Iron Meat Review

As far as Contra games or games styled after that franchise is concerned, Iron Meat is the best of that kind of game I have ever played. I'm more of a Metal Slug guy but Iron Meat managed to win me over. In terms of sheer specticle and approachable difficulty, it's the best a Contra style game has ever been for me.

When it comes to the visuals, Iron Meat's pixel art looks highly detailed especially with everything looking macabe, decrepit and and grotesque. There's lots of explosions and body parts being destroyed mauled and destroyed as you wreak havoc across the levels. It's one of if not my favorite example of indie pixel art work.

I mentioned approachable difficulty before, you get 30 lives on easy with your lives resetting back to 30 when you start a new level. So for someone who isn't really good at Contra style games, this is an easy crutch to rely on.

In Blazing Chrome enemies soak up an ungodly amount of damage even on easy to the point where your lives will be mostly drained by the time you reach the level end boss. In Iron Meat, it's more reasonable where you can have a decent amount of lives left before reaching the level end boss. I make a big deal out of this because there is no health bars in Contra style games, getting hit once is a life lost and losing them all is a level restart.

You also have a reasonable amount of weapon power ups to level the playing field in Iron Meat. It also helps that you can aim in all 8 directions. I did wish the controls for this was better rather like having dedicated buttons to aim diagonally but it's workable.

It's not like the game is brainlessly easy for me on easy. I was almost close to a level restart on the city stage and was down to one life on the boss before took the last one. It was a massive sigh of relief and felt like an epic win when the boss went down. If easy mode can retain things like this? Is it really a bad thing?

Projectile speeds and traps are also reasonable enough for a less skilled player like me to get through. You also get a warning and ample time to get out of the explosions marked in a red skeleton.

Bosses are also the pixel art at it's best and have very maligned designs. Something like a cross between Alien and The Thing.

Overall, that's Iron Meat, it's well designed, looks amazing, very approachable and the best Contra style game that I'm aware of. I randomly heard of this game when it was being compared to the that latest Contra game and Terminator 2D No Fate and while I like the latter, Iron Meat is superior.