Renegade Kid has the technical side of programming games for the DS down to a science. Between last year's horror shooter Dementium: The Ward and now the lunar shooter Moon, the developer has shown that it can make the DS do all manner of amazing things. If only the game design decisions were as strong as the technical ones. Unfortunately, this isn't the case and instead you have a game that initially impresses but quickly turns into a fairly boring shooter, provided you don't get your progress wiped out by a very annoying bug.

You play as Major Kane, the typical gruff military man you've seen in countless shooters. A hatch has opened on the Moon and some of your men went down into it to investigate and haven't come back. It's up to you to follow after them and find out just what in the Sea of Tranquility is going on. The game follows the standard DS shooter mechanics with your stylus controlling your reticle for aiming and looking around, the d-pad allowing you to move forward and back as well as strafe side to side, and the L-shoulder button used for firing. There is an option to switch up the controls for lefties, allowing them to enjoy all of the shooting fun as well. Whatever hand you choose, there's no real comfortable way to play a shooter on the DS, as moving with your thumb and firing with your finger requires you to hold the DS awkwardly and makes it nigh impossible to place the console on a table for playing.

Once you get used to holding the DS in an alien manner, you're off and shooting aliens. Well, robots actually. Kane is equipped with an assault rifle that has unlimited ammo as all good futuristic weapons do. It's fine for the first levels, but soon you'll find yourself going with the weapons you find while exploring, weapons that follow the standard shooter spread of pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles, all with cool quantum mechanical names like the Muon Pistol and the Fermion Sniper Rifle. The weapons work well, but they're not terribly inventive.

The same is true about the various enemies populating the levels. You've got floating robot pods, spider walker robots, little bug like robots, alien robot hybrids, etc. The enemies get tougher as you progress, but they don't change much in appearance, with even the bosses getting few changes from level to level making you feel like you're facing the same room of foes over and over again, despite the change in venue. The only thing that changes is how much ammo you'll use and how much you'll have to dodge.

It doesn't help that the levels themselves, both in appearance and in exploration, aren't terribly different from one to the next. The levels are bright and colorful, with lots of strange, alien designs and terminals about, but even with the distinct coloration, they still manage to look all the same. Your manner of exploration also seems to be the same from level to level. You'll enter, get new map data, head to the weapon part or key needed to open the door, open the door, fight a boss and then leave. Again, once you've played through a few levels, you feel like your character is moving from place to place, but not really going anywhere.

The game tries to mix things up by allowing you to control a small droid, used to access service tunnels, and travel under pipes to get to areas unreachable by Kane, usually to hit a force field control, but even these puzzles all start to feel like the same. This is compounded by the fact that while some of the force fields can be permanently disabled by Kane, many can't, which means that you'll go through the same puzzle rigmarole on your way back from the key or alien weapon needed to progress as you did on the way there. Add to this the fact that you can only save in designated rooms, which conveniently enough restore all of your health, and you have plenty of repetitive puzzle frustration.

At least it looks and runs great. Renegade Kid knows how to make the DS sing and the game never slows down. The weapons are responsive and have nice touches in the way that they recoil in Kane's hand. The frame rate never slows down, probably because there's not a lot being thrown at you at once, but who cares how they managed to do it. The game is a technical marvel, and demonstrates what can be done on the hardware when people know what they're doing.

Unfortunately, all of this technical wizardry isn't without problems as Moon plays host to one of the more annoying bugs I've come across in some time. At times Kane will emerge from the various tunnels under the surface and get in LOLA, his trusty lunar vehicle. LOLA drives like a drunken elephant, which isn't the problem, but is worth mentioning. The problem is that at one point, if you drive LOLA past where you're supposed to get out and head to the next hatch, choosing to park in the nearby garage instead, when you emerge from the hatch, LOLA will disappear on you, making it impossible for you to complete your next objective. Due to the fact that the game saves all of your progress on to one save, this means that you need to start over. The problem is early enough in the game where you'll only use a few hours of progress but a bug like this is inexcusable, and if you're like me, you won't have found the game interesting enough to redo all of the lost sections all over again.

When playing Moon, you can see the various influences that went into its design. Here there's some Doom, here there's some Metroid and Metroid Prime. It's clear that the game designers had some great inspiration, and a team of very talented programmers to implement their vision. Unfortunately, inspiration and programming prowess aren't enough and in the end, Moon starts off strong, but quickly turns into a boring and repetitive experience.

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