It’s great when your fiancée goes out and stumbles across a small Indie games shop that just happens to sell American import games, amongst other things, for handheld consoles.

Scanning over the wall display and the stand in the middle, I come across some unreleased (in the UK at least) games. The cases are different. They are better, and the artwork looks better - but maybe that’s just me.

Digging through games like Trauma Centre, Tetris and Elektroplankton, I stumble across a shiny black cover with Metroid Prime: Hunters stamped on the front of it. I buy it.

Two hours later, when I arrive home, I slam it in my DS and turn it on. Wow. Everyone knows the DS is graphically inferior to the PSP, but this game is trying its damned hardest to push the console to its boundaries. Remember when you put the demo in your DS when you bought it and saw Samus rotating at the beginning? It’s better than that. There are a few different characters. There are explosions and spaceships travelling in cut scenes. It’s something you thought you’d never see on your clamshell console of joy.

As many of you folks would probably know, there are no cutesy animals, no plumbers, princesses, toadstools or moustaches - it’s all about blasting things out of space.

The touch screen responds like a dream, and there are about 4 or 5 different control methods, so trial and error is a good idea.

The game kicks off with you traversing space. The map appears on the bottom screen, and you touch ‘land ship’ pretty straight forward. Jump off the roof of your ship and blast through the door. Welcome to the Celestial Archives. There are long corridors, and some pretty nasty things lurking around some corners. It’s a maze more than anything. It’s pretty straight forward, and more often than not it runs smooth, with the odd pause (for wants of a better word) of a frame when you reach a door. It’s nothing to be concerned about. I’m hooked. I’ve been sucked into a virtual sci-fi world. Pumping the enemies with the cannon that’s attached to your arm is so good, because you know if you hadn’t, then they would have fired a nasty red laser at you, or ran to attack you faster than the dogs in RE. Things hide behind some slanted rafters and zap you. It’s annoying because they were out of site, and obviously, by the time they were in view, it’s too late.

Blast another door, and you find yourself in a tall round room, with platforms spiralling upwards. A double tap of the touch screen and your feet land on the platform. Now to get up the other 8 or so.

At the top is a strange ‘twisted’ room, with strange doors either end. You shoot at the door and it opens. A cut scene shows you what lies ahead. It’s a tower that shoots out fire. There are blue circles on it. It slightly reminded me of the giant octopus in the Wind Waker. Dodge the fire, shoots the blue. Excellent. Or is it? A white block comes out the top, which needs shooting as much as possible; otherwise you’re prolonging the agony of being slowly tortured by a flame.

After a good couple of turns, a cut scene shows the thing blowing up. Fantastic. Collect the things in the room, and stroll back to the ship, you think - but no. It would be easy that way!

You get 5 minutes to leg it back to your ship before the planet blows up. The enemies you ripped apart on the way have respawned, and new ones have appeared. There’s also one other problem. It’s like a maze. I went through the same door about 5 times before I realised what I was doing. Get to the ship in time and you’re sorted. Don’t and you'll have to start the countdown again.

Your ship takes off, and to the next planet you go.

The online mode is just a four player frag fest. The bonus with there not being an ear piece, is that the annoying 13 year old American kids with high pitched voices - the ones that dampened your game of Halo 2 - aren’t there.

I really can’t praise the game enough. It’s totally surprised me, and everyone should buy it. Even if you, like me have never played Metroid before. Make the purchase.

I’d say all round, I’d give it 9/10. It seems like quite a big game. I’m on my fourth planet and 5% through., so with any luck, it could take a while.