Moon

Moon

It’s 2058. “Ever since Roswell we’ve known we’re not alone,” the voice from the opening full-motion video warns. “Now, more than a century later, they found this hatch on the moon.” Far-fetched? Sure, but developers Renegade Kid know how to build atmosphere (exhibit A: Dementium: The Ward). Moon is their latest title for the Nintendo DS, this time securing a Teen rating, and sporting the so-called Renegade Engine 2.0. Instead of a survival-horror title, however, Moon is a first-person shooter/adventure—a genre that many DS gamers would agree has been tragically underrepresented on their system. Can Renegade Kid finally bring the appeal of spotlight console FPS/A games to Nintendo’s handheld?

I promise not to force the “Dark Side of the Moon” reference down your throat

(Seriously—I’m doing my best to avoid that line since everyone else has already worn it out.)

After witnessing the opening, you’ll be fully aware of the fact that Moon shares the same palm-sized cinematic qualities that made Dementium such a hit with the hardcore. The game’s cut scenes are filled with voice acting and (albeit heavily compressed) full-screen presentation. Graphically, it’s also undoubtedly some of the most impressive stuff we’ve seen on the Nintendo DS to date—with beautiful 3-D geometry and an amazingly fluid 60 frames per second. And the sound… well, the “atmospheric” music is actually quite awful at times to be perfectly frank. But the sound effects are good and mixed well between the two channels, and what “music” is there can be turned off if it grates on your nerves (and it will at times). I swear I thought that this aspect of the game was to be changed when I played through the beta build months ago, but apparently that wasn’t in the cards.  (A lot of thought actually did go into the music, even if I didn’t particularly like it.  Here’s an interview with the composer if you’re interested.)

Either way, at the start of your adventure, you’re dropped onto the moon wearing space suit and all, in the shoes of one Major Kane, following a squad of teammates from your Extra Terrestrial Encounter Organization (ETEO). Upon entrance of the aforementioned hatch (which was apparently buried under the moon’s soil), you’re gradually introduced to the game’s very intuitive control scheme, which incorporates the familiar stylus-controlled turn/look and D-pad movement. You shoot using the L button, which is easy to reach and mostly comfortable (lefties will be glad to hear that, as with Dementium, you can also swap to a left-handed control scheme where the face buttons and R button are used equivalently if you are so genetically inclined). The sensitivity of the stylus-based look controls feels spot-on, even to the point where it isn’t bothersome that developers didn’t include an option to adjust it. I will say that I wish Renegade Kid had included jump and duck mechanics, however, as there are many moments during the game where you will likely lament their absence.

It isn’t long before some sort of emergency occurs and your team loses radio contact with many of its members. At this point, you’re volunteered to go hunting for them to see what’s up (take a wild guess). To provide some form of guidance, your colleagues, including General Lambert and Captain Tsukigami, manage to keep in touch with you as you descend into the alien depths. You quickly discover that your squad members met individualized and equally deadly fates going in beforehand. Fortunately, Kane is a different breed of interstellar task force member. Heading into the depths, he is stricken by a sudden blackout that, upon awakening, leaves him infected by some sort of strange, seemingly-alien substance. This allows you to pick up health refills from many of the enemies you destroy in the form of alien vials of this bizarre, unidentified fluid (so, unlike Dementium and its survival-horror foundations, you’ll no longer be hunting endlessly for bottles of pills to sustain you). As you kill enemies, their drops remain indefinitely, and they remain dead—a nice touch that prevents retreading your steps from becoming too bothersome (more on this later however).

Moontroid

The game itself is, as previously mentioned, much closer to Metroid than the Silent Hill-esque style of Dementium. You’ll find yourself exploring based on a similar map system, plotting your route toward distant waypoints (a la Metroid Prime 3: Corruption), though overall, the game is considerably more linear than Samus’ adventures. You’ll also encounter numerous consoles and other objects which can be examined to provide story cues and other plot developments. Like Metroid, most of these are entirely optional, but their inclusion provides an opportunity to get involved as you like in the game universe, which is nice. The weapons and upgrades (life and ammo expansions) scattered throughout the world provide further similarity. There are also the characteristic save rooms, dispersed at fairly regular intervals throughout the adventure mode; this style of progression is more satisfying than the mission-based saving system of Dementium. And, of course, the alien nature of your surroundings and the sensation of being lost with very little direction incite an experience that is fairly reminiscent of… well, you know.

But that’s where the similarities end. Unlike the Metroid we know, there’s no jumping and thus no emphasis whatsoever on platforming. Similarly, while adventuring beyond the charted route is rewarded (you may recall the previously-mentioned weapon/life expansions, which are never too far from the main path), for the most part, linearity is the rule. The focus is on action first and foremost, with adventure and discovery playing second fiddle… even though, truthfully, there isn’t a remarkable amount of shooting going on most of the time. There’s also some mild puzzle-solving, though most of it simply involves piloting a nifty so-called remote access droid through small gaps and corridors to bypass a series of obstacles (generally force fields) and open the way for our hero by way of floating targets. You can switch to and from the droid at will whenever you please just like you would select any other weapon or item. It’s all pretty simple, but again, the game is supposedly meant to be light on puzzles and heavy on action.

The basic firearm that you begin with (called a Super Assault Rifle) doesn’t require ammunition pick-ups, but it’s also depressingly weak. In earlier versions of the game, this rifle would overheat to compensate for its infinite ammunition, but honestly, it’s so ineffective against the vast majority of enemies that it pretty much ends up relegated to backup status from the start. Other weapons, of course, do require ammunition pick-ups. The Muon Pistol, for instance, is powerful, yet has a slow firing rate and limited ammunition, while the Quanta Rifle fires quickly but isn’t quite as powerful. There are eight weapons and gadgets overall, though none are as unique as the Remote Access Droid that you receive early on in the adventure.

Moonotony

Speaking of which, this droid (RAD for short) seems like a great idea, but a lot of the time it’s simply a hassle. The RAD sequences are generally nothing more complex than circumventing a barrier via small tunnels and shooting a couple of switches with the robot’s ion blaster to grant Major Kane passage, and that definitely gets old after a while. You’re always met with some sort of adversarial challenge along the way—a couple of floating orb enemies to stun, a number of creepy wall-crawling robots, some rotating laser cannons—but the monotony definitely begins to set in after you have several of the lock-and-key sequences behind you. To make matters much worse, the game sometimes requires you to retrace your steps in order to progress (much like in Metroid), but these traps all reset after a short period of time. That means that you’ll have to go through many of them not once, but twice, a process which qualifies squarely as tedious. Metroid’s strength is to enrich your retraversal of earlier areas by expediting the backtracking with newly-acquired power-ups and connecting you to somewhere else in the game world that you’d least expect to end up—an approach that actually makes the frequent backtracking enjoyable—but in Moon, it’s just the same thing all over again, backwards. Luckily, it isn’t something you’ll be doing all that often.

Something else that we haven’t yet covered is the assortment of enemies in the game. Early on, you’ll begin to wonder whether every alien in the game is some sort of floating sphere or spider-walker thing. Fortunately, around episode 7, things start to get more interesting… though there still just isn’t enough variety overall. Even some of the bosses are reused, and a few of them are pretty darn annoying, too. There’s nothing fun about getting killed by a recycled boss with inflated HP after blasting through a series of enemies, only to find that you now have to repeat the 15 minutes of action leading up to the battle as a result (RAD lock-and-key sequences included).

And while we’re on the subject, at the risk of sounding like a pansy, I have to file a complaint also about the game’s difficulty (and that’s a rare thing on my part; I’m no pushover). Moon is just plain cheap at times, and the randomized nature of health pickups certainly doesn’t help the situation. Boss battles frequently consist of sporadic supplemental onslaughts of the ubiquitous floating droids, and while they’re annoying enough, what’s worse is that some fights are practically impossible to win unless you just so happen to come across a random health drop during the course of the battle. There’s nothing wrong with a challenge, but when luck plays such a large part in your success, it’s easy to become frustrated. On that note, unless you’re in for a real punishing, it’s probably a good idea to play on the easiest of the three difficulty settings—because Normal and Hard are above the curve.

Long Journey

Sticking with the adventure has its benefits, however, if you can handle the challenge. Moon is broken up into episodes, each of which takes place in a different self-contained environment. These range in duration from as short as 5 minutes to as long as an hour, and there are 24 of them in all (including hidden missions). You can access the hidden “VR training” missions of exceptional difficulty by locating alien artifacts hidden in some missions (most of these are actually pretty easy to find). These are preset scenarios (where you receive only specific weapons and tools) generally several rooms long which consist mostly of droves of enemies and traps; they have no bearing on the story.

While you’re on foot most of the time, you’ll also be dropped behind the wheel of a lunar rover vehicle as well for certain missions. This part of the game is mildly amusing—and perhaps more interestingly, outdoors, which makes for a welcomed change of environment in between the various labyrinthine alien hatch missions which will consume most of your time. However, they’re also home to at least two game-ending bugs which were surprisingly not caught by the developers prior to release. If you run into either (and it’s not too hard to do), you’ll have to restart your entire game (hence the term “game-ending”). In case you’re planning on starting a game and wish to avoid the known bugs, here’s what to watch out for:

Mastiff will reportedly be issuing an updated build which corrects these problems, so if you’re itching to play the game, keep your eyes open.

No Friends Allowed

In case you were wondering, there’s no multiplayer to be had in Moon. That’s a darn shame, too, because with an online multiplayer component, this game could really shine. It’s understandable that perhaps that simply wasn’t the vision the team had in mind when developing the game, but the problem is, it’d most likely be fantastic. Moon’s single-player is somewhat lackluster, but many games in such a position redeem themselves wholly with an amazing multiplayer component; heck, a case could even be made for a multiplayer-only sequel. The controls are spot-on, the visuals are stunning for the DS, and all we’d need is some sort of jump mechanic… but I digress.

Another Take (from Senior Editor Greg Schardein)

Though I’m not the hugest FPS fan (I’ve played a few but it’s not my genre of choice), I was very excited to get my hands on this hotly anticipated DS game. My first impressions of the game were positive as the controls and graphics were equally incredible. However, as I continued through the experience, I noticed that the story was less than enthralling and the game itself just felt generic at times. It felt like it wanted to be similar to Metroid but still remained a first person shooter. Factors such as tedious backtracking and sparse save stations hurt the game’s overall layout and mechanics. Couple these with a lack of mobility from the character (no ability to jump, seemingly restricted movement) and you’ll be forced to play through the same uninspired chapter over and over again until you finish it.

Other factors that made the game difficult to finish were the minimalist/dissonant soundtrack and annoying deviations from the gameplay that felt more like chores than exciting steps in the gameplay (such as driving a rover that’s difficult to handle and far too easy to lose all of its HP). Steve and I agreed that the game might have been a lot more enjoyable if played on easy difficulty but the gameplay still would have felt uninspired. Finally, the coup de gras was a lack of multiplayer in the game. I know that it’s difficult to throw a multiplayer experience together (it’s an entirely separate game) but that would have given the game a boost to its overall appeal. I really wanted to like the game because it was something we haven’t seen much of on the DS but overall I came away more dissatisfied than enlightened with my FPS experiences on the moon.