Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Review from Jae - Monday, 05 November 2007 @ 9:44pm

I can't scan no more!
When you put a beautiful blonde thing into a space age suit, give her a cannon attached to her right arm, a space craft that can travel light years in 20 seconds and immerse all of that into a galaxy full of puzzles you get pretty close to the Metroid Prime experience. Not many other games have really taken the depth that Prime has, with it being the first of its kind labelled a ‘First Person Adventure’. A unique trait to make it an adventure is the introduction of a scanning visor. This has to have the most scannable items and structures out of all the Primes. It becomes a bit of a chore to do this but a chore that can get addicting. I would always enter a new room with my scan visor equipped looking for shades of red and blue to fulfil my scanning fetishes. The incentives to scanning are twofold. Red credits (read: Retro's version of achievements) are awarded for each new creature that is scanned and blue credits for each Lore. These credits are then used to purchase bonuses such as soundtracks and artwork.

Hold me tight and never let go.
The controls for Corruption are, in one word, brilliant. If you're creating a game based on precision then yes mouse and keyboard are your best assets. When a game focuses more on the immersive puzzles and artistic flare you tend to sacrifice the accuracy of a point and click function. Intuitive controls don't come naturally with this game, but I am sure once more first person games arrive on the Wii, we'll start seeing imitations galore (Red Steel 2 please take note). Give yourself time to adjust, say about an hour, and you will be questioning why you still play FPSes with two analogue sticks. So let's get the obvious out of the way. Infra-red allows you to aim and yes, there is still Z targeting, this time with the nunchuck Z button. Although this time the purpose of the Z target is to centre your screen on a fixed object, rather than for aiming. Once you centre on a target you have the ability to circle strafe and fire freely across the screen. So imagine yourself in a situation where 3 space pirates bombard you. You can easily circle strafe one pirate, dodging his shots while you’re at it, and simultaneously shoot at the other space pirates in view. I for one believe this is what the Wiimote was made for. Genius! One unfortunate trait of the IR is that you need to point to the edges of the screen in order to turn around or look up and down. The speed of this is moderately paced which I believe is deliberate as to avoid you losing control of the view. This is a function that is unavoidable for an IR set up.




My advice is to quickly switch to advance mode and change the shoot and jump buttons to B and A respectively. It creates the sense of shooting in a realistic manner. Being a nostalgic Prime fan I initially relied on morph bombs to make the morph ball mode jump. However in Corruption you only need to flick the Wiimote upwards slightly to instigate a jump. The double bomb jump is still a timed skill you will need to grab those extra health tanks and missile expansions. Missiles are launched by hitting the down direction on the D-pad, which I have heard squabbles about, but my thumb has never had problems extending to that point. Time to grow a longer thumb kids.

E-penis
Aside from the blue and red credits earned through scanning, there are two other types of credits to obtain from Corruption; Gold and Friends (yes friends are apparently the colour green). Gold credits are earned through defeating bosses and certain enemies while friend credits must be traded. You will rely on how many friend credits a fellow Corruption player has earned in order to obtain the full complement needed to unlock everything. This way you can measure up how well your friend has played in Corruption, a unique take on sizing up your friend’s gaming skills.

Back Tracking? But of course!
As with the previous two Primes, backtracking is an essential part of the game. Sometimes the load times between rooms are a little unbearable, waiting between 5 – 8 seconds for some doors can test your patience. Unlike the previous Primes, I don’t mind backtracking in this game. Corruption has many more land marks that you can easily recognise and remember. For example in Skytown there is a barrier that looks like a mechanical peacock bum with a big purple-eye centre. When scanned it tells you the design is blocking your path but can be easily removed by providing it with power. This immediately triggers in your mind, when you receive a ‘power up’, that you must return to this area. Is it hard to find? Not really, just refer to your map for that blue coloured unexplored area.




Pimp my ride.
Rumours had it that Samus’s spacecraft, the Hunter-class Gunship, would be drivable via the Wiimote. Well not quite. You can drive it, but you don’t steer your way through out of space. In fact the space journeys you experience are merely loading screens to get you on your way from destination alpha to beta. What’s new about the Gunship is how it plays a crucial role in the advancement of the game. Not only will Samus be upgrading her suit and beams but her Gunship will receive a few improvements along the way too. I would've rather seen more use for the Gunship in perhaps some boss fights and interplanetary shoot outs Serenity-style (with Samus playing the companion).

What else you got?
The new additions to the Prime series are plentiful. The major addition is embossed in the title. To be corrupted is Samus’s double edged sword. To put it into Dragonball terms, its like turning Super Saiyan 4 except every time you do it you can use up an entire energy tank, that is 100 hit points. This is called hyper mode and can simply be switched on by holding down the + button for 2 seconds. Your point of view turns monochrome and your beam fires shots of Phazon, the powerful but dangerous substance in the Metroid Prime universe. The best times to use this are against bosses and foes that themselves turn into hyper mode. Some enemies can fire Phazon shots or bombs at you which overload your suit with too much Phazon forcing you into a state of hyper mode trance. This doesn’t sacrifice your health but you have to ensure you don’t overload Samus otherwise its game over kids. To drain the Phazon overload simply shoot as much Phazon out as you can and as fast as you can.




Boss me around.
Bosses are a part of life, most of us have one, whether it's at work, your wife or your mother-in-law. But can you shoot them to obtain a new suit expansion? Maybe the mother-in-law but Samus definitely can! All bosses will require some thought behind them. It is essential to scan the boss and hit the 1 button to read up on its weaknesses and the tactic required to expose the weak points. The downside with Corruption and all the Primes'bosses is that there is usually a pattern to each bosses attack. Spin, shoot, stomp, rest, spin, shoot, stomp, rest, lather, rinse and repeat. This makes things repetitive and quite easy to predict what comes next. My one biggest wish for improvement in the next game by Retro is to make bosses with random movements. The fun in not being able to react to an attack till the last moment is where this generation should be at.

To Bioshock or not to Bioshock.
Silliest comparison ever. This game bears greater similarities to the original Halo than the latest FPS by 2K. If it was based purely on graphics, it’s a no brainer on who would win. The stories are vastly different but both immersive, and the atmosphere in Corruption fits well with its story. What you’ll come to appreciate are the subtle additions to the rooms and areas. The musical score in Corruption is magnificent, fit for a big budget movie and I can never understand why Nintendo don’t give their main characters voices. You have to force Samus into a lava pit or acid rain just to hear her squeal a little. If you’ve played the first two you’ve already made up your mind about getting Corruption. If you’ve never played Prime and Echoes (Prime 2) I strongly suggest you spend the next few months hunting down some copies and play through them before this baby hits Aussie shores in November.




Is this the end?
Retro Studios have expressed that this will be the last Prime in the series, rounding it off to a very nice Trilogy. Aside from the pinball and multiplayer DS spinoffs the Trilogy have really taken an epic story through two generations of console gaming. My crystal ball tells me there is much more to cash in from the Prime series. Can anyone say “Prime 1 & 2 – Wii edition” ??? A logical choice seeing the great control scheme born from Corruption. All they’ll need to do is pretty up some cut scenes, introduce some Wii controls and pack the games into a Trilogy pack. Hey why not throw in some Wii points to help purchase the back catalogue of Samus’s journeys? C’mon Nintendo, we know how much you love money.

Pros

Great gameplay, story and end to the Prime series. Controls are ace and it's Samus!

Cons

Some very minor slow loadings, scans galore and predictable boss movements.

Summary

Definitely the best 2007 Wii game to date. If you’ve finished Super Paper Mario and you need something to tide you over till Galaxy then this is the game for you. Expect some teething problems but you will get the hang of it in time. Don’t let the small things distract you from the overall awesomeness that is Metroid Prime Corruption.