Game|Life's Chris Kohler got to live our most recent lifelong dream of playing Contra 4, and he likes it! (Hey Mikey!) Upon hearing that Contra 4 is actually as good as it looks and doesn't rely on DS gimmickry, we reacted in a manner that is best illustrated by this video clip.

Kohler cites the classic weapons, the cleverly dual-screen-enhanced level design (which we don't think counts as DS gimmickry) and the Contra-appropriate sound design as features that contributed to his positive impressions. Oh, and the difficulty. Apparently action games are hard when you've been at a trade show all day, doing interviews and lugging a bunch of computer equipment around. We hope Contra will be sufficiently challenging even in more comfortable conditions.

We think we're going to have to find an excuse to post about Contra 4 every day until more developers get the message that there are plenty of strategy RPG's, sports games, mascot platformers, first-person shooters, puzzle games, and such out there. But there is a huge hole in the market for REAL ACTION GAMES like this one that are about jumping and shooting and synthesized guitar, and God knows there's enough of a userbase on the DS to support both awesome run & gun games and whatever else people want to put on there.