XORGate

The two most comparable games are Contra 4 and Hard Corps: Uprising (HCU). Besides those two games, there hasn't been a good Contra game since (besides this one) I would say it's not quite as good as HCU, since there were more mechanics in there, like sprinting, vaulting and deflecting, but there are some improvements, like when you pick up a new weapon, it automatically upgrades the correct weapon type instead of throwing your old one out. Galuga very generous with the difficulty range, with the addition of a health bar option and perks, so even if you don't intend on playing until you're good enough to beat it on hard with no health bar, you'll still be able to enjoy the game and see all the levels pretty easily. However, as far as real difficulty (hard mode, no health bar, arcade mode), so far I would say it's more difficult than Contra 4 and maybe on par with HCU, which is great. The story is just there for some excuse the play the game, which is fine. The cut scenes are skippable and they don't seem to pop up in arcade mode to distract from the gameplay. Arcade mode has 4 player local co-op which is great, though very hectic and hard to hold on to your weapon of choice when other players are dropping their weapons, though maybe that was intentional to make it more crazy. Overall, I'm just glad Konami had this made, especially after that abomination that was Rogue Corps. I'll be putting a lot of hours on this game.