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Reviews » Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [Wii]

I'll admit, when I first played the Metroid Prime 3: Corruption demo I was scared. Metroid isn't supposed to be this linear. It isn't supposed to have voice acting. Samus isn't supposed to have friends. I'm not supposed to be on a space ship being given orders. People aren't supposed to be gushing about what an honor it is to meet the great Samus Aran. It just wasn't right. It worried me a lot. I wanted another Metroid "First Person Adventure", not Halo: Metroid Edition.

Upon finally getting the game about a month ago, amid reviews saying "OH MAN IT'S SO LINEAR :((((" and other similar complaints, I tried so hard to ignore them, and then there was that level again in all of its painfully linear glory. At the start of the game Samus is hailed by a Galactic Federation capital ship, and meets up with some other bounty hunters who have apparently been roped into service of the GF in their ongoing war against the space pirates. I won't try to summarize the plot from here on because I really didn't care for it, and it has very little bearing on anything. Basically, these giant "Leviathan Seeds" start showing up on planets but then everyone gets beaten up by Dark Samus, who just refuses to die for some reason. This is all used as an excuse to stuff a "Phazon Enhancement Device" onto Samus' suit, along with all her bounty hunter cohorts.

Before explaining what all the PED suit gets you, we've already hit the second thing apart from the apparent linearity of the plot that really bugged me. The game starts you off with more gear than any Metroid game prior, and you actually get to keep it. And on top of that, they start handing out new gear like yummy yummy candy very early. At the start of the game you've got Charge Beam, Morph Ball, Morph Ball Bombs, Spring Ball (!!!), Varia Suit, and Space Jump. None of these ever get taken away from you. Before you leave the ship they throw Missiles at you, and right after landing on the first planet they give you the first grapple upgrade which lets you pull stuff (but not swing), and then right after the first planet you get the PED suit. Let's just look at one aspect of it, though: Spring Ball, the ability to jump while in the Morph Ball. We've never had spring ball in one of the 3d Metroid games. If you want to jump you get to use Morph Ball Bombs to shoot you where you want to go. You did this and you liked it. If you needed to get high you spent an hour mastering the precise timing needed for a double or triple bomb jump. And again, you liked it. In MP3 if you want to bounce, you just flick the Wiimote upwards and you bounce up. Need to double-jump? Just flick once, lay a bomb, and flick again in time for it to go off.

Now, I'm torn about this. On one hand, it feels cheap. I can trick-jump with the best of them, and trashing the need to do that just feels wrong. I earned those skills. But on the other hand, it's so fucking intuitive that I can completely understand why they took it out. It doesn't require an extra button to map, and flicking the Wiimote is just so obvious. It's so nice that I'd rather use it than bombs. I think this one just has to go down in both the "Good Change" and "Bad Change" columns.

The other big control changes are all squarely in the "Good Change" column, though. Point & Shoot is the way to go, and makes this the best controlling console FPS I've ever played, if not the best controlling FPS I've ever played period. I strongly suggest using the "expert" controls, which alters where the "dead zone" is on the screen, and how far you have to flick the controller to turn left or right. All your visor controls are handled with gestures, which might sound wonky but it works really really well. Hold "-" and flick up to get the scan visor for instance, or flick to the lower-right or lower-left for other visors. Lock-on is also much looser now, which works pretty well. It means you can lock on to one enemy and still have control over exactly where you're aiming, which lets you actually shoot at two or three targets, as opposed to lock on -> MASH FIRE -> lock on -> MASH FIRE. It makes it feel more like an FPS, which works well because the aiming system is now to a point where it can handle that. The only control choice I really don't agree with is dpad-down for missiles. That just isn't right, but then, I can't think of a better place to put it.

Right, back to the PED suit. Due to some kind of technobabble and plot stuff I wasn't paying attention to, getting beat-up by Dark Samus makes your body start spewing Phazon everywhere. And how convenient! The Galactic Federation has recently developed a method that uses DEADLY DEADLY PHAZON to power-up their soldiers, in the hopes that you'll find less of their corpses strewn about planets you visit at random. So after your encounter with Dark Samus the nice GF medical person tells you "HAY I UPGRADED UR SUIT" and explains this new "Hypermode", wherein you can "inject" yourself with a Phazon tank (because Phazon is now effectively your health), and go into super hulked out death mode, where you basically trash everything in sight at high speeds. Unfortunately, all kinds of crap can go into hypermode. Fucking zoomers have their own hypermode, let alone Space Pirates and Super Magic Flying Space Pirates and Space Pirate Commando Death Squads and whatever. Even more unfortunate is that hypermode comes with a GFDA warning label: if you use it too much you'll become "Corrupted", and if you get too corrupted you die on the spot and get a game over. And nobody likes that. So I played the game hardcore. I only used hypermode if I absolutely had to, like if there was a wall that needed to have a bunch of Phazon lobbed at it, or if a boss just had to be killed that way.

So anyway, once you've been debriefed about your fancy new death-suit you're told that the other bounty hunters got similar upgrades, and were sent off to find what the deal was with all these "Leviathan Seeds" (because seriously, nothing called a "Leviathan Seed" can be good, right?), and that whoops, no one has heard from them and they're all assumed to have gone rogue. So you both have to go finish their missions and kill them if you run into them or whatever.

Luckily, this is where the game really starts feeling like Metroid. You hop aboard the latest incarnation of your ship (which in itself is really neat, you get to be in the cockpit and control stuff manually, and can buy all kinds of worthless but hilarious upgrades like a bobble-head of the Mii [in a Varia Suit, naturally] associated with the savegame for your dashboard. You can poke it.) and head off to the first planet, "Bryyo". And when you get there, it's just you. Bryyo is a fire and ice planet, and while wandering around there you get your standard set of a new upgrade or two, a metric fuckton of scans, some expansions, a boss fight, some more gear, another boss fight, and then head off to a new planet.

The big change in exploring planets (apart from the fact that there . . you know . . are multiple planets) is that each planet now has multiple landing sites. So if you find yourself at a dead end that you can see beyond, you might just have to come in from another site. This is another major departure from previous Metroid games, though, and it continues beyond individual planets. You use the same system to zoom out to the galaxy-level, which lets you fly off to other planets. This is pretty easy to get over, though, because it still works in a very Metroid-y manner. You're still exploring wherever you want, whenever you want, in roughly whatever order you want (though, you'll obviously be limited in how far you can get in what directions by what gear you've got), and you're still effectively alone when you reach these planets. Sure there are space pirates and local fauna and your occasional lizardman, but it's usually just up to you to suss out where you're going and what to do. Unless you've got "hints" on, but seriously, you shouldn't do that.

The puzzles and overall difficulty are pretty much on-par with previous games. Some areas like the steampunkish "Sky Town" have some horribly labyrinthine passages that results in a completely incoherent map and probably contributed half an hour or so of wandering around in circles to my play time, but usually it all makes sense. The puzzles in general are a good mix of mazes, kinetic puzzles, breakable walls, and so on. There are also some entirely new things like welding puzzles (yes, I said welding puzzles) where you have to use your plasma beam to fix electronic panels to restore a lift's functionality or what have you. There's also a good selection of doors and debris that needs to be pulled with the grapple beam (and thus, the nunchuk's motion-sensing), and other puzzles that require you to interact using non-waggle motion sensing. It's used in a very non-gimmicky way, too, which is quite refreshing and expected from a first-party game.

An interesting addition this time around was all the WiiConnect 24 functionality. As you play through the game you collect "credits" for assorted things. Killing a boss or completing a plot point scores you a yellow credit, getting a creature scan scores you a red one, scanning lore will give you a blue one. Then there's "Friend Vouchers". For doing something special, like completing an objective flawlessly, or getting a stylish kill in a specific method, you'll get a grey "Friend Voucher" which you have to send to a friend so they get a green "Friend Credit". All these credits end up being used to buy unlockable stuff. Some of it is just normal unlockable bonus crap like promo artwork, concept art, music, etc. Then there's other stuff, like stickers for your ship (which it determines based on what Wii save data you've got), a screenshot tool (so you can lord over your friends with screenshots of your 100% run), and other goofy stuff like the Mii bobblehead I mentioned earlier. Much neater than forcing you to get something ridiculous like 100% scans or all scans on a planet before you can get any bonuses.

Probably the best change is that they finally did away with the end-game fetch-quest. They managed this by incorporating it into the rest of the game. As you play through the game you'll find puzzles that require you to remove a standardized power unit from a socket somewhere. Once removed, you hang onto these power sources, and later in the game you put them to use to restore power to a damaged ship. It's done in a very unobtrusive manner, unlike the artifact chasing we're used to.

All told, I really enjoyed Metroid Prime 3. Once you get into the actual game, past the two intro missions, it goes from a frighteningly linear game to a Metroid game we wanted, with an amazing control scheme. It isn't incredibly long, but Metroid invented the speed-run, so that's forgivable. But even then, it isn't something you'll knock out in one sitting. If you've got a Wii, this is really a must-have game. Even if you're not big on FPS games, or haven't been playing every Metroid game ever, it's so accessible that it should be incredibly easy to get into. Having finished it, really the only thing I'm disappointed by is that Retro Studios has stated that this will be the last first-person Metroid game for awhile. But maybe even that will turn out being a good thing. They totally revitalized the Metroid series in 2002, and I can't wait to see what series they tackle next.

Metroid Prime 3 - Wii

Presentation

By far, one of the prettiest games on the Wii. It doesn't have as stand-out of a soundtrack as its predecessors, but it's not boring, either.

Gameplay

If you can get past some of the liberties they took (damn you, Spring Ball!) you'll find that this is probably the best-controlling console FPS you've ever played, if not the best controlling FPS regardless of platform.

Replayability

Beating the game will unlock increased difficulty modes (beyond the default 3), and since it's a Metroid game there's always that 100% and low-time clear to reach for, if you're into that.

Value

It hasn't been out long, and since it's a first-party game you probably won't see a price drop unless you buy it used or wait until the inevitable first run of Player's Choice games (it'll be a crime if it doesn't include Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3). But even at full price, it's a pretty good value.

Overall

Easily one of the best games on the Wii, far better than Metroid Prime 2, and even arguably better than Metroid Prime itself. Get this game.