Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)
It's Metroid at its simultaneous best and worst.
1/1/2008 12:00 AM | 1 Comments | Page 2 of 2
What's Hot: Just a engrossing and vast as its predecessors; Shooting works well with the Wii remote
What's Not: Ill-conceived story elements seriously cheapen the experience
Miguel Lopez
Status: This status message, and everything it says, is a lie!
Corruption's action elements are supremely satisfying, thankfully, given how deeply the environments are populated with enemies. It takes a little while to get used to aiming with the Wii remote, but once it clicks, it feels just a bit more engaging than your standard dual-stick console shooter setup. Battles are frequent, and you're always encouraged to unload at your full capacity; missile ammo and energy power-ups are everywhere, so there's never any real reason to hold back. One exception to this rule, however, is in the boss battles.
Corruption introduces a mechanic wherein you can sacrifice a chunk of your health to charge Samus' suit with hazardous Phazon energy. In effect, this makes your weapons -- first, your blaster, and later your missiles, bombs and grapple -- many times more powerful during the duration. Since most of the bosses can only be harmed while in this "hyper mode," a restrictive economy will often emerge wherein you're basically trading health with the boss. Battles lasting an excess of 20 minutes aren't uncommon in
Corruption. If they were epic, multi-staged affairs, this would be less of a problem, but when you're shooting the boss' solid projectiles in the hopes of a health pickup dropping, it gets pretty boring. It's a shame that a lot of these encounters are so onerous in execution; there are plenty of interesting ideas built into many of them that utilize Samus' abilities in very clever ways.
Perhaps this was a good time to end the Metroid Prime series. If
Corruption was an indication of where the series was going, then it's no doubt as good a time as any to step back and reevaluate; the prospect of another Metroid game populated by such an absurd cast of bit players is pretty horrifying. It's fortunate that, in the end, the designers didn't take the sort of liberties with the game design that they did with the narrative presentation. This, in spite of the sour grapes courtesy of this Metroid purist, makes the game well worth experiencing.
Corruption is Metroid at its simultaneous best and worst, which, in the grand scheme of things, is much more than a lesser game could muster.
This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.
