Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
C.O.R.E. is a first-person shooter on the DS that follows a lot of old school traditions like grabbing color-coded keys in a military complex that resembles more of a labyrinth. With a single-player mode comes a multiplayer mode that features single cart gameplay so your friends won't need a copy of the game to enjoy a competitive game.

What's Hot
There aren't too many FPS games on the DS. Metriod Prime Hunters paved the way and showed the gaming world how to do the controls and few other games have followed in the trail blazed by this game. What is unique about CORE is that it closely resembles the classic game of Doom. The nostalgia factor is strong with this one as you even have to collected color coded card keys to give you access to certain parts of the maps.

Single-player mode is rather cut and dry but the multiplayer is a neat little addition. When you have other DS owners around, you all can play off a single cartridge. Your DS will transmit the information to the others and you can all frag it out without having four identical copies of the game.

What's Not
CORE is a dated idea with dated implementation. Everything about the game screams "Doom" from head to toe. That wouldn't be such a negative if it wasn't for the fact that nothing has been taken into consideration for improving the formula. It is like a cookie cutter was taken out of the nineties and applied to CORE without realizing a decade worth of progress.

The dated gameplay might be excusable if it weren't for two critical issues: the lack of navigation and the poor control scheme. There are huge areas you need to explore and clear if you want to get to the end. The corridors twist and turn you through a series of doors that open to reveal larger rooms with more enemies. You aren't given a map or a relative direction so CORE quickly becomes a game of trying to stumble upon the mission without a real sense of what to do or where to go.

Another strike to CORE is the awkward control scheme. Instead of keeping it nice and simple, using the touchpad as a pseudo mouse and the left d-pad to move around and L button to fire, there are buttons mapped to the other side of the controller so you have to stop aiming and use secondary fire, crouch or jump. You can jump by tapping the touchpad, but that is clumsy at best. The HUD on the bottom screen also doesn't do an adequate job of telling you anything other than how many bullets before you run out and have to look for ill placed ammo depots around the game.


Final Word

There are a few kicks to get from CORE since it is such a throwback to a different decade. It is passable if you want to relish the glory days of the FPS when there weren't much in the way of frills and experience systems. There are some neat multiplayer options to play around with and you can give your friends a taste with the game sharing option.