Metroid Prime: Hunters

Metroid Prime: Hunters is yet another installment in the Metroid series of games. It is also the best First Person Shooter for the Nintendo DS and, in my opinion, one of the best FPS games for a handheld console.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of or played Metroid, I will only say that Metroid is a series of games that dates back to 1986 with the release of the original Metroid game for the Nintento Entertainment System (aka the NES). Metroid is basically a platform/adventure game (or action/adventure if you prefer that), but the later installments of the series fit better into the FPS genre. [You can read more about Metroid here.]

I picked up Metroid Prime: Hunters as a game to test my DS Lite (see previous post for that) and I have to admit I wasn’t really prepared for what followed. MP:H is, generally speaking, a great game. In fact, it’s one of those games that sell consoles. I’m certain a lot of careful development is behind Hunters, since this is one of Nintendo’s children, along with Mario, Link and uhm… Pikachu? Anyhow, MP:H is meant to be a show-off of the console’s abilities and they manage that pretty well.

The graphics aren’t that impressive. They’re good graphics, kind of like the ones we’d have seen circa 1998 or 1999 in a computer shooting game. The DS isn’t as powerful as the PSP, but the game manages to be pleasant to the eye. Certain textures are more than good and the graphics work with the gameplay instead of against it. So, nothing too flashy if you’ve seen what the PSP can do, but something impressive for a GameBoy.

This is a Metroid game, so you can expect all the Metroid fun (running around, collecting items, running around again to open doors with your new items, killing bosses, etc, etc, etc), but with one exception: there are no Metroids. The story is about bounty hunters, or simply Hunters, who go to an unexplored corner of the universe, the Alimbic Cluster, in search for artifacts and, well, power. One of these Hunters is none other than Samus herself and your business is to triumph over the rest of the bounty hunters and discover the secrets that lie in the Cluster.

Where this game excells is not in the graphics or the sound or even the story, in which it does quite well, but in gameplay. Nintendo has managed to win the DS bet and the results are titles such as MP:H. On a regular console, you either use the cross or the analog stick to look around. In DS you can use the stylus to achieve a PC-like level of control over Samus. It’s a huge step forward and the second best thing after keyboard and mouse. It only took me about 4 seconds to get used to it, so if you have any experience in computer FPS games, you’ll love it. If I had to give the handling a score out of 10, I’d probably give it a 9.5.

Hunters also supports multiplayer via Wi-Fi. I haven’t tried that out yet, but I will as soon as I get to a hotspot. From what I’ve read, it’s pretty good (for a handheld) and you might even find yourself getting into some pretty intense online fights. Go give it a try.

That’s about it for Hunters. I think it’s a must-have for DS owners.