I would not consider myself a huge Metroid fan, but I do find it to be one of the more interesting Nintendo IPs. Federation Force takes a different, and unexpected approach to a new Metroid game by not featuring protagonist Samus Aran (although she’s referenced briefly early on) and promoting co-op multiplayer. Many may recall the collective groan heard at E3 when this game was announced, but a) it honestly never looked that bad, just different and b) it’s actually a pretty solid addition to the 3DS library.
Federation Force puts you in the boots of a generic space marine, and you’re one of many on the Force. You pilot a mech that can hover short distances, wields a blaster with infinite ammo and a charge shot, has an auxiliary weapon that can be changed out before and during missions, and can also be customized and upgraded with mods. As a space marine in the Federation Force, you will travel to places all around the galaxy with a variety of environmental themes and hazards, and with numerous enemy creatures to destroy. A mission select screen and a text-only briefing set the stage for each mission.
The campaign, which I am still working through at the time of this writing, can be played entirely solo or with up to three others. You can play it in local wireless if everyone has a copy of the game, or over the Nintendo Network. I only know a couple of people with a 3DS to begin with, and none of them have this game right now, so I was not able to test local co-op in the campaign. Side note, the Blast Ball game mode that unlocks after you play through the tutorial is something you can play with friends who do not own the game via the download play option. Anyway, as far as playing the campaign on the Nintendo Network, I’ve coincidentally been facing some internet outages at home and have only gotten in a couple of rounds, which were fun, but as always your mileage may vary.
The campaign itself is enjoyable and the game definitely has the look and feel of a Metroid Prime game, especially when played solo. Bright colors, tall ceilings, spider-like creatures, ancient alien tech, the look, feel, and sound of the blaster, much of this definitely harkens back to Metroid Prime and that’s a good thing. Environmental puzzles that are straight-forward in concept typically work out well, but I had a bear of a time with the second mission and in controlling the direction of a sphere. It was one of those annoying scenarios you come across in games at times where you have to shoot at a sphere and pop it up over over multiple stairs. Blast too hard and the sphere flies off into lava and you’re staring over; too light and it doesn’t get up the stairs, and meanwhile an invisible timer counts down that destroys the ball anyway forcing you to start over.
Most puzzles and level design that I have experienced to this point however have been fun, not necessarily interesting or memorable, but intuitive and generally enjoyable anyway. Playing on my New 3DSXL, the graphics look quite nice, the 3D works really well, as do the controls. As far as I can tell, the only advantage the N3DS has over the original is that you can use the nub to look up and down, but it’s not that useful. Controls in general take a little bit of getting used to, but there is an efficient and worthwhile tutorial at the start of the experience to get you going, as well an alternate control scheme you can switch to. Specifically, the controls have LT as lock-on, RT as gyro-aiming (where you move the 3DS around to get a custom-aim as long as you hold RT), A to shoot, X to cycle your Aux ammo, Y to shoot Aux, and B to jump (and hold to hover). If you press LT + joystick + B, you can do a short dodge maneuver too. The d-pad is used in multiplayer to send quick messages like ‘Thanks,’ and so forth. This all ends up working out nicely, and one thing I would note is that when you do the gyro-aim you do not have to move the 3DS very far to cover the full area of the screen, which is a plus.
Speaking of screens, the top, 3D screen is of course where the first person action takes place, the lower screen contains a map and info on the aux ammo (including heal items) you have. You get all the info you need with no extra clutter. In the Blast Ball mode, you can switch between a map/radar view and a team stats view. While on the topic of Blast Ball, it’s a nice extra gameplay mode that pits two three mech teams against one another. You can play this in single player and go through five increasingly harder Challenges or just play random matches with the other five players being AI. As mentioned earlier, you can also play this locally even if your friends do not own the game. Online play is also supported with leaderboards. The goal is simple, it’s a basic soccer game in which you must shoot a large sphere (which damages you if you touch it) into the opponents net, judging ball physics all the while. You can also focus on damaging the other team directly if you wish. Overall, it’s a fun diversion from the campaign and a welcomed addition to the game.
A key and perhaps obvious area where Federation Force really differs from the Prime series is in that it’s primarily about combat. There are some things in the environment to observe and read about, but there’s no true exploration like Samus was doing in Prime. Same universe, just a different approach. In solo play, each mission takes roughly a half an hour, and can get somewhat tedious, if not downright frustrating (especially during AI escort missions). Failure means starting over, and I noticed my patience wearing thin quicker in this game than some other FPS (come to think of it, I had the same issue with Moon in the NDS days). I think any portable FPS that does not have at least checkpoints during mission or a save point is likely going to prove very irritating at times. Playing Federation Force solo definitely opened the door to this at times, but it’s not always like that. Not surprisingly, playing the same tedious map in co-op is more enjoyable, quite likely because the game was designed that way from the start and, well, numerous games are more fun in co-op than solo — especially with friends.
To the summary…
