Moon Member Review for the DS

"Are you Mooning me?"
Moon is a suspicious title.  Set in the not too distant-future Earth operates a lunar base from the Moons surface... No!  Really!  You might not initially find this choice of location interesting, but you are introduced to a handful of moonbase personnel who set you off on an unsuprising routine mission when all of a sudden supernatural events occur at the moonbase HQ...  and suddenly our planets next-door neighbour doesn't look so dull and grey.

The game uses an FPS game-engine that borrows metroid's control system for aiming and movement - it's a great system, but for some reason I find I get really bad cramp after playing the game for an hour or so, so regular breaks are a necessary precaution, but believe it or not, intense pain in your aiming hand might not be enough to stop you enjoying the games continued suprises -

  The Grab-Factor of this game initially comes from the story, but it will continue to hold your interest - you will be suprisedwith how much is packed into this tiny package, the game offers a number of unique (to the handheld FPS market anyway) dynamics - putting vehicle's under your control ranging from a large weaponised moon-rover, to a small remote attack droid (or RAD as they refer to it) that you can control at any point, and send on it's merry way through the many maintenance tunnels found thoughout the games branching levels to uncover secrets, or to open the next door between you and the games secrets...

  Boss Battles are well thought-out and challenging affairs, one of which will having you disabling force fields with your RAD, whilst a robot it's croneys shoot more lazers at you than a 1980's discotheque... And beating them isn't even as easy as it sounds.  The game's challenging, and you will find yourself coming back for boss battles a few times before you finally topple them.

  The game's graphics aren't far off the mark too, considering it's on a handheld.  The framerate is very smooth, and enough texturing and detail is provided on all the levels and models to please the eye, and the enemies, though sparse, are reasonably well designed.
 
   Unfortunately there is no multiplayer mode available with Moon.  It's a shame, because metroid managed to provide such a good multiplayer gaming experience on the DS.  But Moon has a polished singleplayer game, and if you like sci-fi and FPS games, will give you hours of entertainment, without including the bonus extra's waiting for when you complete the game.

  If Moon where a drink - it'd be moonshine without the alchohol poisoning.