It must be said that there was enough to blow up one or two hoses when the game was announced, a little over a year ago. While fans of Samus Aran were waiting for a first Wii U adventure for the beauty – absent from the screens for six years now – Nintendo then took everyone on the wrong foot with Federation Force: a 3DS game, with a very marked multiplayer orientation, and for the first time without Samus. Icing on the cake, the game looked particularly ugly. Undeniably, there was enough to trigger the ire of the players. Still, Nintendo held on until the end. The game is now commercially available and we were able to find out what was behind this bad reputation.
ADAPTED TO THE SUPPORT
Unsurprisingly, it is indeed a light Metroid Prime that we are dealing with here. The game takes place after the events of Metroid Prime: Corruption and puts you in the shoes of a new recruit of the Galactic Federation. The organization has chosen to create for its army a range of mechs inspired by the capabilities of Samus Aran's suit, and it is therefore aboard your robot that you will carry out 99,9% of your missions. Because the game from Next Level Games (to whom we owe Luigi's Mansion 2, for example) drops the traditional open world of the series and opts for a mission-by-mission structure, like Metal Gear: Peace Walker on PSP. So you can forget one of the basic features of the metroidvania genre, which is being able to unlock the different areas little by little as you acquire new powers. Hard blow. In Federation Force, you will perform various jobs on behalf of the Galactic Federation on three separate planets: Bion, Excelcion and Talvania. Each mission is ultra-marked, very linear and takes place in a restricted play area. Each time, the main objective (which is often at the end of said zone) is supplemented by an additional objective, which is not always indicated. We understand it quite quickly, Metroid Prime: Federation Force is intended for short game sessions, rarely more than ten minutes, which we will have to repeat to get the best score and win the three medals in each mission. And to do this, it will sometimes be necessary to go through the multi box.MULTI for REPLAY VALUE
At any time in your progress, you can choose to call on teammates, locally (one cartridge per player unfortunately) or online to complete a thorny mission or obtain the famous high score. You can also join a game and lend a hand to another marine. If the connectivity seems to work well in both cases, the absence of a real voice chat, replaced here by basic pre-recorded messages, weighs in the development of a strategy. Not a big deal, since after a few multiplayer games, you realize that the challenge is so little raised that you can complete any mission without having to organize yourself (especially if very advanced players join to your game). However, to want to do and redo the different missions of the game, it is still necessary that the campaign encourages us to do so. Let's be frank, the first half of this Federation Force is relatively tasteless and we cross the different tables without falling backwards. Then as we progress, new scenarios appear, more original or more effective, which break the monotony. We think in particular of the boss fights, which are really cool in their design. But this risk-taking also leads to a few industrial accidents, such as this attempted infiltration mission or this super heavy moment where you have to push a cart from point A to point B while avoiding electrical storms and pirates. AN EPISODE AT A DISCOUNT?
Another point that can lead you to replay the adventure several times: the discovery of additional MODs for your mecha. Indeed, in addition to your classic abilities and the special ammunition that you can carry on each mission (by managing the weight of your kit), your armor can carry up to three MODs, which are all passive capacities. These will reinforce your shielding, that of the drones that you can embark with you solo or even the effectiveness of your equipment. And to get your hands on it, you will have to explore every nook and cranny of the levels and discover the few passages barely hidden in the sets. Still, Metroid: Federation Force suffers somewhat from its presence on 3DS. We manage to get used to the maneuverability after a few hours, but it is very far from being optimal (movement and lateral aiming on the left stick, free aiming via the console's gyroscope activated by pressing the trigger R), even on New 3DS. We therefore prefer to rely on the semi-automatic lock to quickly switch between enemies during combat. Similarly, the console's technical limitations prevent the title from taking off much higher than mediocre, and it often navigates the waters of the visually crappy. The different biomes of each planet are not used effectively. But we must still note the few staging efforts of Next Level Games to try to push this episode to the maximum.
