Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [Wii]

The third and final installment in Retro Studios' "First-Person Adventure" take on Metroid is finally here. This time, Dark Samus is corrupting whole planets with phazon, and Samus is ordered to stop the process.

While the story revolves around the corruption of planets, players will be more concerned with the corruption of Samus herself. After the first part of the story, Samus is outfitted with a Phazon Enhancement Device, which harnesses the phazon within her and enables Hypermode. This enables Samus to use more powerful weapons, but at a cost of life energy and the risk of coming under Dark Samus' control if it's used too much. Graphically, players will likely notice little difference from the earlier games, aside from perhaps some better lighting effects. This doesn't really work against the game though, since it gives the whole series a consistency that would have been lost. Same goes for the audio as well, and players will be familiar with the game's audio cues from the start.

The game uses the same type of challenge-based gameplay with bursts of shooting action as the previous incarnations and, as expected, uses the Wii remote to aim; Also giving several options for camera control. Players can choose to enable a lock-on system that also lets them freely aim for easier targeting without losing control. While this is a huge improvement over the GameCube controls of the first two games, it's still somewhat cumbersome to scan objects (holding the minus button brings up a visor-selection), and frustrating when objects, such as door switches, need to be scanned before you can operate them. It would have been nice to see Samus get an "upgrade" that allows her to scan objects on the fly. I also found that after switching out of Morph Ball mode, it occasionally took a few seconds to regain control of the camera. There are some other attempts to bring more interaction to the game through the controls, such as pulling and turning hatch controls, which are novel at first, but eventually feel like a nuisance. Probably the nicest surprise is using the Nunchuck like a fishing rod and "casting" the grapple beam onto objects, then pulling back to move the item. This can also be used on enemy shields to make them more vulnerable.

While this is a fun and challenging game that's a must-buy for fans of the series, it's definitely a big disappointment that there are no multiplayer options at all. After the stellar multiplayer modes Nintendo pulled off in Metroid Prime Hunters for the DS a year and a half ago, this would have been the perfect title to launch a more robust online service for the Wii and pay back the hardcore fans that kept the GameCube alive. Hopefully we'll see a downloadable multiplayer title at some point.

8/10