Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)
The final chapter of Retro Studios’ series closes with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, now on the Wii. Retro has done a fantastic job of ending the series, not only in story and environments, but also with the amazing simplicity of the controls using the Wii Remote, an achievement that no other game on the Wii has really yet to demonstrate.
The story picks up 6 months after the events in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, where Samus, with help of her fellow Hunters and of the Galactic Federation, help to defend the fleet against Space Pirate attacks. Huge asteroid-like projectiles filled with Phazon energy are shot at planets by the Space Pirates, and while the Hunters are able to stop some of these attacks, they are all corrupted by the energy through Dark Samus’ interference. Despite the fact that their corruption allows them to enter Hypermode, where their attacks are much more rapid and powerful, Samus must fend off her own corruption to complete her mission and rid the universe of Dark Samus and Phazon energy forever.
The first thing to notice about Corruption is the controls - obviously on the Wii, you’d hope that Retro would take advantage of the controls. But they’ve gone beyond that, not simply adapting the controls to fit the Metriod style of play, but instead making the game work around the controls, thus making the game play like a natural extension of your body. The game uses both the Remote and the Nunchuck controllers for movement, aiming, firing, jumping, and morph ball modes, all feeling quite natural once you get used to it. There’s no need to swap between weapons, as they “stack” on each other; the only thing you’ll need to switch among are three visor modes, which is done by hitting the minus button and pointing to one of three areas on screen. Similarly, Hypermode is done by the plus button, and the map screen is brought up through the “1″ button. There are also some “mini-game” type parts of gameplay that use other abilities of the remote; you may need to twist and pull out an energy cell, or fuse together a broken circuit panel. While you have regular lock-on aiming as with the other Prime games, the new Advanced mode allows you to lock on to a target to strafe around it, but free to aim your weapon anywhere, which is great for those bosses that have drones or other objects that you don’t have to disable the lock-on to shoot down. This, along with all the fine tuning of the various control elements, make Corruption quick to pick up and learn. Again, it is very noticeable that Retro has built the game around the controls, instead of trying to shoehorn the controls into the game’s scheme. Other attempts at shoehorning with first person shooters (notably Red Steel) have failed. The Wii Remote is not just a gimmick, there has to be thought to make it’s use perfect.
Outside of the controls, most of your usual Metroid play is there. The game expands to cover several planets, which you use Samus’ ship to transverse, which helps to break up the usual monotonous backtracking needed in games as to get the needed power-ups to move forward. Additionally, your ship becomes a usable element in the game, allowing it to land in specific parts of the field, shoot down obstacles, or even lift obstacles as needed. Many places will initially seem like dead-ends, but even more so than other Prime games, the scanning visor, used often, will help hint at what is needed. For those that like to be collectors of everything there, its actually relatively easy to achieve the complete collection of everything, and this may reflect on the lack of difficulty of the game with some of the puzzles; once you know where a hidden cache of goodies are, it’s usually a matter of waiting on the right power-up and scanning to figure out how to collect it. Where the game will be challenging in the foes, which can also switch to the super-charged Hypermode more frequently at higher difficulty levels, making you conserve health as much as possible. There’s also more bonus material to unlock; performing certain tasks (scanning a foe for the first time, killing a number of monsters, or completing an objective) will give you tokens which can spend to unlock these. The game even uses the network abilities of the Wii to allow you to send voucher tickets to a friend which turns into a type of token for them to use, encouraging people to share their experience with others.
Corruption is stunning beautiful; expanding to several planets allowed Retro to expand more beyond one type of general design for the overall game, and each world has a definite flavor. While the Wii’s still limited to 480p, the game is by far the best-looking title for the system to date, with lots and lots of texturing and architectural details, and one world is so wide open, it’s worth taking just a few minutes to admire the beauty of it. The use of audio is great; the themes of each world and subsection are unique yet still feel like Metroid music, and ambient sounds help to complete the immersion. There’s even a smattering of voice acting in the game, used for some cut scenes but often to help tell or remind you of the next goal without disrupting the gameplay.
Arguable, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption may be the best game of the series, possibly losing out to Metroid Prime 1, as it lacks some of the challenge that the first game provided without the dark/light artificial difficulty of the second game. But outside of the Prime series, Corruption shows exactly how a Wii game should be put together - controls first, gameplay second - as to make the controls intuitive and readily accessible. Retro Studios have even gone farther to demonstrate that in this fashion, you don’t need to sacrifice or change the gameplay that is expected for the genre or series.
Primotech Rating: 
Related Stories
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Top News
Latest Articles
Listen to Primocasts
Newest Previews
Recent Reviews
Fresh Media
-
Sponsor
Links