At last we get to see the final game in the Prime series. I was so excited for it here in the USA. That I went searching and actually found it out a day earlier. (WARNING!! POSSIBLE SPOILERS)
Story: The game starts off with Samus in her ship. You get to move her arm around in the screen. You soon find out that you and 3 other space hunters must go investigate the space pirates. When all of a sudden the ship gets hit and space pirates start coming at you. At let me tell you for my very first battle I thought it got intense. Soon you finally go to your ship when you face your first boss. Big pirate that is quite easy to beat. You soon land on a planet where space pirates invaded. Then soon you get another boss battle which some of you might have seen on the demos. Lets just say its an old rival. Then later you meet Dark Samus who corrupts all Space hunters including Samus. From there you must go to different planets and stop the spread of phazon. Overall the story is easy to get into and really doesn’t require you to play the other two. You get some background information from the other two but otherwise its an easy story to follow.
Gameplay: In the start of the game you have all of your regular weapons and abilities. You don’t lose your weapons and abilities like the first and second one. Corruption took a different approach by you just finding upgrades. There are some new things that we have never seen before like “Hypermode”. You get hypermode when you are corrupted by Dark Samus. This Hypermode is very powerful but comes at a deadly price. Each time you use hypermode you need to inject one energy tank which can be costly when low on health. Also if you stay in hypermode to long you will start to become corrupted. The only way to not get corrupted is to shoot all the phazon on out if you don’t you die. New and old visors come in. The new visor is actually pretty cool. You later in the game get upgrades on your ship like grapple beam and missle launcher. There you access your ship control visor and when its the appropiate time; you can tell your ship to fire missles at a certain object or grab on to something. Its becomes Samus’s new best friend as it become quite useful in the game. A returning visor is the X-ray visor. Now there is a part when you lock on to an enemy in the X-ray visor its zooms in on the enemy and reveals the part you need to hit. It becomes very useful and quite fun. Now instead of having a loading bar pop up Retro has either put in a little movie or when you hit the door it loads up. Sometimes it can last about 2 seconds while other times 8 seconds.
Controls: Its about time we see a game that utilizes the wii remote and motion sensing that is good. Metroid Prime 3 controls are really easy to get used to. As the Wii remote is Samus’s arm which you press the fire button. Retro has let you have the ability to shoot at pin point accuracy with speed. It is much faster then dual analog but the mouse still remains the champion for quickness so far. Turning around is by having the cursor over to the side of the screen. Its not as fast as it could be but its good (nothing like redsteel). Now with the nun-chuck you are able to use your grapple beam. By just giving a flick with nun-chuck you are able to grab on to certain things or break of enemy shields. Morph ball is probably my favorite thing about metroid. Retro did add a little time saving thing that I never found out until i was halfway through the game. While in morph ball give a quick flip on your Wii remote and samus will jump in morph ball just as if she was laying a bomb down to jump. It becomes quite useful and time consuming. There are also some gestures you have to do like pulling out a switch or pushing in a switch. Most of the time I it respnds but sometimes you have do it twice because it didn’t register but that is usually once or twice in the game. Retro did add one more feature to shooting that is really cool. You are able to lock on to enemies but you still have the ability to shoot at other things or enemies. Which I find to be a genuis idea.
Graphics: The graphics in the game have been improved over the last two games. Metroid looks great on tv but you always wonder what if it was HD. For the most part I was happy with the graphics that everything ran smooth. It was always at 60 frame per second which I never saw the game slow down. By far Metroid Prime 3 is the best looking Wii game out there right now. The environment looks great as it is descriptive and interacts with you. You will see your lava, snow, sky and other levels. All are very polished and really don’t have any blurry spots. Also your visor interacts with the environment like previous games. Rain drops fall and you see them on your visor. Now when you access you can see Samus’s eyes.
Sound: My favorite thing about Corruption is the voice acting. None of the voices sounded cheesy. It was as if you were actually in the game. No we don’t get to here Samus talk but hearing the general’s and mother brains voice sounds great. The music does return when you have battle. Samus does return with her grunts when getting shot so at least we still know she is alive!
Final Thoughts: The game is very polished. In Corruption you will find that you will be doing more running and more gunning then any other metroid before. With the game’s near perfect motion controls this game is a must have game. As it is in my opinion the best Prime game overall.
Final score: 9.6
