Developer: Joy Van Publisher: Color Dreams Release: 1990 Genre: Action
Contra is one of my favorite NES games of all time. Even though I am not much of a multiplayer gamer these days when I was young I constantly dabbled in coop play. I cannot count the number of coop runs of Contra and, I am ashamed to admit, Ikari Warriors I did. But run and gun action games were few and far despite that game’s success. Silent Assault looked like what I was looking for but sadly I got hit with a double whammy of ineptitude. One, it was an unlicensed game from Taiwan, and two, it was published by Color Dreams, a name we would all soon come to dread. I did not know any of this at the time and wasted a weekend rental on this POS. Do not make the same mistake I did.
Aliens have come to Earth and use their powers to control the world’s military forces. For some reason you are the lone soldier it does not affect and the only one that can stop them. “Silent Assault” implies some kind of covert operation, but the gameplay has you blasting everything in sight—not exactly stealthy. Since Silent Assault was not developed by Color Dreams so it does not have their typical religious themes. However it is still just as bad as their usual output. Birds of a feather flock together I guess.
For the most part Silent Assault is a straightforward action game. The similarities to Konami’s games are there at a glance and probably the only good thing about it. You begin with slow throwing knives but can pick up a machine gun, a shotgun, or rapid fire for the knives. These weapons drop from enemies at a ridiculous clip, to the point you might grab one by accident.
Silent Assault tries its best to imitate the success of Contra. Boy does it fail spectacularly. Instead of polished arcade thrills it delivers stiff controls, awkward design, and glitches left and right. Almost immediately you will notice the game’s problems. Controls are stiff and unresponsive. Your jumps feel floaty and firing lacks precision. Mercifully there are only three levels that require any kind of platforming. But you will dread it when they occur. Most action games succeed by throwing a variety of enemies with different attacks in your path. Regardless of whether they are soldiers, aliens, or dinosaurs (I swear) they are all dumb as shit and pose no threat. I will give the game credit for sending you to exotic locations around the world. But the horrible graphics dull their impact. I saw this through just to see how bad it would get. You have no idea.
Like most unlicensed games Silent Assault is a buggy mess. There are a number of weird bugs in addition to poor controls and hit detection. For example, when defeated enemies drop a power-up, the power-up moves to a point about a third of the way from the top of the screen. Presumably, this is because there are a number of airborne enemies and this makes the power-ups fall to a point where the player can actually use them. The second level, however, has an upper and lower pathway that the player can take. Defeating enemies on the upper pathway means the power-ups will fall downwards through the platform, where a player on the upper pathway can’t reach. In addition, jumping while near close to the top of the screen means the player will appear for a split second on the bottom of the screen.
You would think a game as plain as this would at least be competent on a technical level. But my god this game is a mess. Silent Assault is a garish mess that looks like a god damn clown show. The NES has a limited color palette but they make the bare minimum use of it in the worst way. The palette in every level makes no sense as you will see pink, purple and green trucks, pink skies, and enemies with similar color schemes that blend in to the background. In fact someone really likes the color pink as it permeates the entire game and it looks hideous. And the sprites? They did not even try. About the only thing I can commend is that at least the levels are varied. Get used to the two music tracks as they are all you will hear during the entire game.
In contrast to most run and gun action games Silent Assault is easy. Despite the paucity of cheap hits due to the awful collision detection your generous life bar will keep you alive. Invincibility power-ups seem to drop every few seconds which is overkill. Not that you need them as the AI is brain dead. When the game is difficult it is for the wrong reasons—cheap hits, stiff controls, and infinite enemy swarms. There is no real sense of balance; instead, it wears you down with attrition. Even the bosses are anticlimactic with their inconsistent hit boxes that require lots of repetitive shooting. I suppose the ease with which you can run through the game means the embarrassment of actually playing it is over quickly.
In Closing
Silent Assault is bad. Calling it a poor man’s Contra does not do it justice. It wants to be like Konami’s classic but lacks the polish, creativity, or technical skill to pull it off. This is one of those games we remember less for being fun and more for being an oddity of the unlicensed market. Like Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu. I suppose for collectors it is an interesting piece of Color Dreams history. But for players looking for a satisfying run-and-gun, stay the hell away from this one.
