This is more of a preview than a review, because I haven't yet finished the game (which I just bought on Tuesday), but I'll give you my opinions on it so far, in the same fashion as I normally write reviews.

The premise of the story, as I can gather, is that the Toa Inika arrived on Voya Nui and were defeated and captured by the Piraka. Then a Matoran finds some energized protodermis, steps in, and comes out a Toa. Now he is going to traverse Voya Nui, defeat the Piraka, and rescue the Toa. It's good enough, I guess; for a game like this you really don't need an epic storyline.

Impressively, Bionicle Heroes (when I say this I'm referring to the DS version, unless otherwise specified) has the exact same controls as Metroid Prime: Hunters. You shoot with L (assuming you're right-handed like I am), walk with the D-Pad, and jump by double-tapping on the touch screen. Switching weapons and such is also done with the control panel on the touch screen. In fact the controls are so much like MPH that I have more than once tried to go into Morphball to dodge an enemy's attack.

The music is nothing to write home about. For each world, it seems there's 1-3 tracks reused multiple times. They fit the environment, so I suppose it's good enough. The sound effects are great, though. Each elemental weapon has a different sound effect and it's surprisingly entertaining to listen to a Vahki or Rahkshi shriek in pain as you destroy it with bolts of ice.

The difficulty is minimal; very disappointing to me. When you die (which, for a veteran Metroid fan like me, isn't often), you hit the fire button and respawn right where you died. You lose all the gears you've collected (which seem to be only good for buying cheats), but there are no other penalties. Sorta like Lego Star Wars. Unlike that game, however, the levels are short and mostly consist of walking into a room, killing the enemies, and moving on. The enemies are generally easy, but in large numbers you might get taken down...if you're careless.

As for the boss fights however, you're practically guaranteed to die several times and you can expect to finish the level with little to no gears. The Piraka each have an elemental weapon; you have this weapon too, collected in the first level and upgraded in the second level, but there's is still superior. Because you can't strafe or block or anything and they have a huge range, they can basically run to where you can't hit them and launch a water stream (in Vezok's case) until you're dead. It's unavoidable, as far as I can see. This doesn't make them difficult, however...just annoying. The rest of the fight involves shooting them to death.

The graphics of the game are rather impressive, especially for a DS game. I wouldn't say that they're the best graphics any DS game has had, but they are still good; probably the high point of the game.

Actually, the game is not too unlike Metroid in that there are many secret pickups that cannot be found until you return to a level after getting a new ability (all of which are received by fighting the Piraka; each gives you a different elemental-based ability). The replay value would be quite high in that respect. Not to mention that there are a dozen or so cheats you can turn on, but first you need to buy them with gears. Also, though there's no reward for it, you can also strive to get ranked "Mata Nui" on each of the 30(?) levels.

All in all, this game would be good for a Metroid and/or Bionicle fan (that's me!), though if you've played anything above the difficulty level (battle-wise) of, say, Lego Star Wars, you'll find this game far too easy. Still, it's worth the $13 I paid to get it used...money that would not be better spent on any of those over-priced Mistika.

*waits for a comment that completely ignores the entry and criticizes me/agrees with me for calling the Mistika over-priced*