Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

[The Author]

So, will it break the sacred rule of the trilogy?

(For those of you who don't know, its a thing about movies/action series. First encounter between a hero and a foe is a fight, won by the hero. Second encounter is usually won by the villain or won by the hero but at a cost. Third encounter, they eventually ally together. Take the Spiderman movies, or even Darth Vader in the original trilogy.)

Even Metroid did it before, with Samus "allying herself" with the Hatchling for Super Metroid's climax.

[shikigami]

I just rented Metroid Prime 2 today and so far I don't see what's so great about it. Does it pick up after the first level or is it mostly just exploration and dinky little bad guys?

mp2 sucked, in a big way.

if youve played the original metroid prime, everything good about its level design went away in 2. prepare yourself for ridiculous trans-entire-map fetch quests.

[The Mutericator]

mp2 sucked, in a big way.

if youve played the original metroid prime, everything good about its level design went away in 2. prepare yourself for ridiculous trans-entire-map fetch quests.

Couldn't have said it better. Prime 2 was a culmination of everything bad from Prime 1 (not that there was much) and very little good. On the bright side, Echoes' difficulty is higher than Prime 1's or, as I hear, Corruption's.

IGN gave it a 9.5, and the video review is full of spoilers. Apparently they think the bosses are better than Twilight Princess's (!!!), which says a lot.

[KakTheInfected]

Correction: Backtracking in EVERY Prime game sucked. Everything else about Echoes was bliss, aside from the sickening color scheme in Dark Aether.

[Adam_Slight]

hahaha, now I think I'm gonna take it back now. Yeah, I remember IGN or some site saying it was the best game on GC and that it was supposedly better than Wind Waker so I thought that was enough to give it a try.

[AarowSwift]

mp2 sucked, in a big way.

if youve played the original metroid prime, everything good about its level design went away in 2. prepare yourself for ridiculous trans-entire-map fetch quests.

Don't listen to this. Echoes is incredible. It's technically a better game than Prime 1 but has some frustrating elements that some people can't seem to get over. I think the biggest hurdle to liking this game is it makes you work harder for your rewards. I've played through it 4 times now and ever play through I appreciate all the more.

Ultimately, which you like and which you like more, Prime or Echoes, is very much up to personal tastes and tolerances.

[Hum4n After All]

My Gamestop won't have it until tomorrow.

They're gonna call me tonight to remind to pick it up tomorrow.

Thank the Emperor for reservations.

Gotta pick it up after my class. Won't play it though. Gonna go home sleep some more, then wake up for my night class.

All nighter.

[The Author]

The challenge was there though. And it went back to its "survival horror" roots.

[Fenrir]

I wasn't a fan of the visors or ammo-based beams in Echoes, but I did love the worlds and the lush detail that went into everything everywhere.

My one problem through the Prime series has been getting 100% logbook scans.

I always missed that ONE LITTLE BASTARD THAT QUITS SHOWING UP AFTER A CERTAIN POINT. He's not even a boss and he still goes away!

DAMMIT.

[Lemonectric]

My EBGames is basically guaranteed not to have a game until a day after the release date, so...no surprise for me, really. I'm kind of glad...I have a buttload of homework to get started on. If I get enough done tonight, I'll be able to spend more time with MP3 later this week.

[shikigami]

Correction: Backtracking in EVERY Prime game sucked. Everything else about Echoes was bliss, aside from the sickening color scheme in Dark Aether.

no.

super metroid did the backtracking thing perfectly. it seemed like they didnt even try in echoes. it was almost like the item placement came before the level design. the dual-word thing was also bad, and made it seem like metroid isnt really the type of game that it belongs in.

[Penfold]

Don't listen to this. Echoes is incredible. It's technically a better game than Prime 1 but has some frustrating elements that some people can't seem to get over. I think the biggest hurdle to liking this game is it makes you work harder for your rewards. I've played through it 4 times now and ever play through I appreciate all the more.

Ultimately, which you like and which you like more, Prime or Echoes, is very much up to personal tastes and tolerances.

I'd say that the one thing I really didn't care for in it was just how far you had to backtrack in some cases. For me, it didn't seem like it was quite to that extreme in Prime. Other than that, great game IMO. Personally, I liked Prime better than Prime 2 because of the atmosphere and general feeling.

[DarkeSword]

Looks like I'm getting it tomorrow. I wish "release" dates weren't ship dates.

[Hale-Bopp]

I just got back from the store with my copy of the game.

It's oooooooooooooooooooooooon.

EDIT: Interesting, as soon as I put the disc in, the Wii immediately initiated a system update.

[Penfold]

Looks like I'm getting it tomorrow. I wish "release" dates weren't ship dates.

Agreed, why do they even bother announcing ship dates anyway? It's a valid thing for stores to know, sure, but not terribly pertinent to the consumers unless a store is willing to break street date.

[DarkeSword]

I just got back from the store with my copy of the game.

It's oooooooooooooooooooooooon.

EDIT: Interesting, as soon as I put the disc in, the Wii immediately initiated a system update.

LUCKYYYYYYYY

[Imagist]

no.

super metroid did the backtracking thing perfectly. it seemed like they didnt even try in echoes. it was almost like the item placement came before the level design. the dual-word thing was also bad, and made it seem like metroid isnt really the type of game that it belongs in.

Correction: Backtracking in EVERY Prime game sucked. Everything else about Echoes was bliss, aside from the sickening color scheme in Dark Aether.

you = dum >:3

[BardicKnowledge]

So, tomorrow at noon -- seventeen hours and some change to wait. The day before a big release always feels like a waste to me...

[Neo Samus]

I can't buy it, but I am getting through Gamefly. So I'll play it by the end of the week....hopefully.

[Rambo]

you = dum >:3

Yeah... but it's safe to assume that Metroid prime is a derivative of Super metroid. So it's implied that they're both part of the series. Oh and Echoes should have been Metroid double-prime.

LAWL

But seriously, why do stores advertise the God damned release date when thats not when THEY release it. Some lady had the nerve to get pissed at me when I called to see if it was at bestbuy. IT SAYS RELEASE AUGUST 27 ON THEIR WEBSITE!

[Cecilff2]

I love one ups complete turn around

Similarly' date=' it's tough to stack Corruption's graphics against what you'll see in first-person games on other consoles. As expected, the same sublime artistry and cohesive aesthetic sensibility from the previous Prime titles return here, but at the same time, this looks awfully close to its GameCube forerunners. A few new blur effects and a rock-solid frame rate give it a negligible "next gen" sheen and crispness, but one look at the hyperdetailed, evocative visuals in BioShock will make the most ardent Wii-faithful envious.

Enough of the quibbles -- let's get into Corruption's major accomplishment: the graphics. Or should I say' date=' the artwork. After a few relatively simple early areas, Corruption [i']blooms into colorful and elaborate designs that are thick with atmosphere. The veiny organic walls of a living spaceship pulse and blink at Samus' squishy footsteps; strobe lights and giant steaming tubes give a claustrophobic enemy stronghold a foreboding you feel in your gut; rusty machines creak and whir to life, their intricate clockwork mechanics telling the story of an ancient alien culture better than text or a voiceover ever could.

Amazing as it is to say about a Wii game, Corruption contains some of the best visuals in gaming, period. It can't always mask the hardware's technical limitations (pixelation every time you're up close waiting for a door to open, for example), but in most cases the lighting, attention to detail, and wonderfully cohesive and imaginative art direction more than make up for the Wii's lack of raw horsepower. Put it this way: I found myself wandering through rooms two or three times just to look at them. How many games on any system can you say that about?

[NeoForte]

I love one ups complete turn around

Previews and Reviews writers were different so you get different opinions on it.

[Penfold]

Previews and Reviews writers were different so you get different opinions on it.

Personally, I found it relieving that even 1Up gave Prime 3 a good score (9/10), depsite their usually rampant Wii hate.

[friendlyHunter]

Rant time!

Metroid Prime was great because of amazing atmosphere, which Prime 2 distinctly lacked (despite a few great songs in light Torvus Bog). Even the story of Prime 2 was rather unengaging... all the logs you could read were pretty boring and really felt quite "forced", especially if you compare it to the interesting stuff in Prime 1. I'll agree that Prime 2 was more difficult, but the combat in both was - admit it - pretty dry compared to most games. 90% of the combat is locking on to something, and then shooting and jumping left and right until it's dead... it was trivial and repetitive (except for the morph-ball bosses in Prime 2, those were great). I didn't see a major gameplay difference between the two, other than the fact that Prime 2 likes to send you unavoidable damage so you have to hammer those bosses as fast as you can. Prime 2 also had enemies and bosses that took longer to kill - that just forced you into the "shoot and jump sideways" pattern for unnecessarily prolonged periods.

While the non-boss parts in Metroid Prime 2 were too easy to mention (unless you're trying to get all of the secrets; a couple of the gigantic room puzzles were confusing as hell), Prime 1 had some intense non-boss fighting in the Phazon Mines. In this game it wasn't so much that the act of combat was fun, it was the sense of "there might be an enemy that can kill me around this corner" that made it great. Prime 2 had none of this. Prime 2 enemies came in two varieties: the ones you could easily walk past (or easily kill if you felt like wasting your time and ammo), and the ones that it forced you to kill (bosses and minibosses, those pushover pirates that you can kill in 1 hit, and those annoying flying hologram balls that knock you off of cliffs.) It not only had metroids that were easy to kill, but super-dark-evil metroids that were easy to kill. If a game has metroids, they should be hard to kill!!!

Oh yes, and Prime 2 broke a sacred rule of action gaming that I just made up... they made places you can stand in to slooooowly recover health over time with no penalty (besides wasting your own time). So as long as you have patience, you can stop and get full health every 20 meters. Way to go! Replenishing health in 2D metroid games was a fun adventure - you actually had to kill dangerous enemies if you wanted to win back your health or ammo back - no "living storage containers" and healing lights all over the place.

If you thought Prime 1 was way too easy, you MUST to try it without getting any energy tanks or missile expansions... death could be at any corner (especially in the mines) and the boss fights are spectacular - it's really like a whole new game. And the Omega Pirate... simply amazing. Actually, the final boss was surprisingly easy compared to the rest, though the lack of energy tanks still makes it a rather furious battle. If you thought Prime 2 was too difficult, this might not be for you...

I tried a "no energy tanks/ammo" run in Prime 2 (on maybe my 3rd or 4th play through), but the last boss was simply unbeatable (I had 4 or so energy tanks). Unfortunately my saved games were mysteriously erased - I've never felt like playing Prime 2 since (even the multiplayer was bad). Also - though Zero Mission is the ultimate king of low-item runs, Super Metroid has some VERY fun moments. It's insane how drastically different you have to play the games, you need to think up entirely new strategies to beat most of the bosses. It's even more fun if you stay away from walkthroughs, and try to figure everything out on our own.

I'm thinking I'd better do my first run of Prime 3 normally, then do a crazy "no energy tank" run for my second game. I'm just hoping that Corruption's combat is much better than the past two... from every video I've seen, all the enemies look extremely easy. Perhaps they just didn't want to spoil the good stuff? =P

[dsx100]

Why does every topic concerning metroid, especially the prime trilogy, always and up in the flaming of Echoes. Echoes was not a bad game, it just wasn't ment for certain people. Everything about Prime 1 was there intact plus a lot more. Now just because you hate back tracking, traveling between dark worlds, ammo based weapons, doesn't mean the game sucked. It was just not what you people where expecting. Lets leave the Echoes flaming out of this and discuss Corruption.

First off, today is the ship date. Nobody should getting their hands on it today unless they did the whole street date online preorder or unless the certain retailer put it on the shelves earlier than they were supposed to. Tomorrow is the big day.

Also, this game is nothing like Halo, everybody who has reviewed so far has said this game has stayed true to its Metroid roots. It may have gotten a little faster paced but its still very much a Metroid Game and a First Person Adventure. It also lacks multiplayer, so agian no comparison to Halo. Halo is a multiplayer focused game, except maybe for Halo 1.

Who here has actually had a chance to play the game? I played through the whole first area at my local gamestop. I was very impressed and I serisously can't wait much longer to play this game.

Finally, Darke Sword, I'm glad to hear your already planning another Prime remix. I loved the first two and I'm sure your 3rd one will be just as good. From what I here, the music in Prime 3 is really something.