FA+
Shop
"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: Moon
9 years ago
Merry Christmas everyone!
Another cheapo regular DS game. Well, let us see how this one goes.
Moon
I had never heard of this game before honestly until I bought it for cheap. I figured it was worth a try for the cheap price it was offered for and from what it looked like on the back cover. With a simple name like Moon, you obviously can figure out that this game takes place on the moon. However, what in the world are you doing on the moon in this game? Well, let us take a closer look and find out exactly what you are doing on the moon and if this game is any good shall we?
Gameplay
Moon is a first person shooter for the Nintendo DS. That's definitely a genre you don't tend to see much of on the handheld consoles. Pretty much in Moon, you are running around from location to location shooting up everything that moves or is trying to shoot back at you while you move from each objective blip as they appear on the map. You have big maps of each location you have to go through as they change color as you explore them. You have upgrades to your health and weapons that you find along the way, and occasionally you fight large bosses. This sounds sort of familiar maybe? Moon is pretty much a Metroid Prime clone. It didn't take me long after starting this game to realize that this game is trying to be like Metroid. However, Metroid is obviously the far superior game, especially since it first created the formula that Moon is pretty much based off of. As I said, you are pretty much just running from objective marker to objective marker killing everything that moves. However, unlike Metroid, Moon is pretty straightforward. There are really no branching paths to take, no backtracking and really not much in the form of exploring in the game. Yes, you are running around exploring these mysterious locations as you go through them, but you rarely are ever going to go back to any of these locations. You see them once and usually you just go to the next area, that's it. There is no reason to explore more than the minimum. The game isn't bad in this manner of course, because if you are just looking for a straight forward first person shooter, then Moon is something you may have some interest in for a shooter on the go. However, if you are expecting something as deep as Metroid with the environments, then you won't be getting that here. You do collect a number of weapons as you play this game, and certain weapons are obviously more useful at times than others and more effective on different enemies as you would expect as well. It's just many of the weapons are very situational, and it really depends on if you have the ammo for them as well. Ammo isn't too hard to come by as you do have one weapon that is infinite, but all the other weapons do take ammo that randomly drops from enemies. You just gotta hope you have the right ammo at the right times or you will be stuck with the weapon infinite ammo rifle. The bosses in this game are mixed as well. You end up fighting the same ones several time through out the game, and some of them are quite difficult as well. Yet, others are a complete push over and can be killed in just a few shots with the right weapons and movements. Really, I can see where they were trying to go with this game, and in some parts they did a good job, but other areas really, not so much. If you like a straightforward first person shooter on the go, then that's what you are going to get here.
Story
Moon is pretty much about a Marine that is part of a squad of soldiers that have been sent to the moon in order to check out some areas that have been unearthed on the surface of the moon. Mysterious openings and facilities have been found to be on the moon, and now you, as the major of the soldiers, must go through these areas trying to find out what exactly these facilities are, and why they are here, and who put them there if possible. However, it all goes wrong immediately when all but one soldier and yourself go missing. You then have to go into these facilities that you have unearthed to try and hopefully find some of the survivors of your squad and find out what is going on here. There is some story here, and I will give it that the game tried, but it really did a lot of things wrong as well. Without spoiling much of the game in case people do want to play it, pretty much the game just feels like there should be a lot more story, but it just isn't there. Many instances of plot points that are going on during the game, like this mysterious person you are talking to throughout the game, go unanswered. The game ends on a cliffhanger and way too suddenly. You don't get to find out what happens to anyone in the game. I know that's a bit of a spoiler right there, but in a game that even has a small story, you at least want the conflict resolved in one way or another when you finish the game. This is just one of those games where the story feels like it is building up to something, but then just doesn't deliver it. It feels like there is missing content in the story of this game and I just find that unacceptable. Even with the journals and such you find throughout the levels of this game, they never are full explained. You sort of can figure out what a lot of the facilities are used for as you go through the game, but you don't get the entire story or a full explanation really in my opinion. I was really hoping for that and I didn't get one. It's not the worst story in the world, but they could have added a lot more here. They really missed the full mark here.
Graphics
The graphics in Moon, while okay, are nothing impressive either. The game doesn't look too bad for a DS game, but you can tell they had some limitations in making the game. A lot of the graphics as you are playing around can at times look rather blurry and like they were really trying to push what they could make on this handheld. While not great graphics don't always make the game as gameplay always comes first, this game even for the time it came out, doesn't exactly look that impressive. So many of the areas are rather dark and pretty sparsely populated with objects. Everything just looks so plain. While the objects that are in the game aren't that bad to look at, most of the backgrounds are just generic and nothing special at all. I can't say I was that impressed with it. There were only a few times I was sort of going yeeeeeah when I looked at the graphics of this game, but you could tell they were trying to push it with this game. It might have helped if the game was a little brighter though. It is just such a dark game, that blurriness can be quite obvious at times. If you can get over that, the graphics aren't that bad, but if you are picky about blurriness or graphics that you can tell aren't super smooth then you won't like the graphics of this game at all.
Sound
Yeah, the sound in this game isn't that great. It's not the worst I have ever heard, but there are just so many points where the music just has these sounds that just aren't too pleasant for the ears. For example, some of the title screen music just has this low screeching noises that are just not pleasant. They aren't high pitched screeches, they are rather low pitched, so its a bit hard to explain. Still, you hear a lot of the music in these facilities and they are just not appealing to listen to at all. Most of the guns sound sort of similar, and most of the sound effects are rather similar to each other. Almost all of the speech in the game is just text as well, so other than one or two spots where there is some voice acting, everything else is just text with text noises. I guess some of these sounds were used to try and make the player think they are all alone in abandoned strange places, which they are, but you could have used sounds that didn't sound so odd as these ones do. As I said, they aren't the worst sounds around, but they aren't something you would want to sit and listen to at all. Pass on the soundtrack as something to listen to on this game.
Control
The controls in this game are quite interesting. You control your character with the control pad or c stick if you have a 3DS while aiming with the stylus on the screen. This is both a positive and a negative. It's a bit of a positive in the fact that you could touch and pull to aim where you want to aim, which is nice, but at the same time, this means you are holding your DS in an odd way and on one hand usually. This means that your hand can get rather tired quickly from this awkward way of having to hold the DS at all times as you play this game. I know they had to do it this way as this was meant to make use of the touch pad on the DS. There is also the fact that there is not a second c stick like you would be using to aim if you were using a normal controller. This can make it very awkward for some people to play this game. There is also a bit of a learning curve with using this method as well, as you are likely so used to the double c stick method for first person shooters, that this can easily throw you off in the short run. In the long run, you can pick up the method and get used to it, but still, the odd way of holding your DS is a bit factor in the controls here. It makes it so you have to play the game for short periods of time or else just tough it out when your hand starts to hurt a bit from the odd way you hold the DS to be able to constantly control your gun with the touch screen and stylus. Sometimes, you may not want to do this, so the fact the different way of controlling this game can effect your play time, I do think that is something to consider for sure and why I think it hurts it a bit.
Replay Value
Honestly, I see this as another okay here at best when it comes to replayability. As I mentioned in the gameplay section, the game is pretty straight forward. There is really nothing in the game that rewards exploring, replaying and trying it again, nor is there any extras really when you beat the game. Sure, there are some extra training missions you can unlock, but that's it. It is just training missions. There are other difficulties, but just extra difficulties isn't really something that may keep people coming back again and again at this game. With everything being so straight forward, once you have played through this game once, you have pretty much seen everything there is to see. There aren't really many hidden areas in this game, and even ones that may seem like they are, are way too obvious to really miss. Once you have played this game once, you have seen it all. The only reason to play this game again is really if you just want to play it again. There just doesn't seem to be a heavy pull here in this game to make the player want to play it more than once, unless they just want a first person fix on the DS.
Overall, Moon is pretty much just an average first person shooter that is trying hard to be a Metroid Prime clone on the go. It really tries, it really does, but it just doesn't impress that much. It is just an average first person shooter. If you have played a first person shooter recently, then you have played something similar to this. I would recommend this to people that are just in the mood for a first person shooter on the go or on their handheld instead of their console. If you are a fan of Metroid though, you may have some interest here to see what a clone of the game looks like, but you are still going to have way more fun with Metroid Prime than you will with Moon. Overall, its just an average game. Check it out if you please, but I doubt you will be that impressed by it, even if it isn't a terrible game. It just isn't that impressive either.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Moon on the DS a six out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 6
Graphics: 6
Sound: 5
Control: 6
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 6
Another cheapo regular DS game. Well, let us see how this one goes.
Moon
I had never heard of this game before honestly until I bought it for cheap. I figured it was worth a try for the cheap price it was offered for and from what it looked like on the back cover. With a simple name like Moon, you obviously can figure out that this game takes place on the moon. However, what in the world are you doing on the moon in this game? Well, let us take a closer look and find out exactly what you are doing on the moon and if this game is any good shall we?
Gameplay
Moon is a first person shooter for the Nintendo DS. That's definitely a genre you don't tend to see much of on the handheld consoles. Pretty much in Moon, you are running around from location to location shooting up everything that moves or is trying to shoot back at you while you move from each objective blip as they appear on the map. You have big maps of each location you have to go through as they change color as you explore them. You have upgrades to your health and weapons that you find along the way, and occasionally you fight large bosses. This sounds sort of familiar maybe? Moon is pretty much a Metroid Prime clone. It didn't take me long after starting this game to realize that this game is trying to be like Metroid. However, Metroid is obviously the far superior game, especially since it first created the formula that Moon is pretty much based off of. As I said, you are pretty much just running from objective marker to objective marker killing everything that moves. However, unlike Metroid, Moon is pretty straightforward. There are really no branching paths to take, no backtracking and really not much in the form of exploring in the game. Yes, you are running around exploring these mysterious locations as you go through them, but you rarely are ever going to go back to any of these locations. You see them once and usually you just go to the next area, that's it. There is no reason to explore more than the minimum. The game isn't bad in this manner of course, because if you are just looking for a straight forward first person shooter, then Moon is something you may have some interest in for a shooter on the go. However, if you are expecting something as deep as Metroid with the environments, then you won't be getting that here. You do collect a number of weapons as you play this game, and certain weapons are obviously more useful at times than others and more effective on different enemies as you would expect as well. It's just many of the weapons are very situational, and it really depends on if you have the ammo for them as well. Ammo isn't too hard to come by as you do have one weapon that is infinite, but all the other weapons do take ammo that randomly drops from enemies. You just gotta hope you have the right ammo at the right times or you will be stuck with the weapon infinite ammo rifle. The bosses in this game are mixed as well. You end up fighting the same ones several time through out the game, and some of them are quite difficult as well. Yet, others are a complete push over and can be killed in just a few shots with the right weapons and movements. Really, I can see where they were trying to go with this game, and in some parts they did a good job, but other areas really, not so much. If you like a straightforward first person shooter on the go, then that's what you are going to get here.
Story
Moon is pretty much about a Marine that is part of a squad of soldiers that have been sent to the moon in order to check out some areas that have been unearthed on the surface of the moon. Mysterious openings and facilities have been found to be on the moon, and now you, as the major of the soldiers, must go through these areas trying to find out what exactly these facilities are, and why they are here, and who put them there if possible. However, it all goes wrong immediately when all but one soldier and yourself go missing. You then have to go into these facilities that you have unearthed to try and hopefully find some of the survivors of your squad and find out what is going on here. There is some story here, and I will give it that the game tried, but it really did a lot of things wrong as well. Without spoiling much of the game in case people do want to play it, pretty much the game just feels like there should be a lot more story, but it just isn't there. Many instances of plot points that are going on during the game, like this mysterious person you are talking to throughout the game, go unanswered. The game ends on a cliffhanger and way too suddenly. You don't get to find out what happens to anyone in the game. I know that's a bit of a spoiler right there, but in a game that even has a small story, you at least want the conflict resolved in one way or another when you finish the game. This is just one of those games where the story feels like it is building up to something, but then just doesn't deliver it. It feels like there is missing content in the story of this game and I just find that unacceptable. Even with the journals and such you find throughout the levels of this game, they never are full explained. You sort of can figure out what a lot of the facilities are used for as you go through the game, but you don't get the entire story or a full explanation really in my opinion. I was really hoping for that and I didn't get one. It's not the worst story in the world, but they could have added a lot more here. They really missed the full mark here.
Graphics
The graphics in Moon, while okay, are nothing impressive either. The game doesn't look too bad for a DS game, but you can tell they had some limitations in making the game. A lot of the graphics as you are playing around can at times look rather blurry and like they were really trying to push what they could make on this handheld. While not great graphics don't always make the game as gameplay always comes first, this game even for the time it came out, doesn't exactly look that impressive. So many of the areas are rather dark and pretty sparsely populated with objects. Everything just looks so plain. While the objects that are in the game aren't that bad to look at, most of the backgrounds are just generic and nothing special at all. I can't say I was that impressed with it. There were only a few times I was sort of going yeeeeeah when I looked at the graphics of this game, but you could tell they were trying to push it with this game. It might have helped if the game was a little brighter though. It is just such a dark game, that blurriness can be quite obvious at times. If you can get over that, the graphics aren't that bad, but if you are picky about blurriness or graphics that you can tell aren't super smooth then you won't like the graphics of this game at all.
Sound
Yeah, the sound in this game isn't that great. It's not the worst I have ever heard, but there are just so many points where the music just has these sounds that just aren't too pleasant for the ears. For example, some of the title screen music just has this low screeching noises that are just not pleasant. They aren't high pitched screeches, they are rather low pitched, so its a bit hard to explain. Still, you hear a lot of the music in these facilities and they are just not appealing to listen to at all. Most of the guns sound sort of similar, and most of the sound effects are rather similar to each other. Almost all of the speech in the game is just text as well, so other than one or two spots where there is some voice acting, everything else is just text with text noises. I guess some of these sounds were used to try and make the player think they are all alone in abandoned strange places, which they are, but you could have used sounds that didn't sound so odd as these ones do. As I said, they aren't the worst sounds around, but they aren't something you would want to sit and listen to at all. Pass on the soundtrack as something to listen to on this game.
Control
The controls in this game are quite interesting. You control your character with the control pad or c stick if you have a 3DS while aiming with the stylus on the screen. This is both a positive and a negative. It's a bit of a positive in the fact that you could touch and pull to aim where you want to aim, which is nice, but at the same time, this means you are holding your DS in an odd way and on one hand usually. This means that your hand can get rather tired quickly from this awkward way of having to hold the DS at all times as you play this game. I know they had to do it this way as this was meant to make use of the touch pad on the DS. There is also the fact that there is not a second c stick like you would be using to aim if you were using a normal controller. This can make it very awkward for some people to play this game. There is also a bit of a learning curve with using this method as well, as you are likely so used to the double c stick method for first person shooters, that this can easily throw you off in the short run. In the long run, you can pick up the method and get used to it, but still, the odd way of holding your DS is a bit factor in the controls here. It makes it so you have to play the game for short periods of time or else just tough it out when your hand starts to hurt a bit from the odd way you hold the DS to be able to constantly control your gun with the touch screen and stylus. Sometimes, you may not want to do this, so the fact the different way of controlling this game can effect your play time, I do think that is something to consider for sure and why I think it hurts it a bit.
Replay Value
Honestly, I see this as another okay here at best when it comes to replayability. As I mentioned in the gameplay section, the game is pretty straight forward. There is really nothing in the game that rewards exploring, replaying and trying it again, nor is there any extras really when you beat the game. Sure, there are some extra training missions you can unlock, but that's it. It is just training missions. There are other difficulties, but just extra difficulties isn't really something that may keep people coming back again and again at this game. With everything being so straight forward, once you have played through this game once, you have pretty much seen everything there is to see. There aren't really many hidden areas in this game, and even ones that may seem like they are, are way too obvious to really miss. Once you have played this game once, you have seen it all. The only reason to play this game again is really if you just want to play it again. There just doesn't seem to be a heavy pull here in this game to make the player want to play it more than once, unless they just want a first person fix on the DS.
Overall, Moon is pretty much just an average first person shooter that is trying hard to be a Metroid Prime clone on the go. It really tries, it really does, but it just doesn't impress that much. It is just an average first person shooter. If you have played a first person shooter recently, then you have played something similar to this. I would recommend this to people that are just in the mood for a first person shooter on the go or on their handheld instead of their console. If you are a fan of Metroid though, you may have some interest here to see what a clone of the game looks like, but you are still going to have way more fun with Metroid Prime than you will with Moon. Overall, its just an average game. Check it out if you please, but I doubt you will be that impressed by it, even if it isn't a terrible game. It just isn't that impressive either.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Moon on the DS a six out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 6
Graphics: 6
Sound: 5
Control: 6
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 6
