Contra: Legacy of War

"Contra: Legacy of War is a 3D action game produced by Konami and developed by Appaloosa Interactive that was originally released in 1996 for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It was the first of two Contra games that were externally developed by Appaloosa, followed by C: The Contra Adventure in 1998. The game marks the series' jump to three-dimensional graphics and controversial changes in gameplay. Legacy of War was released packaged with a pair of 3D anaglyph glasses, which the game supported. Legacy of War bears the distinction for being the first console game in the series to retain the Contra title and human characters during its release in the PAL region (where the series has been known as Probotector from the first NES game and up until Contra: Hard Corps). The game was scheduled to be released in Japan as well, but was canceled.

Colonel Bassad, a dictator of a small country, has managed to buy off a stolen alien embryo and is now using it to breed an army of fierce alien mutants. Moreover, it is rumored that Bassad has allied himself with an unknown alien entity for his bid to world domination. Ray Poward (returning from Contra: Hard Corps) is deployed to thwart Bassad's scheme along with three of the newest members of the Hard Corps team: Tasha, a female mercenary; CD-288, a robot; and Bubba, an alien.

Each character plays exactly the same except for the type of weapons they yield and their movement speed. All characters start with a machine gun and flamethrower, but the remaining two slots are for player specific weaponry. The game plays from an isometric angle. Since the game takes place in three dimensions, enemies come from all angles. Ducking and strafing have been added to the player's abilities, as well as an auto-aiming feature to help attack airborne enemies. Jumping has been slightly changed as the characters no longer do tightly curled somersault jumps (a feature in every previous game since the arcade version of the original Contra). The game no longer uses a system of lives, it uses a hit point meter instead. The player's progress can be saved to a memory card."

Source: Wikipedia, "Contra:_Legacy_of_War," available under the CC-BY-SA License.