Scurge: Hive

Reviewed by CL on 1/28/2008

This game’s setting and story is almost a direct rip off of the Metroid series. It features a female, interstellar bounty hunter as the protagonist and has her fighting weird aliens in a futuristic setting. The gameplay is set from an isometric point of view so it makes for some interesting platforming sections. The main problem is that this was originally a GBA game, not a DS game. This is fairly obvious from the low quality sprites and weak usage of the second screen (it is used for just displaying a map which, admittedly, is fairly useful).

You have to go exploring this giant space station trying to combat an evil virus thing. The game play is pretty basic and pretty boring. The game’s gimmick is the virus which permeates the space station is constantly trying to infect you. You are required to periodically visit healing stations to purge the virus. If you don’t, you’ll start loosing life and eventually die. This severely limits the sense of exploration because you are required to periodically stop and backtrack your way to a medical station. This also makes the last boss practically impossible because it is so long and drawn out and you are virtually guaranteed to die due to this timeout instead of the bosses attacks. This is simply horrible game design.

The only attractive thing about this game is its price, so unless you want just another game in your collection, I would pass this one up.