Metroid Prime: Hunters

The hunt goes online

bit-tech readers used to high-dynamic range lighting and third-generation pixel shaders are welcome to scoff, but sit a while with Hunters and it's hard not to admire what Nintendo's done. It's a slightly grainier vision of Metroid Prime, of course, but it's ever clear, ever detailed, and ever imaginative. It's the most convincing handheld FPS game yet, and even puts rivals like Coded Arms on the PSP to shame (not that Coded Arms needed much helping finding shame, truth be told).

Of course, those familiar with Hunters' lengthy incubation will be aware that the one-player game's little more than a backdrop to its real purpose: online deathmatch. Modes are a little thin on the ground, but the good news is diversity is not. Once you've unlocked a few of the levels offline, you can take on a mixture of friends (as in Friends-list friends) and worldwide rivals, and being able to employ the varied tactics of Samus' rival hunters is top fun. Whether you're just hovering above the fray with a charge-beam or leaving your gun-turret legs in the middle of an arena as you scoot around like a spinning top to hack at people's legs, there's strategy to what goes on. And, thankfully, you can only do voice comms in the game lobby. Playing online deathmatch FPS on a Nintendo DS is, frankly, pretty awesome.

Admittedly, Hunters is capable of frustrating. The morph ball - Samus' Marble Madness ability - can be a little tricky to control precisely, whether using stylus or d-pad, and there are times during Adventure Mode when you'll curse its parents. Usually as you fall off a ledge for the seventh time because the camera span round and the controls didn't. Likewise, the repetition of unskippable third-person camera-reveals can jar with the I'm-on-my-fifth-go brigade. And of course, playing online you're beholden to Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection (aka "Wi is this taking so long to Fi-nd a Connection"). But as Tzu intimates, planning is the key. Order a pal to ready up using MSN Messenger and then opt for a Friends game and you'll get there soon.

In truth, the real challenge here is one for your wrist. Successfully guiding Samus' projectiles with your pen requires a bit of perseverance, but any initial confusion there is nothing next to the unusual contortion of strafing and firing with the shoulder button while supporting the weight of the DS with your other hand. Prolonged sessions are likely to lead to prolonged sessions of a physiotherapeutic kind as you nurse the kinks out of your tendons. Those playing in bursts won't have so much trouble, but those playing without reading the manual's Health Warning might face other kind of bursts later on. Or, you know, arthritis. Still, as Tzu put it, every battle is won before it is ever fought - and since I've already paid for Hunters, it seems fair to say Nintendo's a fan of his.

But since this is Metroid Prime, but on a handheld, future use of my limbs is something I'm willing to sacrifice.

-- Lance William.

Metroid Prime: Hunters is out now on Nintendo DS.