Developed by Graphic State and published by Majesco/THQ in 2002, Dark Arena is a first-person shooter set in a futuristic environment where you are the only survivor of a team sent in to neutralise a bunch of Genetically-Engineered Organisms (GEOs) inside a top secret training facility.

Although you wouldn’t know it from the game itself, you actually play as a woman in the story – Angelina Bradshaw – the commander of a team of special operations soldiers. The training facility you’re sent to is located on a small, remote island on an alien planet, and your mission is to try to get things back under control.

Player movement is fast, and the controls are responsive. There’s also a small amount of momentum on movement, which makes the game feel Doom-like. In fact, Dark Arena is very reminiscent of Doom overall.

The game can be played at three difficulty levels (easy, medium and hard), and on medium you’re given a decent challenge. There are a variety of weapons to find and use, and you always have a default pistol, with unlimited ammo. Ammo for other weapons can only be collected when you have that weapon in your possession.

What is interesting (and also slightly frustrating) about Dark Arena is that you lose the weapons you previously collected when starting a new level.

The enemies in Dark Arena are varied and fairly challenging. They do the Doom thing: make noises when they’re nearby, so you can identify them before you see them. Some are smart enough to hide, if you start shooting at them, but in general their instincts are to come at you if they detect you. If you’re out of detection range, though, they just stand there, and don’t seem to patrol, which often makes them easy targets at a distance.

The level design in Dark Arena is decent enough. Environments are colourful, and sometimes have atmospheric lighting. There are also switches, elevators, and secret areas to find (by pressing ‘B’ when facing walls). Colour-coded keycards are also required to open certain doors. Overall, the level design is very Doom-like. There is a map feature, but this only becomes available when you collect the mapping device (which doesn’t seem to be very often – I only found it a couple of times, so I don’t think the map is available on every level).

To complete a level, you basically have to find the exit, which is hidden somewhere on a level. You’re given a summary of your accuracy and statistics, and a password so you can play from the last level you reached from the main menu, when you enter the exit.

As well as the single-player campaign, there’s also a multiplayer mode in Dark Arena. I haven’t played it, so don’t know what it’s like. I did try to get it working with VBA Link, but had no joy.

I did read that the ending in Dark Arena is directly tied to the difficulty level you choose to play, which some might think is a bit unfair. Only by completing the game on hard difficulty can you get the “good” ending.

Dark Arena is nicely-presented, playable and challenging. The only thing I didn’t like about it were the humanoid enemies, which I thought were animated pretty badly. Some of the weapons are arguably a little too generic for their own good too, but overall this is a reasonably good FPS on the GBA that is still worth playing today.

More: Dark Arena on Wikipedia