Let’s face it: playing first person shooters, honest-to-goodness fully 3d with stylus-look, jumping, and explosions everywhere first person shooters, is an exciting prospect. DS owners in the West received a slice of fps goodness with the pack-in demo for Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt. The latest build of the real game was on the floor today and I gave it for a frag-filled spin.
First off, no single-player action is on display this year. Nintendo’s description of Metroid Prime Hunters makes it out to be a vaguely Quake IIIish series of death matches. Multiplayer is the focus here, and while the final game may yet have a complete Metroid Prime single-player adventure, my guess is that single player will be comprised of bot-matches and time challenges, which is a disappointment. As is the lack of online wi-fi play.
But what is there is an incredibly fun and easy-to-control portable frag fest.
Our demo was a four-on-four free for all. A few different maps were cycled randomly and two modes of play were presented. Hunter Mode is your standard death match: destroy the other players before they obliterate you, wash, rinse, and repeat until time is up. Bounty mode had players searching for a sphere called the octo. When found, the players battled it out to bring the octo to “the base†– doing so gave the player bounty points and bragging rights and the octo was reset. Most of the players at E3 didn’t even figure out that we were playing a different game type. Well… it led to many easy bounty captures for me.
Four different characters were selectable in the demo. More may appear in the final game. Each character had artistically different, but functionally identical, gun models and HUD. The real differences seemed to stem from morph ball mode. Each character had a different two-screen cinematic upon the start of the game.
- Samus – Our leading lady is back and as warm-colored as ever. Little has changed in her arsenal or appearance from the DS pack-in demo. No, there were not selectable “bikini†skins. She’s still dropping the mad blue bombs everywhere.
- Noxus – Looking like the unfortunate result of a love triangle between a space pirate, a Covenant trooper, and the Alien, the purple Noxus has sleek curves and bubbly-looking guns. In morph ball mode, he spins like a top and twin blades pop out to cut down enemies like a weed eater.
- Spire – An orange and brown Thing-clone, spine’s morph ball spins his outer rock shell outwards to damage enemies. Unlike Noxus’ attack, the button can’t be held down to continue dishing out the pain.
- Kanden – While the name sounds like that of a troubled teen on a Beverly Hills night-time drama, Kanden looks like a giant green and grey 80s action figure. Upon entering morph-ball mode, he becomes (transforms!) into a slug that squinches along the ground in an amusing fashion. Pressing attack drops a small slug bomb on the ground, much like what we are used to with Samus. But it’s more than meets the eye – the slug bomb both damages and slows down enemies.
Weaponry has been retooled for Metroid Prime: Hunters. Aside from the standard plasma cannon and missile launcher, the E3 demo featured:
- Mortar – acting more like a grenade launcher than a true mortar, this ended up being my favorite weapon in the game. Launching balls of explosive death from on high and watching them bounce off canyon walls and into the frightened facemasks of my opponents was a treat. It is definitely possible to blow yourself to smithereens with the mortar if you are not a careful bounty hunter.
- Electrogun – firing a bolt of electric death, the electro gun was trickier to handle than the mortar but powerful and quick-firing. Charging the weapon fired a big ball of lightning pain.
- Ice Beam – shooting someone with freezing icy shards is bad, but following it up with a Mr. Freeze line from Batman & Robin is just plain evil.
Game play and control have been balanced and I am very happy with the results. The touch-pad aiming seemed much more responsive and at a slightly higher sensitivity setting. Still no word on whether the final game will allow players to adjust sensitivity to their liking. Energy/health pickups in the demo maps are not as obviously placed as before, and energy is capped at 200. Also, every player starts with a load of ten missiles. These two changes make the game much more balanced because a player can’t “run the map†as easily. A few other game play enhancements have been added. Fire just above an opponent’s shoulders and do extra damage with the resulting “Head Shot.†Take out the automatic sentry gun guarding the octo or leave it there to attack whoever is following you. After being destroyed, fly around the level as an observer for a few seconds, contemplating life.
Metroid Prime: Hunters is shaping up to be a very fun game and excellent DS first person shooter attempt. Time will tell if the single-player modes and selection of content will make this a must-have for DS gamers, but as long as this version is fully fleshed-out before release, game excellence is as inevitable as screaming death when that mortar you just fired rebounds off a wall and into your sternum.
