"Scourge, Indeed"

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front. Even though I've never played a Metroid game in my life (at least at the time of this writing), I am familiar with the premise and, aside from visual presentation, Scurge rips it off in every way imaginable. In this isometric action/platformer hybrid, players will take control of an ass-kicking mercenary chick who wears a power suit that has a bunch of unlockable weapons she'll use to fight a parasitic alien menace. See? It's Metroid. But I can hardly fault a game for mimicking such a highly praised series, nor can I criticize a developer for using a solid (if cliched) concept. But even if I don't bash Scurge for being a cheap rip-off of Metroid, the fact that this game just isn't that good is inescapable.

Scurge revolves around a female bounty hunter named Jenosa Arma (sounds a bit like Aran, doesn't it?) who is hired to go to a distant planet and retrieve some data from a science lab. Naturally, the lab was mucking around with some dangerous alien species known as the Scurge, which inevitably gets loose. As her ship enters planetary orbit, Jenosa is attacked by these lifeforms and she becomes infected with the Scurge. But like any good mercenary, she decides to go on with her job and hopefully get out alive. It's probably painfully obvious from that summation, but the narrative in Scurge is a bottom of the barrel, science fiction cliche. But who expects an epic narrative from a DS game?

Scurge is really nothing more than an isometric dungeon crawler, and throughout its length players will have to endure all sorts of outdated and monotonous mechanics and design traits. For starters, the objectives are all mind-numbingly dull and repetitive. Most of the game will be spent scouring environments looking for keycards to open doors (doors that lead to new environments with more lost keycards). For a bit of variety, most areas also have another objective that requires players to unlock a warp pad to go to proceed. This basically entails finding blocks and pulling them into set places. My, what visionary design!

While the objectives are monotonous, there's a lot of action to be had in the game. Each area is packed to the brim with a variety of enemies, which Jenosa can kill with her basic blaster. As the game progresses, players will also uncover additional weapons that have different traits and do greater damage to certain enemy types. For instance, an electric type weapon is especially harmful to robotic enemies. On top of that, certain types of weapons can actually benefit enemies, making them stronger or faster. Not only will weapons help fight enemies, but they also usually come in handy while trying to get around many environmental obstacles. For instance the first two weapons will be used to power up certain machines while another freezes enemies that can then be used to hold down pressure plates.

Combat is just as repetitive as the rest of the game, as enemies respawn each time you leave an area (and often while you're still in it). The added weapon types are a vain attempt to spice up the action and they just mean you'll have to go to the quick menu and change constantly in order to stay effective. There are several other problems in regards to the combat as well, namely in that Jenosa only shoots in eight directions. So, bullets can go up, down, left or right as well as diagonally. However, enemies have an irritating tendency to fall between these firing lines, which means you'll spend as much time trying to line up a shot as actually shooting.

During fights, Jenosa will also take a lot of unnecessary hits simply because she can't maneuver well enough to avoid them. The game has a jump button, but the isometric angle makes it almost impossible to determine the proper jump timing. And, there are usually so many enemies onscreen at a time that avoiding everything is just impossible. But after enemies are defeated, they'll drop little globs of green goo that not only replenish Jenosa's health, but give her experience. When she levels up, she'll get typical perks like increased health.

There's also quite a bit of platforming in the game as well. This usually boils down to jumping on some moving platforms, shimmying along rails and other boring activities. Later in the game, Jenosa will acquire a gadget that allows her to grapple onto enemies or objects and pull them towards her, which is used in many of the “puzzles”. This device will evolve to allow her to grab onto certain environmental objects and perform a gravity-defying leap across platforms. All in all, the platforming ends up being quite irritating, due to a isometric viewpoint that doesn't always accurately represent her position in relation to the environment.

One of the game's biggest quirks is in regards to Jenosa's infection levels. Because of Jenosa's aforementioned contraction of the Scurge virus, her infection level continually rises during her adventure. Her mechanical suit protects her from outright death, but it slowly seeps in regardless. Lucky for her there are lots of decontamination rooms scattered around the lab complex and these allow her to eradicate the virus from her system (and they serve as automatic save points to boot). Should her infection levels ever max out, she'll start losing health until she eventually dies. While the decontamination chambers are pretty common, this whole thing is still a nuisance because there are times, especially in the early going, when you'll have to turn back from exploring just to make sure you don't die. And given the infinitely respawning enemies, there's a lot of extra hassle and wasted time in doing so.

There is one final issue I never thought I'd encounter in a game with an isometric viewpoint – the camera. Rather than having the camera scroll automatically along with Jenosa's movement, it will instead trudge behind her at a lazy pace. This means that you can run to the edge of the screen before the camera decides to move. Because of this, there are numerous instances where she'll get hurt from enemies you can't even see.

The technical aspects of Scurge are average, but unimpressive. The game only utilizes the DS's capabilities in the most rudimentary of ways. Basically, you can use the stylus to tap options in the menus. However, this isn't too much of a surprise given that the game was developed for the DS and Game Boy Advance simultaneously. The sound design is pretty basic, with average sound effects and generic, tense sci-fi tunes.

The graphics are also about all that can be expected from a game designed for the GBA. The environments have some nice details and there is a surprising amount of color for a game that focuses so heavily on laboratory style rooms and hallways. Enemy designs are pretty simplistic and rudimentarily animated. In some areas, you can see objects that would be attached to the ceiling, such as girders. These never obscure the view, as they turn translucent as Jenosa passes underneath them and it's a nice touch as it feels as if you're really staring down into the facility.

THE VERDICT
Some might hold a grudge against Scurge because of its wholesale conceptual theft from the Metroid franchise. Personally, this isn't as much of a detracting factor as the fact that Southpeak didn't do anything noteworthy with these ideas after they took them. Scurge is ultimately flawed and most won't find anything of merit by picking it up.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/09, Updated 07/07/10

Game Release: Scurge: Hive (US, 11/01/06)