Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii) Review

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is the third and final game in the Metroid Prime series, developed by Retro Studios. The plot goes something like this (spoiler alert): In the first Metroid Prime, Samus (the main character of the Metroid series) was tasked with eliminating the Space Pirates on Tallon IV, as well as wiping out the phazon (it’s deadly, don’t touch it, unless you want to know the definition of the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility”) corruption on the planet. The source of the corruption is revealed to be a heavily mutated Metroid (creatures who feed off the life force of other species, also where the series gets its name from) known as Metroid Prime, living deep within the depths of the planet. So you need to collect these mysterious artifacts that open up the path to wear it lies. After finally defeating it, it’s presumed dead. However, it returns in the next two games as Dark Samus, Samus’ evil twin (exactly how this happens I’ll leave secret). So in the second game, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, basically you need to defeat Dark Samus before the amount of phazon she consumes reaches a critical mass or something along those lines. In other words, you just need to stop her, which you do, and then lo and behold she’s able to come back, which brings us to right now. In this game, you need to defeat her once again, only now you’re heading straight for the source of all phazon corruption in the universe, so you can wipe it out along with her. The plot sets the stage for the adventure ahead.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is actually the first Metroid Prime game I’ve played, unless you count the spin-off title Metroid Prime Hunters for the Nintendo DS, so I haven’t experienced the controls of the previous two (I’m currently trying to get my hands on them, so expect reviews on them once I get them and complete them). As such, I also can't tell you what has and hasn't changed about the series ever since the release of the first game. Retro Studios claimed that the control scheme they created for Metroid Prime 3 is the best first-person control scheme ever made (they say so right on the back of the case). I’m not sure I agree with that statement, but there’s no denying that it is good. The game is played using the Wiimote and Nunchuk attachment. You use the control stick to move forward, backward, diagonally and side to side. The Wiimote acts as your arm cannon. That being said, you use it to change the direction you aim in, as well as the direction you move in. You press the A button to shoot, the control pad down to fire missiles (hold it down to fire multiple missiles once the ability becomes available to you), the B button to jump, the B button twice to double jump, and three times to do the screwattack (Once you gain the ability. Also, the A and B button can be switched, you can have the A button be the jump button and the B button to be your fire button). The C button is used to change into your morph ball and the Z button’s used to lock onto enemies. While Z-targeting you can shake the nunchuk to employ use of the grappling hook, which can be used to pull you across gaps that can’t be crossed by any other means, or to rip stuff apart, like enemy shields or hunks of debris that block your path. The – button (that’s minus) is also really important. You can use that to switch between various visors in your possession. At the beginning, you’re equipped with a scan visor that allows you to scan enemies and stuff like that (I know you totally couldn’t have figured that out without me), but as you progress you gain a visor that allows you to control your ship remotely as well as one that gives you X-Ray vision (take it from me, it’s really useful) The 1 button pauses the game, the 2 button displays hints (can be toggled on or off, if you’re a Metroid purist, you’ll probably want this turned off), and you use the + button to enter your hypermode (once you get the ability), which allows you to fire extra-powerful blasts of that phazon stuff I mentioned earlier, albeit for a limited time (more on this later). The setup feels weird initially, but becomes second nature after a few minutes.

I’ll admit I wasn’t really paying attention to the graphics. So rather than trying to make up things to say about them, I will say that they must have been good, considering that I lost myself in the game anyway.

Guess what’s coming up next? What’s that you say? Voice acting? Well you’d be right. The voice acting in this game is excellent. That being said, voice acting is never perfect, as one who has hopes of getting into the business himself, I should probably commit that to memory. But the voices in this game are good. I know, it doesn’t matter if the voice actors are well known or not, but most of them are obscure, at least to me. There are a few that I’ve heard. For some examples, Jennifer Hale (who plays the main character, Samus Aran), Christopher Sabat (who plays the bounty hunter Rundas, and those who have watched Dragon Ball Z might recognize as the Saiyan prince Vegeta, and the Namekian Piccolo), and Troy Baker, whose voice, to this day, I still can’t pick out. That must speak volumes about his versatility.

The music for the game is being composed by Kenji Yamamoto, the one who composed the music for the previous two games in the Prime series, among others, such as newcomer Minako Hamano. The music sets the mood of every one of the planets (yes, Metroid fans, I said planets) you visit in the game. One example that stands out to me at the moment is a theme that plays in a xenoresearch laboratory found in SkyTown, Elysia. Once you first visit, everything is more or less normal. As you progress, you will go past several cells containing Phazon Metroids (Metroids enhanced with Phazon? How can this be?). Some will try to attack you, some won’t. As you progress further into the lab, which is seemingly empty except for you and the Metroids, it becomes evident that you’ll need to shut off the power to the entire lab. So you do, and, when you do, a rather unsettling theme starts playing. So you start backtracking, and sure enough, those cells with Metroids you saw earlier? The glass has been shattered. They’re destroyed. They’ve broken out, and judging by the amount of time it took for you to get back to that spot, they’re probably still somewhere in the laboratory. So now you’re trying to find a way out of here when BOOM! Out of frigging nowhere, a Metroid comes charging at you and unless you’re exceptionally prepared for the thing, you’re probably gonna get some life sucked out o’ ya. But that’s beside the point. The point is the music gives you a sense that you are not alone in this place. It really is amazing, the effect that music has on situations like this one. Would it have generated the same effect if the Jaws theme was playing? Well I guess it would’ve helped, if anything, you’d be better prepared for those Metroids at least. One other example is the abandoned federation ship G.F.S. Valhalla (see what they did there?), but I’ll leave that to you. The sound effects in the game were done by a company known as Okratron5000, ironically founded by Christopher Sabat.

If there’s one thing I enjoy about the gameplay, it’s the combat. This is really where the game gets most of its challenge. The enemies you face are mostly of the Space Pirate variety. The earlier enemies are easy enough, but as you progress, they’ll be sent into combat with flight capability or they’ll find themselves enabled with the same hypermode ability that you possess, or they’ll have really thick, near-impenetrable armor. Sometimes it may even be a combination of these things. In other words, the difficulty really ramps up later in the game, even on normal difficulty. I’d say about half the challenge comes from knowing when to use hypermode, because as I said above, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Seriously, this thing will kill you if you let it. The boss fights in the game take this even further. The boss fights will test your proficiency with your abilities like nothing else can. Alright, maybe I’m exaggerating that a little, like few other things in this game can. Whatever, the point is that the boss fights are challenging, and I like ‘em that way. I don’t think there has been a single boss fight where I wasn’t left with a low amount of energy. This is just in my experience, I’m not sure about you. Maybe you’ve had better luck.

The puzzles are another aspect of the game that deserves praise. They never had me guessing for more than a few minutes, but they were well done nevertheless. They are almost always galaxy-spanning, almost never limited to a single room/area/planet. Sometimes you need to backtrack to previous planets to find a solution to a problem you encounter on another planet. That being said, some puzzles are still done the old fashioned way. The solution is right there on the planet you’re on. For those Metroid purists out there, the guys over at Retro Studios haven’t forgotten you in this regard either.

As I haven’t played any other game in the series (except the original Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was stupid-hard), I have no clue how this game would stack up compared to previous instalments in the series. But for my money at least, you can’t go wrong here. The game and its story can easily be enjoyed without previous knowledge of the series (I looked up backstory after I beat the game just to see where it fit in the chronology), the difficulty ramps up at a steady pace, and higher difficulty modes provide incentive to play through the game again after beating it, not to mention the extra content you could unlock, such as decorations for your ship (bumper stickers, bobbleheads, etc.), based on what Wii games are also saved onto the console’s internal memory. You can also unlock background music, so you can sit there and listen to it without having to actually play the game just to listen to it (this or you could always just go on YouTube and search it up), pieces of artwork, and the like. Like I said above, you can’t go wrong with this game. If you’re a Metroid fan and you own a Wii, pick this game up. If you aren’t a Metroid fan but own a Wii, I’d also recommend you give it a go. It’s an excellent game to play to get a good first impression of the series. You’ll probably really enjoy it. I know that I did.