Developer: Retro Studios
Publisher: Nintendo
Ok, so if Samus had conceived a child she'd be due in the next few weeks. We're a little late with the review. Also don't let the title of the review fool you, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a very good game.
Corruption takes place after the events of Metroid Prime: Echoes. Having destroyed Dark Samus and sealing the 'Dark Aether.' Samus enjoys an unspecified amount of vacation time until those pesky space pirates stumble ass backwards, yet again, into a plan to control the universe by infecting all living things with Phazon. Their plan this time? Crash giant Phazon corrupted 'seeds' into planets and let the virus do it's thang.
Corruption re-introduces the space travel and ship concepts from it's DS sibling Metroid Prime: Hunters. Instead of being dropped off on a planet and left to fend for yourself you now have the ability to fly between different landing sites on a planet, and between several planets themselves encompassed within two galaxies. The ship also plays an integral role in helping you advance the story. You can upgrade your ship with different attachments, and increase it's missile carrying capacity. Oh, did I mention you can call in air strikes (however scripted they may be) with your ship now?
One of the big things Retro Studios did right this time around was strip down the gameplay. Don't get me wrong Metroid Prime was an awesome game with equal if not better gameplay than Super Metroid, but looking back there were maybe too many suit upgrades. In the first Prime you had four different guns, and four different visors. Depending on what kind of variety of enemies you were facing you would have to switch your gun and visors several times in a single room. Corruption takes most of the guesswork out of which gun is the most effective in a certain situation by simply replacing your old buster with a more powerful one whenever you upgrade your gun. You're also limited to three visors, the old standbys Scan and X-Ray, and the new Ship visor which you use to call air strikes, pick up large items, or simply call your ship to a landing zone. To compliment these upgrades Retro Studios added a little caveat called 'hyper mode' which allows you inject Phazon into yourself and dramatically increase the damage of all your attacks.
This installment of the Metroid Prime series is much more of a puzzler than previous ones. On several occasions you'll find yourself locked in a room until you figure out how to accomplish a series of tasks that allows you access to another room or a suit upgrade. Yes, I realize you do this in the previous games as well, but the puzzle element has definitely been amped up in this game. Parts of levels will be destroyed tasking you with having to find alternate routes around the different planets. All around you'll find yourself doing much more thinking than shooting in this game.
Now my justification for the title of this review. Enemies are frustratingly resilient in this game. Much like Samus herself they can enter 'hyper mode' and unleash some powerful attacks. The big problem is that there are no middle weight enemies. You either take them out with one or two shots, or fight them for a good minute.
Don't even get me started on bosses. Each boss fight, honestly, seriously, no joke, will take at least 15 minutes. From the very first boss up until Dark Samus. After fighting one of the bosses for a solid 10 minutes I got his health down to just a nugget of power, just one hit, and he entered a phase where I couldn't attack him. I screamed in rage, "For Fucks Sake!" because I had to fight him for another five minutes before he became vulnerable again. That was somewhere near the halfway point, and yes they do get successively harder. Let's face it, the Wiimote is not the most comfortable controller to use, and after about 10 minutes of intense fighting you start to feel some pain in that space between your thumb and pointer finger. Yeah -- you know what I'm talking about.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is one of the most beautiful and detailed games I've seen on the Wii. While it loses some of it's original novelty in that you're not isolated on a planet left to on the figure out an eerie mystery, and you have to deal with other people, it still holds up to Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. (Why didn't I include Echoes in that previous statement? Because Echoes was a linear, restrictive piece of [End])
Don't even get me started on bosses. Each boss fight, honestly, seriously, no joke, will take at least 15 minutes. From the very first boss up until Dark Samus. After fighting one of the bosses for a solid 10 minutes I got his health down to just a nugget of power, just one hit, and he entered a phase where I couldn't attack him. I screamed in rage, "For Fucks Sake!" because I had to fight him for another five minutes before he became vulnerable again. That was somewhere near the halfway point, and yes they do get successively harder. Let's face it, the Wiimote is not the most comfortable controller to use, and after about 10 minutes of intense fighting you start to feel some pain in that space between your thumb and pointer finger. Yeah -- you know what I'm talking about.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is one of the most beautiful and detailed games I've seen on the Wii. While it loses some of it's original novelty in that you're not isolated on a planet left to on the figure out an eerie mystery, and you have to deal with other people, it still holds up to Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. (Why didn't I include Echoes in that previous statement? Because Echoes was a linear, restrictive piece of [End])
Prepare your hands now, cause they're gonna get fucked.
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