Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Review

Retro's new game is a visual stunner. In fact, it's the best looking title on Nintendo's system to date, a feat made possible through truly awesome art design and a profound knowledge of Wii's technology. Prime 3 comes alive thanks to an updated 3D engine that draws larger, more detailed environments, more particle effects, crisper textures, and layered backgrounds such as rooms with crisscrossing piping systems beneath half-broken tiled walkways. So many first-person shooters on more powerful consoles feature very high-resolution textures, but do nothing with level geometry. Prime 3's levels curve and are drowned in jutting architecture that seems different at every turn. In addition, the title does more with bloom lighting than most games we've seen, save for efforts like Ico. As Samus runs through a mixture of high-tech space stations and organic earthly locales, everything from fire and lava to gunfire, explosions and display panels are illuminated with a neon-like hue that looks fantastic and moody. Adding to the ambience are screen shakes, motion blur and more pronounced reflections, like Aran's face in her visor. The game also runs in progressive-scan and, for the first time, in 16:9 widescreen mode. The widescreen resolution is not exactly 854x480, but something closer to 825x470, which means that it may show some thin black borders on your screen. We suspect most people won't notice the difference. Perhaps most impressive is that the adventure jams along at 60 frames per second through 99.9 percent of Aran's quest. This simple truth makes a huge difference -- it's much easier on the eyes and the hands. The musical score by Kenji Yamamoto fits the atmosphere very well. It's more grandiose than it's been in previous Prime titles and yet there are some throwbacks that fans will like. For instance, when Samus enters a beautiful snow-filled scene, a remix of the song that originally played at the Phendrana Drifts chimes in the background.

The upgraded visuals may have come at a small price, though, because the load times between some doorways have increased over the original Prime and its sequel. The majority of the time -- say 95 percent -- the doorways will seamlessly open to reveal the next area, but every so often you'll be forced to wait as long as 10 seconds for a door to open, which breaks the momentum of the action. Worse, sometimes you might have no choice but to fend off attacks from enemies like Metroids while you wait.

In Corruption, Samus never loses her trademark abilities, which is a relief. She begins with an arsenal of suit upgrades -- morphball, double-jump, bombs, and a power beam -- and keeps them through the end of the adventure. About 10 minutes in, she gains missiles, and then an original suit, which facilitates the biggest new gameplay mechanic to the series. The Phazon Enhancement Device or PED Suit enables Samus to harness Phazon to jump into Hyper Mode, transforming her into a much more powerful fighter, but at a cost. If you're not careful, you may overload Samus with Phazon and she'll need to continually discharge her weapon or she could die. Knowing when to jump in and out of Hyper Mode is a skill and a necessary component to successfully advancing. It's also fun. Simply, we dreaded traveling to the purple Dark World in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, but in contrast, using Hyper Mode in Corruption is incredibly satisfying because Aran's weapons do so much damage and also because you can jump back out at any time.

Aran doesn't pick up as many different weapons and visors as she does in Echoes, but the ones she does acquire are more meaningful. For example, Samus can now command her Gunship to attack certain points in the worlds, to pick up some items, or merely to land nearby so that you can save your progress. Rather than selecting between different beams, your weapon takes on new functionality -- all of it used via a single blast -- as you upgrade. The Nova Beam can shoot through walls, but it can also burn ice, like the previous beam. It's a simplified design probably developed as a workaround to the limited buttons on the Wii remote, and yet it functions very well. To be fair, though, we also liked the freedom of manually switching between beams in original entry and its sequel.