Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Review)

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Nintendo Wii)

Rated “T” for “Teen”

Space, where evil seems to come from. In Samus’ case it is where she stays employed. Her first outing on the Wii is filled with what she has spent years doing. This time the Aurora unit has been corrupted. Samus herself is not immune from it as she herself becomes corrupted. Corruption…bad. Corrupted sheep…ba-a-a-a-ad.

Getting rid of the corruption in your body surprisingly is not your main objective. It is after all just a little infection, only deadly after much ingestion. You travel throughout space to de-corrupt the Aurora system. Doing so involves destroying seeds filled with phazon and of course it is never easy to do as you need power-ups and upgrades to yourself and ship to fulfill this.

As this is the Next-Gen age of consoles, Metroid-Wii is not too much of a big difference from the Metroid-Cube. Things are shinier and areas are vast and large. Space hunting as pretty as it can be. Enjoy the large areas and planets you visit before the baddies come after you. You will visit some areas more than once because…well, Samus does that. Back tracking and item collection is a Metroid thing.

By the way, welcome to the first Metroid game with voice acting. No, you do not get to hear Samus spitting out one-liners or give a monologue on how she may have chosen the wrong profession. Other than grunts, all other voice acting comes from NPCs. Not the best in the world, but it could have been worse. Thankfully they did not go with the latter.

This may be one of the first times that Samus starts her space trek without losing everything she had and having to find them all again. Must be the new Wii controls keeping them together. That is the obvious difference from the Wii from the Gamecube. As with most Wii games, the controls take some getting used to. Soon enough you will feel like the controls were made for Metroid. The lock on system still exists, but acts more as a “center” as you are more dependent on actually aiming and hitting your targets.

Other hand functions such as hand sensors and pull/push switches give your hands more to do. Your nunchuk also gets use instead of just moving around. Once you get the grapple, you will have your left hand flinging around more. Grappling does add more to just shooting in a fight and it just feels cool pulling stuff off with your hand. It adds to the fights and gets frantic is some close-quarter fights.

Remember that Samus is corrupted? Yeah, that adds the new Corruption mode ability also. You can switch back and forth by using up a full energy tank and serve up some phazon-filled shots when needed (and you will HAVE to at times). Careful though as enemies can force Corruption mode leaving you to crazily shoot out as much phazon as possible before you become fully corrupted and die/lose. Again, never easy for Samus.

At least the boss battles are huge and tough…WHAT?! Oh yeah! The boss battles are HUGE and TOUGH. Any Prime player from the previous platform knows how these battles can and will be. Big bosses that cover the screen and if they are not big then they are strong or fast or has extra cool special abilities or is strong, fast, and has extra cool special abilities. Walks in the park are pretty much nonexistent in space (are there even any parks in space).

Does Samus bring it to the Wii? She does. Some may have hoped she brought more with her to help push Nintendo’s new system to the forefront. The game does not really do anything new except showcase how well the Wii controls can be put to use when worked heavily on. But you will not be disappointed in this installment which wraps up the Prime series nicely.

4 out of 5