Great FPS, but not for everyone's tastes (Metroid Prime Hunters (DS))

Member Name: _jlee

Product:	Metroid Prime Hunters (DS)
Date:	06/08/08 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good story mode, fun multiplayer options, very nice graphics and sound, use of DS mic

Disadvantages: Linear, sometimes repetitive?

As in the other Metroid games, you play as Samus Aran, a female bounty hunter. You being by scanning around the Alimbic Cluster for planets, from which you need to collect 8 octoliths from for the ultimate power.

You soon find that there are other bounty hunters racing you for these octolith artifacts in order to find an ultimate power. These enemies all have different strengths, weaknesses, weapons and characteristics, and all steal your octoliths if they beat you in battle. This means you'll have to later recover that octolith too.

The control system in this may seem slightly confusing and complex, but once you get used to it allows for excellent and precise control. There are of course different setups, but the most common (for right handers) is the stylus to aim, R shoulder to aim/zoom, L shoulder to shoot, double tap screen to jump and D-Pad to move. To change weapons and forms, you need to press buttons on the touch screen, which can be slightly annoying at first, when you do it on accident.

Firstly, a note on the graphics. They are great, and look 3D and each level has its own design, one being a tech station, one being an ancient ground, one being ice and so on. Also, there are some nice effects like spouting lava in the environment. When you reach a specific point in a level, it triggers a theatre-like cutscene with nice camera angles and is very realistic. It is a shame, though, that these are not of excellent quality, as they've had to be compressed. Bosses and bounty hunters look quite detailed with smooth movements. The sound is also very good, with it picking up and being intense with hunter deathmatches and speeding up with danger around.

Back to the game, you progressively learn the truth behind everything using your scan visor and the storyline isn't bad, although a bit linear, with an annoying amount of backtracking. Each level ends with you having to return to your ship with a time limit with enemies back to fight you. There are a few puzzles which you have to solve to advance, some involve the alt form (which in Samus' case, means changing into a morph ball which can drop bombs to hurt enemies and to jump)

Although the story mode can be epic at times, the multi-player is perhaps where the fun is, over download play, multi-card or wifi with up to four players which includes not only the battle modes but also other unique modes such as capture the octolith (like capture the flag). You can play in teams, too. You get to play as all the hunters that you've unlocked, with each of them having an unique alt-form and affinity weapon. You play on specially designed levels which are modified parts of story mode. WiFi mode also allows people to chat to each other not only using the "keyboard" on the touch screen for sending messages but also using microphone chat in the lobby before the level starts, but not ingame.

Summary: Excellent multiplayer fun, good singleplayer