My wife was generous enough to let me play one of my birthday presents early. The final chapter in the Metroid Prime series: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Bless that Austin developer Retro for yet another very worthy Metroid title.
I confess, I've left a few still popular Nintendo "sure and steady" series' behind such as Zelda. But I'm still going strong in Castlevania, and I believe I've played every single Metroid game out there. Definitely haven't won them all (Fusion was a BITCH!), but it is the one series along with Half Life that hasn't let me down.
Gameplay: First things first. The Wii has some cool new interactions but there's really not much difference between this title and the previous two Metroid titles. I suppose some might see the Wiimote / nunchuk interactions as "gimmicky" but they fit with the universe, particularly the grappling hook, which is pretty responsive and fun. You actually toss the nunchuk forward and the grappling hook attaches to things and you can yank them.
The annoyance is the "lock" mechanism which requires you to push and pull the Wiimote towards and away the television. This rarely works and can get frustrating.
Otherwise all the familiar hallmarks are here, from the camera angles to cueing the player to various enemies that might be around a corner. The first boss fight is a little rough and requires you to do a lot of things simultaneously that usually are saved for later. While you can sit there and get hit for awhile, it is frustrating for the player that wants to avoid getting hurt, and to do that you need to simultaneously lock on your target, jump, "jet" strafe and shoot projectiles coming out of the damn thing's back. Maybe the kids are hip to that many things with a new control scheme but an old dog like me needs a little while to learn new tricks.
Graphics: Since the Wii is a Gamecube x1.5, don't expect to be blown away. The art direction is marvelous as always but like the gameplay, its more of the same. I can't believe I'm saying it since the game is gorgeous and has a metric ton of eye candy, but I'm ready for a bit of change I guess. The visual / particle effects are a combination of "same old same old" and some new very impressive Samus arm cannon effects, such as the charge shot, which has gotten a very pretty makeover and is full of swirling color in a lot more detail than on the Gamecube.
I'm at a point where I'm down on the planet and am about to turn on a generator (sorry for the spoiler but I'm really not revealing much). The exterior is beautifully landscaped with a nice canyon, what is sometimes called an "impostor" since the player can look at but not interact with it. Samus herself has some interesting new twists such as your ability to see her eyes when switching to the scan visor. Animation is great with the speaking characters having decent lipsync.
I think possibly the coolest new designs are the bounty hunters Samus encounters every so often, each with a very distinct set of powers and varied personalities.
Music / Audio: Voice is decent but not great. Metroid never was a "speaking" series and while voice is cool to get a better grip on Samus' reputation in the Galactic Federation, not to mention her relationship with other bounty hunters.
Sound effects are fairly standard fare and almost stamped blueprint style. No complaints but nothing incredible either. Good designs that were started by Clark and the other sound designers on the original Prime have made some tried and true fx.
Music is on the dissapointing side, sounding MIDIfied despite the synth nature of the pieces. The title theme has a lame attempt at a choral voice trying to communicate something haunting but ending up sounding camp, whereas the first and second Prime games were definitely much more subtle and foreboding, a tribute to Super Metroid. I hope that someday a great composer will effectively mix the melodic mastery presented by Tanaka-san and the alternate but still effective ambiences by Yamamoto (wait, maybe he's still doing the music..? I need to check), and combine them, but as it stands the music does not grab me nearly as much as the first several games did. Sad but hey, I'm EXTREMELY particular about these tunes, considering they are what inspired my career.
Overall this is an excellent game despite my caveats and for those wanting more of the same without too much in the way of new surprises, definitely pick this up.
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