Konami’s celebrated Contra series provides the bulk of inspiration for Iron Meat. It’s a relentless run ‘n gunner starring a battle-hardened hero – one who’s able to tuck themselves neatly into a ball while jumping – and features weapon drops carried into battle by flying drones. The main difference here is the buckets of gore, with a theme true to the game’s title that sees man and machine combining. You’re up against tanks, helicopters, and even subway carts brought to life by manmade organic tissue barely clinging to their metallic hosts, making for quite a grotesque experience. This wouldn’t have passed Nintendo’s censors in the 16-bit era, let alone the 8-bit.
Like so many modern retro games, its visual style is a halfway home between 16-bit and 32-bit, boasting large bosses, detailed backdrops, and camera panning. The animated intro perhaps helps it lean more towards the 32-bit era when it comes to the general presentation. There’s a choice of difficulty modes available from the outset – with Easy Mode offering a generous 30 lives per stage, and Normal Mode cutting that amount in half while adding more hazards – and you can also choose a character skin, with more unlocked throughout play. This ties in with the considerably modern ranking system, where XP is earned at the end of the stage, gradually giving access to more playable characters. Aiming to reach max rank allows for replay value too.
Eight stages are on offer, each set within a bleak and dreary location. You’ll be running and gunning through a moonlit forest peppered with defences, a ruined city that utilises a panned-out camera view, and a few other industrial-style complexes predominantly grey and reddish brown in colour. Stages last 6-7 minutes, culminating in a modest runtime of around 45 minutes. The majority scroll from left to right, although there is a horizontally scrolling tower climb, and stages set astride both a train and an airship. A military base introduces trickier platform jumping, and it was this stage I struggled with the most despite it appearing halfway through. A hoverbike section is teased in a cut-scene, but disappointingly not realised fully.
Bosses mostly rely on focused blasting while leaping over searing lasers and avoiding missile barrages to stay alive. If you reach a boss with only a few lives left, it can be quite tense. And with just one life left? You’re probably looking at a Game Over. Once they’re unlocked, any mission can be picked and replayed freely, so you’re never forced to start anew. This assists with mopping up achievements too, with most stages encouraging you to destroy certain objects.
Mechanically, it’s more or less what you’d expect. The controls are responsive and it moves at a rapid pace, with enemies exploding into showers of gore almost instantly after appearing on screen. You’re able to crouch and shoot, as well as fire in different directions. Two weapons can be carried at once which can be switched between, but this feature feels underused. I never felt like I should be holding power weapons back for certain instances, and no weapon emerged to become a favourite. The starting weapon can tear through most enemies without hassle, even bosses. Everything else is just supplementary. Something like a shotgun that packs an almighty punch, or a flamethrower, may have helped the weapon roster stand out.
The screenshots on these pages are a pretty good indicator of what to expect here as a whole. Backdrops mostly cycle, leading to light repetition, and while there are sections where things come to a standstill to deal with a unique adversary or situation these are quite few. At the same time though, Iron Meat puts on an entertaining show. 45 minutes of relentless shooting and brutal boss battles, accompanied by a moody atmosphere. It knows how to grab your attention and keep hold of it. I did, however, expect the experience to be a bit more rewarding and satisfying. In its attempt to please all and sundry, it does come off a bit more casual than similar examples of the genre. If you make it your duty to unlock and see everything though, it should serve you reasonably well. Treat it like a ‘one run and done’ experience and you’ll definitely miss out on its finer points.
Retroware’s Iron Meat is out 26th September on all formats. Physical editions are now available from Strictly Limited.