Review: Moon (NDS)

Set on the actual Moon, the game puts you in the spacesuit of Major Kane, a soldier in the US Army’s Extra-Terrestrial Encounter Organization. The back story is that humanity got all sorts of cool gadgets from Area 51, and now they've found an alien facility on the moon. Kane and his comrades go to open a mysterious hatch, when suddenly in true Doom style fashion, all hell breaks loose (though not literally like in the aforementioned titled), when the facilities automated defences are activated forcing Kane to attempt to rescue his comrades and find out more about the hatch. The way the story is presented, with Kane exploring the facility and having conversations with command, and via logs left by humans and...others,  is well executed and has some good twists along the way.

Graphically the game is superb. Using the engine from Renegade kids first title, Dementium: The Ward, immerses players in a well animated environment that keeps a constant 60 frames per second, something no other DS FPS game manages to our knowledge. Animated wall panels flicker into life, and level specific colour is used to help make navigation around the facility fairly straight forward. When you’re on the surface,l the stars flicker and you  have the omnipresent earth in the background which just looks fantastic. Sound design is handled fairly well as the music is very atmospheric and helps emphasise how isolated you are in the game.

While the game is touted as a hardcore FPS by some sites, it’s sort of more like an adventure game with shooting, not unlike the Metroid Prime series. You’ll primarily be solving puzzles that impeed your progress, while also shooting at lots and lots of floating security robots. There’s plenty of other enemies and bosses to fight, but the game really does love those floating security bots. Expect to be blasting those from beginning to end of the five hour game. The controls are handled rather well, but nothing you haven't seen in previous DS games. The stylus aims, the D-Pad moves, and the L button shoots as default, those for lefties movement and firing is swapped to the right hand controls. The excellent frame rate helps a lot with this as since it’s always smooth you can be as precise as possible with your shots. The touch screen is also used to change weapons, with you pressing on the weapon icon to bring up the menu, which pauses the gameplay, and then dragging the stylus to the weapon you wish to use. The only place where the controls seem to have issues is when you’re in one of the games driving sections. The D-Pad controls here are loose meaning at first you’ll end of skidding around like a drunken cosmonaut until you get the hang of it.

FPS games need good weapons and Moon doesn’t disappoint, despite the limited selection. The basic rifle you get from the beginning of the game is pretty effective against anything, even though it doesn’t do too much damage due to it’s limitless supply of ammo, meaning you can keep the fire going. Another favourite earned early on is the Moon Pistol, which is basically a hand held rail gun which packs a wallop. Ammo for other weapons is not limitless but enemies drop plenty, along with a generous amount of health packs, which means you can use your favourite weapons without having to resort to too much ammo management, and you’ll have plenty of health at the end of the fire fights. Even if you do die, the game has plenty of checkpoints so you don’t lose too much progress.

Overall Moon was quite a surprise, a well executed FPS on the DS that seems to have come out of nowhere, as most of the Gamestyle staffers hadn’t heard of it before it landed in the inbox. Which is a shame as this means it probably won't get the sales it deserves. If you’re looking for a good FPS game on the DS, it’s a recommended purchase.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Garry Webber