PLATFORM

Nintendo Wii

DEVELOPER

Retro Studios

PUBLISHER

Nintendo

GENRE

First Person Shooter

# OF PLAYERS

1

Rating

T

U.S. RELEASE DATE

August 27th, 2007

MSRP

$49.99

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

OVERVIEW

After Dark Samus the Space Pirates launch a massive attack on the Federation, Samus must prevent Phazon from corrupting several planets and help restore the Federation’s Aurora Unit Network so the Federation can strike back.

REVIEW

This is the third installment of the Metroid Prime series, and the first for the Nintendo Wii. As highly anticipated as this release was, I must admit that I was skeptical. After enjoying the first Metroid Prime game on the Gamecube, the second installment, Echoes, left me cold. The game was so boring that I never bothered to finish it. I was very much afraid that Corruption would leave me equally cold.

Thankfully, Retro shook things up with this release. One of the most annoying features of every Metroid game in the past has been the inevitable “Samus loses everything” sequence, where all of her standard gear is predictably removed, forcing her to find these via upgrades throughout the game. In this installment, this scene never comes. She is still fairly stripped down as the game begins, but standard gear like the Morph Ball, Bombs and Space Jump are with you from the beginning of the game, with the Missile Launcher coming almost right away. You still start with only one Energy Tank, but you never lose any of the core equipment. This was refreshing, and made the game a lot more playable off the bat.

The second improvement was the voice acting and characters. The addition of NPCs really added depth to the setting. Instead of simply receiving text instructions, Samus received audio transmissions and actually interacts with various allies and opponents. These various characters add a real sense of urgency to Samus’s mission - because there are finally other visible allies, her mission seems less random than it has in the past. In true Nintendo fashion, Samus herself remains voiceless, which was the right move.

The addition of the bounty hunters was a nice tweak as well. It makes sense that Samus wouldn’t be the only bounty hunter in the universe, and from the moment you saw each of them, you knew you were going to have to fight them all. Serving as bosses throughout the game, each of the bounty hunters brought something new to the table, giving Samus something different to fight against which spiced things up. In the past, Metroid has relied a lot on the same-old bosses, and the variety made things a little more challenging. Some of the standards like Metroids, Space Pirates, a Mother Brain analog, and Ridley are present, but the new additions fit right in and don’t disrupt the flow of the game at all.

The most notable and most talked about improvement to the game is the control scheme. For the longest time, the wii-mote/nunchuck combination has been hailed as the heir-apparent to the FPS control scheme throne currently occupied by the PC’s keyboard/mouse combo. Using the Advanced setting (an absolute must - I am not even sure why they included other options), the thumbstick on the nunchuck controls your motion, while aiming the wii-mote on the screen directs your weapon and controls the direction you are facing.

Instantly, the movement was far more natural and way more precise than the standard console dual-analog control scheme. I was able to jump, turn, and fire with a degree of accuracy I have never experienced in a console game. In fact, it almost made the game too easy. The intelligence and numbers of the opponents you face seemed to be designed with dual-analog limitations in mind - a couple of the bosses really stretched the limits of the control scheme, but most seemed like they were supposed to be harder than they ended up being.

Corruption made some use of the motion controls as well - with mixed result. Whipping the nunchuck out to use the grapple was a nice, intuitive twist, as was the Morph Ball jump. In Morph Ball mode, you jumped by flipping up the Wii-mote. You still had use of the old-standard bomb-jump technique, but the regular jump made things much quicker in standard situations. Occasionally you would have to shake both controllers to break free of the grip of an opponent. All of these were well conceived ideas, and ultimately seemed very intuitive.

Retro took things a step farther and added a few fairly pointless motion controls that slowed the game down a bit. Energy Cells had to be twisted and pulled out using the wii-mote, and several levers had to be pulled and twisted in various ways. The ultimately ended up being far too gimmicky, and disrupted the flow of the game. While it made sense in a single situation (a handle you had to look at with your X-Ray visor to see where to line-up some tabs), the mechanism was awkward and clunky. The controls rarely picked up the motion perfectly, and I had to repeat motions over and over again to get the game to pick up on it. The motion controls are great on the Wii for broad, forceful motions, but asking for this kind of detail for tasks that don’t get input from the sensor bar is never going to work right. The Wii’s motion control is revolutionary, and in many ways made this game phenomenal, but it does have limits, and using it for tasks like this are definitely beyond them at this time. Thankfully none of these tasks needed to be completed under fire, nor were they overly complicated. If it had been so, it would have been a real detriment to this game. As it was - the actions would have been far better served with a simple press of the A button - fighting with the motion controls to perform a meaningless task just ended up being a superfluous distraction that disrupted the flow of the game.

The graphics were more than adequate. The cut scenes featured some very vibrant planetscapes. I am sure that it is probably doesn’t look as good as it might have on another more technically powerful console, but we really have reached a point where the graphic quality is less important than how well the forms function in the game environment. On that count, Corruption excels. I can’t recall seeing a single instance of clipping. Sometimes in puzzle rooms, the solution was difficult to find, but diligent use of the various visors always revealed where you needed to start. The rooms were well designed. Each were very unique in appearance, and featured various combat or navigation challenges. From falling bridges to wide chasms, there were an abundance of challenging rooms you had to get through while combating a difficult opponent. The different planets themselves had unique themes and challenges to match - through and through the environment of Corruption was exceptionally well designed.

The audio was another important element to Corruption’s overall package. The music was rich and vibrant, and the various game play effects added a great deal to the package. Beam-fire mixed very well with the music, adding to the ambiance in major fight sequences. Each planet had its own general theme which meshed very well with the graphics, and the more quiet, peaceful music was seamlessly replaced with like-themed combat music when enemies appeared. I was forced to recall the creepy feel the music and graphics of the original Halo imparted in those early confrontations with the zombie-like Flood when I first encountered a Metroid. Like in previous games, the first time you see the Metroids, they were behind shields, but you knew you were going to have to fight them eventually. Once the sound of those shields shattering was heard, and that music started up, I knew I was in for it. Corruption makes excellent use of music to enhance the game play.

One of the biggest disappointments about Corruption was the lack of online multiplayer. Between the various Space Pirate types, the bounty hunters, Space Marines, and Samus herself, there was a wealth of potential player types for an online free-for-all. But, it was totally absent. The only way Corruption makes use of the internet is through the trading of Friend Tokens, which you can use to unlock various special features. While fun, the unlockables prove to be fairly mundane, and processing the trades through the cumbersome Friend Console system might be more trouble than it is worth. The Wii’s online function for browsing the web, shopping, and looking at the News and Weather channels is outstanding, but when it comes to communicating with other consoles, it is outright abysmal. This was reflected in the paltry online capability of this game. While this doesn’t really downgrade the game as a whole, it definitely limits the game’s replay-ability. It takes about 20 hours to beat the campaign. After that, some people might attempt to replay at the hardest setting, or to get a 100% completion, but after that, the game will gather dust.

BOTTOM LINE

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is possibly the best Wii game yet, though its shortcomings really highlight the issues Nintendo needs to address if they are going to make the Wii a long-term success. Specifically the over reliance on motion control for mundane tasks and the total lack of online functionality really keep this game from being a true console-seller. If these items weren’t an issue, this game would go from a must-have Wii game to a game that made the console itself a must-have for everyone who hadn’t yet bought one. A minor distinction, perhaps, but in a brutal console war, an important one.

A very strong outing for the still-young Wii, but Nintendo shouldn’t rest on these laurels. There is a lot of room for improvement, and as much as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption showcases the Wii’s strengths, it does bring out those areas that need improvement.

As to the FPS control style? In the end, it blows dual-analog control out of the water. But as far as knocking the mouse and keyboard off its throne - it makes a good case, but the jury is still out.

Rating(out of 5):

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