less than we did will likely be able to clear it faster. It’s also best played co-op as we noticed that there was very little difference in the amount of enemies to fight and the difficulty of the bosses – a perfect excuse to get your friend to jump in with some classic couch co-op.

If you’re a fan of the genre, Blazing Chrome should already be on your watch. It’s a perfect homage to the classic 16-bit era, with responsive controls, a tough but fair difficulty, and enough over-the-top action to remind you what made games like Contra, Metal Slug and Gunstar Heroes great in the first place.