I would argue it appears to look better than Contra 3 in some ways. There's definitely expanded use of color, and there do appear to be a few more frames of animation in at least some of the movements.but I'm a bit dissapointed that it doesn't really surpass Contra 3 graphically.
It is a good looking game, but there are actually quite a large number that do look better. But I'm a long-time SNES player. Contra 3 was definitely fun, but the overhead levels weren't very fun to me, and while the levels did try to do interesting things, what with climbing buildings and all, I didn't feel that I like the backgrounds as much stylistically as Contra, Super C, or Contra: Hard Corps. It just feels like they didn't spend enough time on the environs.I mean, Contra 3 is one of the most amazing looking games that doesn't use any fancy chips on the SNES.
I agree in that Contra 3 used a lot of the Mode 7 effects, I don't always think they used them well. Super Castlevania IV and Contra 3 were both relatively early games in the life of the SNES and as such the companies felt under a lot of pressure to utilize all the different functions of the SNES. Sometimes this had great results, but sometimes this had poor results. There were times they put in certain parts of the various games just to demonstrate the cool stuff they were doing with special effects rather than to actually further the game or gameplay. This is a mistake, in my opinion, and I think some of the best SNES games are the games that actually use these special effects wisely, like Actraiser or Cybernator.It used quite a few of the fancy built-in features and I'm pretty sure the only other game to really surpass Contra 3 effects wise is Super Castlevania 4, though it's possible there are others out there. I really haven't played too many SNES games.
Sorry, this is just a little rant that's been building over the years. Everyone saying "Look at the scaling and rotation the SNES can do! The TG-16 and Genesis can't do that!" and then Treasure, with Gunstar Heroes, and later Konami, with Rocket Knight Adventures and Contra: Hard Corps proved everyone you didn't need it in hardware to do it. And like I ranted earlier, so much of the early use of hardware scaling and rotation looked like they were doing a "special effect" rather than just making the graphics look good and didn't really contribute to the gameplay.
Look at Axelay, for example. I'm not super fond of the game like many other people, but it's damn good looking, but that weird over-the-horizon rolling effect made those overhead levels a lot less fun than the side-scrolling ones, IMO.
