Step Into the Suit

I am a huge Metroid fan. With the exception of Hunters on the DS, every game has been of impressive quality. And I still consider Metroid Prime to be the best video game ever made.

The final installment of the "Prime" trilogy is no slouch, with its impressive new controls that wouldn't be possible on any other console. But some unfortunate design decisions keep Corruption from matching its two prequels in quality.

Controls:

When the first Prime was released, Nintendo was careful to call it a first person adventure, and not a shooter. They were right. The mechanics had more in common with Zelda's z-targeting scheme, despite the perspective. Aiming was rarely an issue, as Samus's lock-on system kept you on target, while you supplied the timing and wits.

The abysmal Metroid: Hunters for the DS showed what happens to Metroid when it gets transformed into a true first-person shooter. It wasn't pretty. And I had concerns that the new Wii controls would push Corruption in a similar direction.

Happily, Retro is a clever bunch, and they devised a control system that admirably melds the two schemes. What they've accomplished is nothing short of exceptional. This is the game that completely validates the Wii motion-control gamble.

Movement is handled with the analog stick on the nunchuck. The remote is used as a pointer, handling your aim and turning, similar to a PC mouse. As you drift your aim away from center, the camera turns in response. The sensitivity can be adjusted to your liking, although the "advanced" setting is strongly recommended, even if it seems jittery at first. In twenty minutes, you'll be completely square, and the increased agility will be welcome, I promise.

What makes this setup more difficult than the old PC mouse is the inherent unsteadiness of your hand, versus a mouse that can rest on a flat surface when you want to hold your aim in place. It's not a deficiency of the control method -- in fact, it's easily argued that this better mimics a real firearm. Some of the bosses have very small target points, and you'll absolutely need to develop a sure hand to succeed.

But the lock-on mechanism from prior games is still present. Once locked on to an enemy, all movement will occur relative to its central position. You remain, however, free to aim anywhere on the screen with the reticule (although this can be toggled off in the options, I have no idea why you would do so). This means that Samus can now engage multiple enemies without constantly changing her target, or aim at the weak points of large targets.

The Nunchuck doesn't go to waste, mind you. Its weaker motion-sensing capabilities are put to good use with Samus's grapple beam. Once a target is acquired, a flick of the wrist extends your beam. Pulling your arm back can rip certain enemies from the air, or remove environmental obstacles.

The overall effect is magnificent. Your right arm is your cannon, and you left arm is your grapple beam. Coupled with the first-person perspective, the degree of immersion goes unparalleled by anything you've ever played before. Like Twilight Princess before it, the feeling is enhanced by playing standing up, and those who elect to sit for the journey will not feel the full impact of what has been accomplished here.

Also added are a few cutesy motion sensitive handles and levers, which have you twisting and pulling the remote to manipulate on-screen objects. The movements are generously interpreted, so there isn't any frustration in pulling them off. Maybe unnecessary, but I thought they helped drive home the immersive feel of the game.

Gameplay:

Metroid titles generally revolve around the semi-guided exploration of a sprawling world, and the first two Prime games did just that. Corruption takes a page from Metroid: Fusion on the Game Boy Advance, however. The game is diced up into multiple areas, which might add up to the same amount of real estate, but the bite-sized chunks are more accessible to the average player. I thought this compromise made sense in Fusion, which was designed for a portable market. But on a home console, it seems unnecessary, and the constant ship-hopping from planet to planet became a bore by the end of the game.

Corruption begins with a sequence ripped straight out of the original Halo. After years of being improperly compared with Microsoft's juggernaut, Retro seems to have decided to mimic Bungie. Go figure. As Samus explores a beseiged spacecraft, she runs into several non-player characters, all of whom are extremely excited about the debut of speech in a Metroid game, and refuse to shut up. After filling your ears with mediocre voice-acting, you're free to get on with you mission. Unfortunately, the sense of solitude that used to pervade Metroid games is frequently broken by radio chatter and mission objectives from Admiral Dane and various Aurora units (artificial intelligence units which will trigger waves of nostalgia in students of Samus's 8 and 16-bit adventures).

Despite the irritating hand-holding (which cannot be turned off), Corruption's stomping ground is large and fun to explore. The diced-up map is still fairly complex, and the puzzles remain fun to solve. I'm afraid that Retro may be getting too familiar with their creation, however. The puzzles seem a bit too tidy this time. Many unravel so logically and sequentially that you can solve quite a few of them by near accident, as the game keeps pointing you towards the appropriate bomb slot or lever (or have I just grown too familiar with the series?). But there were a few head-scratchers among them, and even veteran players will find themselves stumped a couple times.

Samus starts with a few of her old abilities intact, but seems to have lost most of what she learned in the last two games. I don't know what she does with all of her toys between games, but if she'd just hold on to them, she could save a lot of hassle in coming adventures. Silly bounty hunter tosses them all into the trash when she gets home...

Regardless, Samus's mission follows the tried-and-true formula of exploring an alien environment, trying to dig up whatever items and abilities she needs to access previously blocked areas. The items have changed a bit this time around, for better or for worse.

For better are the clever new gizmos and gadgets. Samus's grapple beam is cooler than ever, tearing doors from hinges and yanking shields from enemy hands. Her morph ball can now jump, without bombs, with a quick flick of the remote (which is occasionally flaky). Her ship is no longer consigned to one room of the map. Now, she can summon it to various landing points for transport or use as a mobile save station. And, in certain places, she can call it in for bombing runs. And she gains the new power to sacrifce an energy tank to go into Hypermode, which cranks the damage to eleven (but risks fatally corrupting her in the process).

For worse is the dumbing down of her visors and weaponry. Samus has lost the ability to choose different beam weapons. Corruption harkens back to the old side-scrolling days when her beams stacked onto one another. Ok, fine... but at least give us some cool beams, then! At the end of the game, you don't really feel like your gun is any different, apart from its color and ability to open more doors. The awesome power missiles from the first Prime do not make a return this outing. And the visor selection is lame, with only one used regularly in combat. Sigh.

The bosses are well-designed, and make good use of the new controls, allowing the player to target weak spots. There is an extremely memorable battle towards the beginning of the game in which Samus grapples her foe while they tumble down a vertical shaft. The difficulty could have used a tweaking... some of the earlier bosses are far more difficult than the later ones. And the final boss was a cakewalk, even on Veteran difficulty.

Graphics and Atmosphere:

The game looks phenominal, although it seems like it could have been pulled off with only minor sacrifice on the GameCube. Regardless of the horsepower of the parent console, Retro has a brilliant eye for art direction, and they make exceptional use of what they have. Corruption is colorul without being garish, and has a great science-fiction feel to it. Samus's armor looks as good as ever, with rivulets of phazon running through the creases as she grows more corrupted through the game.

The sky-town of Elysia is particularly impressive, with its hovering spires and tramlines. While most Metroid environments are deliberately cramped, Elysia allows you to see far into the distance, glimpsing structures that beg to be explored (and most certainly will be). But other planets, like Bryyo, have splendor of their own, with giant stone golems built into the surrounding rock, and huge sky-borne planetoids apparently chained to the ground below.

A few corners were cut here and there. I would have loved to see some improvements to Samus's cannon, since it's front-and-center all game -- the three-frame animation light effect coming from its interior is a little creaky in 2007. Some of the backgrounds are obviously stretched out "matte" images, and look a bit cheesy for the few seconds they're visible. And doors are often terribly slow to open as the hardware races to load the next room before you enter (seriously... you'll often find yourself waiting 5-10 seconds!). Some further engine optmization, just to improve the streaming technique, would have been wonderful. And I would have loved to hear an improvement in the music, which is still banging out the same synthesized tunes from the first game.

Newcomers to the series will undoubtedly question the realism of the game, where Samus seems to explore environments which are unusually suited to her particular skill set. Three games in, even I'm starting to question why alien spaceships have large machines powered by morph ball slots, despite the fact that they have no obvious ability to use such machines. Or why every planet in the galaxy uses doors that open only when fired on with appropriate weaponry... how do the normal inhabitants get around? These are standard Metroid conventions, but without nostalgia to smooth them over, they are beginning to stand out like a sore thumb against other modern games.

Summary:

If I come down on Metroid Prime: Corruption, it's because I adore the series, and was hoping for a game that instilled the same sense of wonder, isolation, exploration, and excitement as the original Prime. While Corruption is an expertly designed game, Retro has chosen to take it in directions that may not sit well with veterans of previous installments. I respect their desire to flesh out the world with speaking characters and more plot, but when the dialogue is anemic and the voice acting stinks, it's hard to justify the effort, and I'm left longing for the silent days where the plot was revealed in tiny bits and my imagination invented the rest.

Regardless, Corruption is a must-own title on the Wii. It is proof-positive that the Wii controller can be put to brilliant use by the right developer. It offers the player a deep and complex adventure, bested only by its prequels. And it represents another quality entry in the Metroid franchise (which was much-needed after Hunters). It's a great game, which falls short only because of its masterful pedigree.

For the Fanboys -- Potentially Major Spoilers:

I'm including this section for fans of the original Metroid games who just need to know, or those who have finished Corruption and are just looking for another fan's take on a few key events of the game. The following is not intended as part of the review if you haven't played the game yet, and doesn't change anything written earlier.

Retro missed more than a few opportunities here. This game had the potential to really highlight the rise of Mother Brain, who is clearly descended from the Aurora units which are key to Corruption's plot. The pre-release videos teased with a map of Taurian leading up to her support tank, and got my hopes up for a trip through a similar area. And while you most certainly get to duke it out with an Aurora (with a few nods to Super Metroid), the link is never clearly drawn. Where were the crystals that I need to destroy before attacking Mother Brain? The moat of lava? Where was the tank that needed a few missiles pumped through its face? Super Metroid is renowned for the way it touched on events from the first game while building something completely new around them, and Retro would have been wise to do the same here. It would have been incredible to revisit the set of the original game, updated for the new era.

I'm also a bit disappointed that, after three Prime games, Kraid has yet to make any sort of appearance. When did Ridley become the most important enemy in the Metroid universe? You fight the old dragon no less than three times throughout this game! I figured that Kraid was being saved up for a game 3 surprise, but he's nowhere to be found.

These are all just geek venting, to be sure. But I'm still scratching my head at Retro's decisions here.