Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

For the last five years, the Metroid Prime series has served as a keystone in Nintendo's catalogue of top-name titles. Primarily developed by Texas-based Retro Studios, it successfully transplanted the cherished exploratory gameplay of the Metroid series into the style of a First-Person Shooter, a genre of whose popularity Nintendo hadn't taken advantage since Rare, another second-party company, developed GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for them back on the Nintendo 64.

But while the first game was still in development, unless you worked at Nintendo or Retro yourself, you never would have guessed it would turn as flawlessly as it did. Between Retro's nonexistent pedigree and the fact that the average shooter is so far removed from Metroid's defining characteristics, the gaming public considered the combination ill-conceived at best. Especially loud in their protests were fans of Super Metroid, the last title in the franchise, which had gone without a sequel for eight years and gone well beyond sacrosanct in the meantime.

Expectations were a collectively nervous mix of hope and dread, but they were all blown away in November of 2002, when the final product emerged a near-perfect 3D representation of Metroid's signature organic adventuring. And with the revival of the franchise's grim science-fiction setting, along with plenty of shooting action, Nintendo also gained a “mature” title they could use in marketing to refute their reputation as dealers in “kiddie” games. With all doubts disproven, the venture was considered a success, the unique result officially dubbed a “First-Person Adventure”—a genre unto itself.

That prestige continued to thrive with 2004's Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, but although the sequel was a critical success, its sales numbers failed to meet Nintendo's high standards. Because of this, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, originally advertised as a launch-date title for the Wii, was held under multiple delays for fine-tuning. It's now almost a year later, but Corruption is finally ready for consumption.



As Nintendo's flagship shooter, Corruption was expected to compete with Microsoft's Halo 3 even as far back as early 2006, and those comparisons only gained steam as the delays drew their release dates ever closer towards one another. Interviews with Retro revealed that they were shifting the focus of the series more towards straight action than exploration, and footage of the game's opening areas only seemed to corroborate this disturbing turn. Environments were drab and metallic, from gray battleships to gray naval bases; the presentation took a military slant as Galactic Federation troopers featured prominently alongside the series heroine, Samus Aran; and gameplay progression was achingly straightforward, constantly yielding to a linear narrative.

But anyone who would judge the game based on those segments alone is sorely mistaken. While it's true that they're strikingly bereft of Metroid's traditional style, they only serve to set the story and establish the characters that will steer the remainder of the game. After playing out the prologue, you're aimed toward the planets of Bryyo and Elysia, which instantly shed the silvery hues of cold technology for the beautifully intricate and eclectic art design that made the series famous. Moreover, their labyrinthine passages are completely yours to explore, alone and free from the shackles of a rote storyline.

Unfortunately, gameplay is still artificially framed into a series of objectives passed down to Samus from a commanding entity from the Federation, but this is ultimately a minor nuisance—certainly nowhere near as annoying as the similar system exhibited in Metroid Fusion, which brought gameplay to a halt with constant story scenes and prevented the player from exploring any areas not pertinent to her current mission. In Corruption, objectives are communicated over transmissions that play in real-time over your gameplay, making no interruption, and you're free to ignore them for as long as you wish while you go where and do as you please.

As far as controls go, fans of shooters widely hold the PC set-up (where the keyboard is used for movement and the mouse is used for aiming) as ideal. On consoles such as the Xbox, the mouse and keyboard are emulated by dual analog sticks, but since the GameCube controller only had a single viable stick, Metroid Prime 1 and 2 utilized a lock-on feature that made aiming a non-issue. This was one of the series's few criticisms, but it's been finally been rectified by the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities. With the Nunchuk attachment's analog stick guiding Samus's footsteps and the Wii Remote's pointer directing her onscreen arm cannon, Corruption has been fitted with controls that may very well exceed the PC approach in terms of basic functionality. Hardcore players can even select the “Advanced” setting in the Options menu, which increases the sensitivity of the pointer for an even more accurate response.

Some may regard the revised interface as a potential mixed blessing, reviving fears that the majority of the game will be lent to pure shooting in order to showcase the strength of the set-up. Fortunately, the controls are put to use for exploration purposes at least as much as they're dedicated to fire-fights. Aiming is no more important to killing Space Pirates than it is to clearing debris, making platforms out of obstacles, and even using the Plasma Beam as a welding torch to repair broken circuitry. Moving on to more complex techniques, a flick of the Wii Remote will deploy the Grappling Beam to tear barriers from doors as easily as it can tear the shield from an armored Pirate trooper.

Speaking of Samus's new repertoire, you'll be able to enjoy her more interesting power-ups much sooner than in the first two Prime games. Not only does she no longer suffer some contrived injury in the opening sequence that forces her to spend time reacquiring her most basic equipment (she starts the game with—and keeps—the Morphing Ball, Bomb, Charge Beam, and Space Jump Boots), but she also gets to the fun stuff—the Grappling Beam, Screw Attack, and so on—well ahead of when you'd expect. Because of this, the first third or so of the game no longer feels like a chore, which is a marked advantage for the overall pace of the experience.

Another improvement in terms of pacing is the removal of scripted battles that trap Samus in a room until she cleans out the enemy threat. These cropped up all too frequently in Corruption's predecessors, breaking the momentum of the game for what seemed like nothing more than an attempt to ratchet up the shooting ratio. Thankfully, Samus now only gets locked in for the rare surprise boss fight, and the game generally flows very smoothly, striking an ingenious balance between action and adventure.

Retro's design is such that the game will never require a particular item or ability too often, tactfully shuffling the use of Samus's arsenal and making sure that no two consecutive rooms will have the same solution. However, one entry in Samus's new arsenal does stand out, and it's as focal to the game as it is controversial among players. Early in the story, Samus's body gets infected with the toxic substance known as Phazon, putting her life at risk but bolstering her combat effectiveness. In gameplay terms, this is expressed as the ability to enter “Hypermode,” which temporarily turns Samus into an invincible killing machine at the cost of an entire Energy Tank. Each shot fired during this time accounts for a portion of the sacrificed energy, so exiting Hypermode before spending it all will return Samus to normal without taking too much of a hit.

The real danger in Hypermode is the capacity for Samus to become “corrupted,” which occurs when she goes too long without expending the Energy Tank or making a manual exit. At this stage, her Phazon infusion gradually increases to deadly levels, forcing you to keep shooting in order to expel it from her body. The initial instinct is to avoid corruption like the plague, but savvy players may find it even better to shoot just enough to stay alive and kill their enemies without flushing out the last of the Phazon, thus reaping the benefits of Hypermode for as long as possible before the built-in time limit runs out. Many enemies and obstacles can only be surmounted with Hypermode, so learning to use it strategically is crucial to survival, especially on the higher difficulty settings.

Corruption's presentation is suitably immense for bringing the Prime trilogy to a close, all while keeping to its roots as a Metroid game and knowing when to leave the player alone. Its gameplay is enhanced to great satisfaction, and its alien worlds and haunting soundtrack uphold the engrossing sense of atmosphere that is essential to the series. And while it could never be as fresh and revolutionary as the original Metroid Prime was five years ago, it stands a worthy successor to its gaming legacy and will surely be remembered as one of the best offerings of the Wii generation.