In the year 2058, final preparations are being made for humanity's first trip to Mars. Singular in their importance amongst them are a range of outposts on the moon, from which the celebrated spacecraft will be launched and vital research carried out in the erstwhile. However, operations within one of the build sites stops suddenly when a mysterious hatch is discovered upon the lunar surface; a team of scientists are sent in to assess the structure beneath and when communications with them are lost, Major Kane is elected the leader of a special task force whose charges are to locate the missing men and unravel the secrets of their strange discovery. You'll have heard it all iterated upon before, of course, and very likely more effectively, but Moon is no less engaging a game for its trite narrative. It's all text-boxes anyway, easy to skip, and the thrilling immediacy of its twitchy, touch screen shooter mechanics mean you're amply rewarded for your impatience.

Startup developers Renegade Kid are on a mission, it seems, to wring the very best out of the modest tech of Nintendo's DS. Lucky for those with a penchant for fast-paced action and adventure then that they just so happen to have created two excellent games in the process of pushing the procedural prowess of their preferred portable. Renegade Kid's debut - Dementium: The Ward - ran at a remarkably consistent sixty frames per second, but where that shooter was about darkness (with its claustrophobic corridors and sparse, torch-lit scares), its sci-fi successor takes light as its central cue and succeeds at that same feat, an achievement indeed given that the vast majority of its underground environments are lit with a clinical intensity that leaves no polygon unperturbed. Impressive though the technology is, it's plainly restrained by the platform's humble hardware, although there's precious little that anyone short of Nintendo itself can do about this particular quandary. As it is, Moon looks great considering the limitations by which it must abide; there's a surprising level of detail to some of the textures and even when you get in close, the environments, such as they are, prove reasonably varied and the enemies suitably menacing. A few basic cut scenes suffer some unfortunate compression artefacts and when things get particularly hectic you might too, but they get the job done just fine. Technically, it's at least the equal of its apparent spiritual predecessor, Metroid Prime: Hunters, and given the substantially smaller development muscle behind Moon, that's quite an accomplishment.

In fact, Moon will remind you of some great games over its five to six hour duration, with Metroid DS not least among them. The grid-based map screen serves firstly to keep you from getting lost in some inescapably repetitive geometry, but succeeds also in evoking the spirit of the Castlevania franchise. Dementium: The Ward was criticised primarily because of its poor save system and they way its respawning monsters discouraged exploration in any real sense; here, poking around the six, expansive stages is not only encouraged, but rewarded. You can find extra health hidden in rooms that you can only access with your remote access drone - a sort of weaponised Roomba who you get to be very familiar with - not to mention upgrades for each of the seven guns that your inventory will eventually comprise and Halo-esque terminals with bonus story snippets. Moreover, the complaints levelled at Renegade Kid's debut have also been addressed: if you clear a room of enemies then it's just as safe on any return journeys, and so long as you use them wisely, the save stations scattered around the facilities you explore are perfectly sufficient. The puzzle-solving sequences, meanwhile, bring Ratchet & Clank to mind, and the environments - not to mention the frenetic action to contend with as you progress through them - recall the output of iD Software at its most prolific point, albeit with an added vertical axis.

The aural presentation, too, is superb. Enemies make enough noise to clue you in on their attack patterns, your weapons reverberate just right, and the ambient industrial noise in each of the lunar facilities sets the tone perfectly. There's some tinny drum 'n' bass, indiscernible hissing aplenty and a good bit of beeping - not much to boast about usually, but Moon pulls the lot off with more conviction than most. The only issue I'd raise about the sound throughout Renegade Kid's latest is its repetition; simply put, there's not enough variety, and sadly, the same complaint can be made of the rest of the game. That you'll see the same objects time and again is - let's be honest - par for the course on the DS, but simply swapping out colour palettes is not an acceptable way of generating a diverse selection of assets.

The real problem, however, is with the gameplay itself; firstly there's a criminal amount of backtracking - and not just through environments but with puzzles that you're forced to solve twice in order to get back to the hub areas around which each stage is centred. The puzzles, too, become incredibly rote; whip out your robot buddy - that's how it begins - and find two key shards to unlock a door, or deactivate three barriers to proceed, or collect the cores of four mini-bosses to progress. And although the shooting mechanics are precise and responsive, the fun goes out of them somewhat when you come to realise that all the enemies exhibit the same, predictable behaviour: they rush your position, shoot, and reload. Defeating the vast majority of the sentient robots that prowl the lunar substructures is as simple, in the end, as strafing around their slow-moving projectiles until an opportunity to let loose with your weapon of choice presents itself, and from the first enemy to the final boss, one size fits all. As you progress, in fact, Moon seems to realise how flat its difficulty curve has been, but rather than bumping up the challenge factor with more intelligent enemies, it simply throws more and ever more of the same cannon fodder at you.

In short bursts, Moon is a genuinely compelling if not compulsory experience, but longer sessions expose the unfortunate simplicity of Renegade Kid's sophomore effort. With that said, the dreaded 'claw hand' that every DS shooter to date has inflicted upon its players will likely keep you from gaming for too long anyway. The controls are spot on otherwise, while the graphical and aural presentation is surprisingly cohesive - particularly given the developer's modest resources - and the story, for all its adherence to the conventional science fiction, has enough self-awareness to sacrifice seriousness for some welcome satire. The inquisitive player will come upon some choice info dumps, relating variously how spare human remains are dried and crushed to be used in the intergalactic cosmetics industry and how the infamous Roswell incident was the fault of hippie alien activists looking to save our species from the mad doctors of their own. Wicked sense of humour aside however, primitive AI and a lack of variety in gameplay and level design mean that Moon is ultimately but one small step for first person shooters on the DS, so gamers waiting for that giant leap will have to wait for Renegade Kid's next landing.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).