Blazing Chrome

What it is

Blazing Chrome sends a small resistance squad — organic humans and rebel robots alike — through a side-scrolling war against a machine occupation of Earth, built explicitly in the mold of Konami's Contra series and its Sega Genesis spinoff Hard Corps. Developed by Brazilian studio JoyMasher and published by The Arcade Crew and CE-Asia, it released on 11 July 2019 at NZD 20.49, offering run-and-gun action across a small set of missions with local co-op, unlockable characters, and three difficulty tiers up to a punishing Hardcore mode.

Its review corpus, 528 in English, sits at a strong Very Positive 89% (470 to 58), and reading through it reveals a game whose core craft is rarely in dispute — this corpus argues at length about specific, checkable control decisions rather than whether the game is well made.

Praise that repeatedly outranks the games it's imitating

Few homage games earn the specific praise this corpus gives Blazing Chrome relative to its inspiration. "One of the finest Run 'n Gun titles I played in a long time. A way more faithful manifestation of the genre than the overhyped Cuphead," writes one detailed reviewer, listing "gorgeous pseudo 16-Bit pixel graphics," "dark and slick character and level design," and a "modest but fair selection of weapons and vehicles" as specific strengths. Another goes further still: "this is pretty much Contra 5 in everything but the name. I would go even further and say this is the best Contra game ever made." A separate, especially detailed review frames the achievement more precisely: it's "a faithful homage to Contra games and on its own terms an accomplished retro-inspired sidescrolling shoot 'em up," crediting "tight controls" and a forgiving continue system for keeping "even slow-to-learn and bad reflexes players" able to see the ending — a specific, credible claim about accessible difficulty design rather than vague enthusiasm.

A detailed, specific case against the control scheme

Set against that praise, a real and unusually precise critical minority targets specific, checkable control decisions rather than difficulty in the abstract. "Why is there not a button to Aim diagonally? Genuinely, that would have solved most of my problems with the game," writes one reviewer, arguing that most of the bosses they found frustrating would have been manageable "if I could just aim diagonally without walking towards the enemy." A separate, especially detailed negative review escalates the same underlying complaint: "the controls are just not good enough for the difficulty. There are countless situations were you just know you are dead while still alive. The roll does not work in critical situation," describing what they call "weird input lag" affecting several mechanics at once. A third reviewer frames their overall disappointment around a genre- identity question: "the biggest problem with this game is it's not a run-and-gun... it has large sprites, a melee attack, and a dodge roll. This game is Strider (with a gun)" — a specific, structural argument that Blazing Chrome's added mechanics change its core feel more than its Contra-inspired marketing suggests.

A fair, more measured middle ground

Not every critical voice in this corpus frames the game as fundamentally broken. One thoughtful review explicitly avoids blanket dismissal: "it's NOT a perfect Contra clone and not ideal run'n'gun game, but it's great in its own terms," going on to carefully distinguish which specific elements work and which don't rather than rendering a single up-or-down verdict. That kind of nuance is worth highlighting, since it captures the actual shape of this corpus better than either extreme — the vast majority of reviewers, including several who note the diagonal-aiming gap themselves, still land on a recommendation, treating it as a real but survivable flaw in an otherwise well-built package rather than a dealbreaker. The detailed negative reviews quoted above represent a genuine, specific minority position worth taking seriously, not a hidden majority opinion the aggregate score is obscuring.

Smaller but real complaints worth naming

Beyond the aiming and control debate, a handful of more specific, isolated complaints recur enough to be worth flagging plainly. At least one reviewer notes the absence of cloud save support directly: "I really wish it saved to the cloud so I could come back and play as the damn ninja I unlocked." Another reports a controller compatibility problem serious enough to prevent play entirely: "please allow me to change the movement options of my gamepad... I just can't even play the game if the gamepads I use just aren't compatible with what the default gamepad settings have." A separate reviewer specifically calls out gimmick sections — an auto-scrolling motorcycle level and a forward- scrolling shooter segment — as breaking the pacing of an otherwise consistently strong run-and-gun experience.

What the achievement data suggests about the difficulty debate

Blazing Chrome's achievement curve shows a fairly steep, front-loaded decline: the first achievement sits at 65.5%, dropping quickly through the campaign's individual mission-completion milestones (Mission 2 at 28.1%, Mission 6 at 16.8%), before falling to the 2-6% range for Hardcore-difficulty and speedrun-specific achievements. That's consistent with a game whose main campaign is genuinely completable by a meaningful share of buyers — corroborating the "forgiving continue system" praise — while its true difficulty ceiling, reserved for Hardcore mode and mastery-focused achievements, remains the preserve of a small, dedicated minority. That shape doesn't resolve the diagonal-aiming debate directly, but it does support the corpus's broader consensus that the base campaign, whatever its specific control frustrations, is fair enough for most players to finish.

Verdict

Blazing Chrome earns its comparisons to Contra and Hard Corps honestly, delivering tight, well-crafted run-and-gun action with gorgeous pixel art and a soundtrack worth remembering on its own. Its most serious flaw is specific and fixable in principle rather than a matter of taste — the lack of diagonal aiming genuinely does cost players fights that should otherwise feel fair, and it's worth weighing that complaint seriously rather than dismissing it as difficulty-averse griping. For genre fans willing to work around that one gap, this remains one of the strongest retro run-and-guns available.