Iron Meat doesn't just bring home the bacon - it serves up the whole damn hog.
Iron Meat is truly a love letter to the old Contra games. It plays and feels exactly like them, and although it doesn't look exactly the same, as it looks way better and more unique, through and through Iron Meat screams Contra and, well, I love it.
This is a fast-paced, run-and-gun shooter that immerses you in a world overrun by The Meat--an all-consuming interdimensional biomass. After an experiment goes incredibly wrong in a Moon laboratory, this biomass makes its way onto Earth and pretty much has a field day with everything it comes in contact with. It mutates everything and I mean everything, not only humans, but cars, trains and hell, it mutates even buildings. I've never really seen a concept like this before; it's very metal and I love it. The music is also, and pardon my French, fucking fantastic and adds a ton to the overall package.
Seeing a train turn into a giant, visceral, gory, meaty and metallic snake or a straight-up building with massive mandibles, tendrils, and eyes, and fighting these entities is unlike anything I've ever done before, and I am all for it. The pixel art is absolutely stunning, gory as fuck, but extremely unique and full of intricate details. All of the nine levels are unique and will see you visiting all sorts of different environments, starting from an overrun forest, which by the way has the same starting layout as the first level in the first Contra game, and apocalyptic urban streets to a dark lab on the Moon. And of course, there's a level set on a moving train as that is the law with these types of games.
As you run and gun across the levels, you can pick up different guns that are better than the default one, and you can stack them twice, increasing the damage and fire rate. You can also have two different guns at any given time and switch between them with the press of a button. However, if you get hit, you die and lose that gun. Get hit again and you lose a life.
Iron Meat pays homage to classic run-and-gun titles from the past, as each level ends with an intense multi-phase boss fight. These are a lot of fun, display a lot of creativity when it comes to the encounter design, and can be extremely challenging in the Medium and High difficulty settings. Yes, the game has three difficulty settings where the Easy mode is just a walk in the park with few enemies to fight and a lot of lives per level. Cranking that difficulty setting up means way more enemies on screen trying to murder you and way fewer lives. I'm going to come clean, I started the game on Medium and did OK for the first few levels, but by the fourth level, I had to lower it down a notch as I just couldn't get past the boss.
You see, being such a love letter to the classic titles means that Iron Meat controls exactly like them. Moving and aiming is done via the d-pad; of course, you can still use the left analog stick, but that kinda sucks when playing these types of games. What that means is that aiming and shooting things is kinda challenging, and when there are a lot of things on the screen trying to murder you and you can't easily dodge or shoot at them, that can get quite annoying really fast. Now, I grew up playing these types of games and Iron Meat scratches that nostalgia itch real good, but for newcomers to the genre, it might be too much. That's why I think the game would have been even better if it also included a more modern twin-stick shooter control scheme. Move with the left analog stick, aim with the right full 360-degrees and shoot with the triggers, oh it would be glorious.
Luckily, you don't have to suffer alone and retry levels a lot as Iron Meat also offers 2-player couch co-op. You can grab a buddy and leave a trail of bloody, Meat-infected corpses together! It's double the firepower, double the carnage, and double the MEAT! I stole that last sentence from the press release as it perfectly encapsulates the co-op experience.
Iron Meat slams onto the scene as a gory, pulse-pounding homage to classic run-and-gun shooters. With its unique biomass-infested world, mind-blowing pixel art, and killer soundtrack, it's a feast for the senses that'll have retro fans salivating. While its old-school controls might test your patience, the sheer creativity on display - from mutant trains to building-sized monstrosities - makes this a meaty experience worth sinking your teeth into. Grab a friend, crank up the difficulty, and prepare for a blood-soaked nostalgia trip that proves there's still plenty of life in this time-honored genre. Iron Meat doesn't just bring home the bacon - it serves up the whole damn hog. I highly recommend it. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a PS5 via a promo copy provided by the publisher. Iron Meat is available on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC.
