Nintendo likes to tease their new games, and one of the things that I said in my pre-E3 wishlist was for new game announcements to have a “this year” release date. No vague “coming soon” or just “2016” release dates. And while this game falls into the later category, I’m okay with that for now.

The truth is I need to see more of what this game is all about.

This is the (as far as I can recall) the first cooperative Metroid game. From the start of the franchise on the NES, Metroid has been a solo affair. You play as Samus and you go it alone. So with this being a new cooperative game, there is a lot that can and will likely change from the gameplay. Is that a bad thing? Is it a good thing? The truth is that I don’t know enough about the game yet to make that determination, and since it’s still a long ways off there is a lot for Nintendo to say about the game.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force takes place in the Metroid Prime universe and features a four-player squad, which can be local or online. For those who may already object to that, the literature for the game does specify that the main campaign is for 1-4 players, which means you could play this game solo. Does that mean that you will play with computer controlled partners or will it be truly solo? We’ll have to wait and see.

In the game you hop in a specialized battle Mech suit and work with your teammates to take down enemy forces and complete objective based missions. The game takes advantage of the 3DS’ built in gyroscope to aim as well, which worked really well in Splatoon on the Wii U. The game comes packaged with a multiplayer sports game called “Blast Ball” as well, a 3-on-3 sci-fi sport in the Metroid universe where players shoot the ball into the opponent’s goal to score. First to three goals wins the match.

The Blast Ball game can be sent to local friends as well for free to via Nintendo 3DS Download Play.

We’ll bring you more information once we have more details.