
	Platform DS Genre Action Publisher Southpeak Interactive Developer Orbital Media ESRB T (Teen) Released October 2006

- Some decent puzzling aspects - Should be instantly comfortable for fans of the genre (and Metroid in particularly) - Generally good animation

- Instantly respawning enemies after leaving a room makes for frustration - Targeting in eight directions isn't enough - Not enough new ideas or settings or story twists

Review: Tomb Raider Legend (DS) Review: Metroid Prime Hunters (DS) Review: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)
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Scurge: Hive

Score: 6.5 / 10

Most games I go into with an open mind. Bad buzz following a title? I'll ignore it. A stylistic approach only a mother could love? I'll look past it trying to see the what the gameplay is all about. I went into Scurge: Hive with an open mind, maybe moreso than with other games because I'd not heard anything about it before it hit my desk.

scurge hive

Simply put, Scurge: Hive is a 3/4 view Metroid wannabe. From the female protagonist (with the waviest hair this side of classic Shatner) to the level layouts to the weapon selection... it all screams of knock-off. However that doesn't totally knock the stuffing out of the game. It's a decent platformer with a few ideas of its own, but with just enough frustration to make the whole experience somewhat dissatisfying.

The essential premise of the game is tried and true: investigate a scientific

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research station to investigate what has gone wrong. The only real catch is that right at the beginning of the investigation, your character is infected with a Scurge virus, which builds up in her immune system until it starts draining her health. Fortunately, the research station is littered cleansing units that not only reduce the infection level to zero, but also saves her progress.

If a rapidly building viral load wasn't enough the

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place is crawling with creepy crawlies of various sizes and composition. To combat them, your character can equip a variety of "rock, paper, scissors" weapons. And what I mean is that some enemies can only be defeated by certain weapons. In fact, using the wrong weapon can actually increase an enemy's aggression or damage. These same weapons can also be used to interact with specific items in the environment, like energy receptacles that need to be filled prior to a door opening.

Scurge: Hive features plenty of exploration (and excessive backtracking) and battling respawning enemies along the way in the same vein as practically any Metroid game. This wouldn't be so bad if the targeting system were better. Your character can only shoot in eight directions and inevitably you'll miss more often than hit a target simply because the control doesn't have any degrees of control between those eight directions, since the touchscreen isn't used for anything other than some rudimentary map interactions.

It's a good thing that it's so easy to level your character up -- with each level gained her total health points is increased. It's necessary to go out of your way to die.

With the plentiful cleansing units (cleaning the virus, filling your health) and easy level-up thresholds, if you die, you automatically lose gamer credibility in my eyes. I died many times during the opening minutes of the game, but after that... I can't think I ever died after that.

Complaints aside, I really liked the puzzles included, even if most of them revolve around opening a door to progress to the next part of the level. I actually had to think about some of them, which is an achievement for any game like this.

Scurge: Hive is a good first effort from Orbital Media -- with some tweaks any possible sequel could be turned into a franchise of sorts. It's a decent enough game, but it could use even more new ideas to truly stand out.

- Omni

(December 14, 2006)