This review was based on a review copy of the game and not a retail copy, generously furnished by Mastiff.
There’s a rather interesting paradox in the game development world that always boggles my mind when I see it in action; this would be the fact that smaller, independent teams so regularly seem to create games that are fantastic, while so many larger companies, with all their manpower and finances, can’t quite measure up most of the time. This is the case with Renegade Kid. Two years ago, they made the excellent Dementium: the Ward for the DS with three people on their main team; now, they return with only a couple more staff members (six in total, I believe) to give us Moon, which trumps its predecessor in almost every way.
The game, as you would probably expect, takes place on the moon; the year is 2058, and mankind has found a rather odd hatch on the surface of the planetary satellite. Playing as Major Edward Kane, you’ve got to go into this hatch and figure out what’s going on inside; you eventually do find out, and it’s anything but pretty. While the beginning of the game features nicely-done cutscenes with quality voice acting, these drop off rather quickly, and most cutscenes from then on are only meant to introduce bosses; the majority of the story is conveyed both through non-voiced, Codec-style radio transmissions and a number of information terminals you’ll come across in the game, offering journal entries or mission logs. The former describes the more obvious points of the story, while the latter offers some more subtle, atmospheric touches that make the story slightly more disturbing than it would be otherwise. The ending, like Dementium’s, is a bit minimalist: it doesn’t describe much of what happens when the game ends, it leaves at least one major question unanswered, and it seems to leave the game open for a sequel.
If you’ve played Dementium, you know how the game controls. You’ll move your character with the directional pad (or the other buttons if you’re left-handed), you fire with the shoulder button, and you use your stylus to aim and turn, which makes for some very quick and responsive controls. This time around, though, you’re less likely to accidentally hit another button while trying to move your character, except for the couple of times you’ll hit the weapon select button at the bottom. Besides those instances, you won’t be wrestling with these controls in any way. The Options and Map buttons have been moved to the out-of-the-way top corners of the touch screen, while touching and holding a button at the bottom of the screen brings up your weapon choices; drag the stylus to the weapon you want, then let go, and you’re good. The process is very quick and streamlined.
While the story was billed as dark and twisted when Moon was first announced, don’t pick up this game expecting some sort of horror title; Moon’s focus is undoubtedly the game’s combat, which it does quite well. As you explore the labyrinthian corridors that make up Moon’s world, you’ll come across enemies waiting for you at pretty much every turn, from security drones to alien attackers to spherical turrets to spider-like defense robots; actually, I think I’ve covered all of them in that last sentence. The enemies are one example of how Moon can unfortunately be repetitious at times; instead of coming across a variety of new enemies, you’ll mostly run into upgraded versions of previous enemies. As the game progresses, you’ll not only find more intense enemies, but they’ll start coming at you in larger numbers; by the last few chapters, you’ll practically be bombarded by them, and the game truly becomes a fight for your life, even on Normal difficulty. I didn’t bother to try Veteran.
This is one thing that Moon does well: the progression of difficulty is quite well-paced. As enemies become more powerful and numerous, you’ll have to start dodging more and taking out your more powerful weaponry. Naturally, you’ll receive more weaponry as you go along, and it’ll be rather nicely varied, from a powerful but slow pistol, to a sniper rifle (with scope!), to a cannon that generates some very large and powerful explosions. As you play through the game, you’ll figure out which weapon is best for which situation and you’ll end up swapping out quite often depending on what’s going on, which is thankfully very quick and easy. While I played through about half of the game with my starting gun, being the conservative ammunition hog that I am, I found the experience to be much more enjoyable once I started utilizing my entire arsenal.
The bosses in this game make up the other portion of combat. The main campaign of Moon is divided into seventeen episodes, and a portion of these episodes are dedicated entirely to a single, giant, challenging boss battle. These battles generally have you running around and dodging enemy attacks as you fire away at the boss’s weak spot, though as you move on they’ll be getting more complicated; for some battles, you’ll have to deactivate a force field while taking cover before you can attack the boss itself, which is more entertaining than it sounds. The bosses, unfortunately, can also be a little bit repetitive, though at least there’s an explanation for this in the game’s story. If a boss should ever repeat itself, incidentally, the experience is most certainly made more difficult; one boss in particular had me battling it over and over for about a half-hour until I finally developed a good strategy and found the right weapons to use. Additionally, there will be the occasional mini-boss inserted into an exploration episode, which does a good job of breaking monotony, but these bosses are generally nothing to write home about. The full-episode bosses, however, are invariably entertaining despite being occasionally repeated, and one of the best parts of the game.
When you aren’t shooting things (or sometimes when you ARE shooting things), you’re going to end up doing some level exploration. The levels of Moon are generally very straightforward, but occasionally you’ll run into force fields or branching paths to explore; this is where you’ll be pulling out your Remote Access Droid, or RAD. The RAD is a tiny, remote-controlled droid that you’ll be using to explore areas that Major Kane can’t enter; you’ll typically use this little guy to enter the tunnels that abound in this game, or else you’ll duck under some pipes so you can deactivate a force field and let Major Kane enter the next area. The catch is that the RAD can’t really defend itself, only having the capacity to stun enemies, so the game in these instances turns into a sort of stealth/speed endeavor instead of a combat-heavy one, which shakes the game up. You can use your RAD in a combat capacity if you want, though, stunning enemies with it, then quickly switching to Major Kane and finishing the enemy off. At one point in the game, there’s even a boss that’s entirely battled using the RAD, which I thought was extremely clever.
The one other thing you’ll be doing in this game, albeit not too often, is driving around the surface of the moon in your “LOLA” vehicle. The controls for this are a little strange, using both the touchpad and the directional pad to turn, but you’ll get used to them before too long. You’ll have to, too, because the surface of the moon is, for some reason, littered with mines, so you’ll have to drive carefully; you’ll also need to use the LOLA’s cannon to take out enemies, and occasionally you’ll have to do this all while racing against a ticking clock. I only wish we did this more often, as I don’t remember seeing the LOLA at any point in the second half of the game. I should note, though, that there is a bug in early versions of the game that will make it impossible to complete: at the end of the first driving section, you have the option to drive past your objective into a nearby garage and park your LOLA there. Do not do this; once you get back in the LOLA a couple episodes later, the episode will end just a tiny bit too early, and you’ll end up engaging in a time-based mission without the extremely necessary vehicle. Renegade Kid is aware of the problem and should correct it in later printings of the game.
Visually, the game is very impressive considering the system it’s on. The environments are all very science-fictiony (though a bit repetitive), the enemies are well designed, and the graphics themselves are highly polished; not only this, but the game runs at 60 FPS and the framerate never drops once. The only real complaint I have about the game is how destroying enemies always results in a rather lackluster explosion, even when attacking the organic ones. Sound-wise, the game is fairly adequate. The occasional voiced cutscene is done very well, but those drop off very quickly, and you’ll hear nothing but non-memorable sound effects and music, which is a bit unfortunate; it gets the job done, but is nothing to really write home about.
Besides all of the above, the game has a number of little touches going for and against it. One thing that surprised me was the fact that enemies do not respawn at any time, and dropped ammunition and health packs will stay where they are indefinitely, until you go to pick them up; if you need to, you can run back through previous rooms to get health or ammo, and there won’t be an enemy in sight (assuming you killed them all the first time). Save points are also used sensibly, placed before boss battles as well as at various points in the level; you won’t end up playing through overly large portions of the game twice, which is excellent. One thing that bothered me through a large portion of the adventure, though: I’m aware that it would be difficult to give Major Kane a way to jump, but Moon rubs this fact in your face when you find yourself unable to proceed because of a foot-high wall.
Once you end up completing Moon, you’ll have plenty of reason to go back. One major reason the game is divided into episodes is so that you can go back and replay individual parts of the game, either on a higher difficulty or aiming for a better time; your best times and completion percentages are tracked on each individual difficulty. Additionally, within some levels are Alien Artifacts to be collected; if you get all three, you’ll unlock a training mission that you can play in Quick Play mode.
Moon is Renegade Kid’s second example of what can be done on the DS, and consequently the second time they put most DS developers to shame. I give this game a Yay! for anybody looking for a fun FPS, because this is the best you’ll find on this system, and the gameplay could even stand up to some of the efforts found on more powerful consoles.
