CORE: M-Rated First-Person Shooter for Nintendo DS Goes Gold

— -- You can count the number of DS-based first-person shooters on one hand. Three fingers, really, between GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Call of Duty 4, and Metroid Prime: Hunters.

Make that four, courtesy NoWay Studio's C.O.R.E., a first-person shooter about drilling to the center of the earth and aliens waiting there for who knows how many decades to eat your face off. You get to stop that from happening with shotguns, plasma guns, rocket launchers, and "a host of new specialist weapons" that hopefully won't include chainsaws, baseball bats, gravity guns, or BFGs.

The trailer describes C.O.R.E. (which stands for what again?) as "old school gaming" with "twenty various enemies" and "various scenery environments" with "great soundtracks for special climate." I know, I have no idea what those last couple mean either.

Judging from the trailer, C.O.R.E.'s notion of old school extends all the way back to Wolfenstein 3D, where your enemy's "tactical acumen" amounted to "stand in the open, glower, fire two-handed from hip indiscriminately." That looks like the playbook here, probably because there's nowhere to hide when you're stuck in geometrically primitive tunnels. The trailer also says something about "interactive tools and objects." Looks like you can swipe cards and push buttons. (Get out!)

Not helping the game's wave at your wallet: local-only multiplayer.

Then again, it is "one of the few M-Rated games for the Nintendo DS," to which Kenneth Hurley, CEO of Signature Devices, Inc. and Graffiti Entertainment, Inc. adds "We've remained true to the hardcore FPS gamers and brought a fantastic FPS to the Nintendo DS. C.O.R.E. is what every Nintendo DS owner and FPS fan has been waiting for."