If Metroid Prime 2 wanted to be a harder, more story-driven game than its predecessor, while maintaining an identity of its own, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's goal is a lot clearer. It wants to be a big, bombastic finale to the Prime series, and it probably also wants to be Halo. This is pretty clear since moment one- where every other Prime game and most games in the franchise at the time had little on-screen story and dialogue, Corruption starts with a long tutorial delivered by friendly NPCs, and then follows that up with an action intro where you meet three fellow Bounty Hunters you'll be working with. It takes little time for things to go wrong, and while the four of you manage to avoid disaster, you are all knocked out for a month by the villain of the previous game, Dark Samus. When you wake up, you find out your suit has been modified to house Phazon, the all-consuming evil matter that the trilogy revolves around, and with Samus tasked to save two different planets from destruction at the hands of Phazon, the game finally starts proper.
Except, does it really? As I said, Corruption's goals are pretty different from the other games: it's clearly trying to be a more linear and narratively focused game first, and a metroidvania second. Action with a side of exploration, not exploration with a side of action, while still keeping the Metroid spirit. This is... fine, frankly. Fusion does something similar, and I quite it like that game. And Corruption's combat is... alright! It's the same basis as the rest of the series, with the removal of beams to switch between (not such a bad thing, in my personal opinion, but the loss of hidden weapons kinda sucks, especially in a game that has you do more shooting) and the addition of Hyper Mode, which a lot of the combat relies around- you sacrifice 99 hp, and get to briefly do a whole lot more damage. Even with what I'm about to say, this is definitely the Metroid Prime game I had the most fun fighting in, though mostly because of the bosses. The problem with the core combat is that Hyper Mode quickly goes from an emergency tool that you only use when needed to the strongest weapon in your arsenal, and eventually becomes the only thing you'll ever be doing. 99 HP quickly becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your overall health as you get more E-Tanks, and when enemies get strong enough to do more damage than that in half a second, you'll be popping it on every fight, multiple times. It's just too strong of a tool- you can hammer down on a Space Pirate for 20 seconds before taking them out, all the while their friends pelt you with bullets, or you can go Hyper Mode and wipe the entire squad in half that time. Luckily bosses need to be made vulnerable before you can deal damage to them and are balanced around Hypermode, so that isn't a problem there. In fact, I must once again commend the overall design of some of these fights- they've got the puzzle element you'd expect from the series, requiring you to figure out the right combination of actions to make the boss vulnerable, but they don't let up on a mechanical level either, asking you to execute your strategy efficiently and quickly, all the while demanding some good aiming and dodging. Great stuff.
Something worth noting is that I played on Hard and at the beginning, I thought this game was going to be a real challenge- several fights in the end of the first area got me to struggle quite a lot, which I welcomed, but the difficulty loosened up pretty quickly, with the exception of the occasional boss encounter. Something else to note is I played this game on Dolphin, using PC FPS controls. It was a great experience, but it does prevent me from commenting on the game's use of motion controls, which are a very important element of it. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed combat more if I had to physically yank enemies' items and weapons away, rather than just pressing a button to do so. A thing that I can comment on, though, is Samus' Gunship, which is very weird- a whole Visor slot is sacrificed to being able to command it, and the first upgrade it gets is the ability to bomb enemies. This is really cool in theory, but completely pointless in practice. Even among the wide open areas where you'd expect this ability to be usable (which given this is still a Metroid game, are few and far between), the ship can only be used in a few of them, to the point that I don't think I actually ever remembered to use it on an enemy once. There's even ammo expansions for the missiles as pickups but I couldn't fathom ever using them often enough for those to matter. Feels like they had the idea but then never figured out how to implement it.
Where I think Corruption really falters, though, is the level design. Again, it's not a problem to make a game less open, but this is taking the worst of both worlds. First off, progression is not only 100% linear, but spelled out to you by some NPC over comms- there's an option to turn off hints, but bafflingly that only removes the marker over the area they tell you to go to, not the actual dialogue and cutscene that points you to that area. In Prime 1/2 you could choose to go in entirely unassisted, here you'll be babied no matter what. But that might be for the best, because frankly backtracking in this game sucks. A game like Super Metroid handles its world by having side rooms spin off a central, shorter path- you may want to explore every branch of this tall room in Brinstar once you first reach it, but when you're done with that you can just go through the center room any time you pass by. It's smart- it focuses a lot of content in side areas so backtracking is quicker. Corruption does the exact opposite to an infuriating degree. I mean look at this shit, it's literally a straight line from the beginning to the end, and you'll have to go through that a few times, especially if you backtrack for collectibles. Even just on the first time through, you'll need to go back through these levels on your way out, a lot of the time. And those collectibles are worthless, a lot of the time. Ship Ammo upgrades mean basically nothing, and missiles are nearly vestigial in this game- I think just mashing attack does more damage than them, by the endgame. MP1 and 2 made the missiles more valuable thanks to the super missile attack, and encouraged you to look for upgrades for your beam weapons, E-Tanks and ammo expansions, which were all either pretty cool or pretty vital- 3 has very little of that.
It just feels bad, especially with the long load times between rooms, and the game straight-up enjoys making backtracking miserable. When you've beaten a boss, areas will be repopulated by a very annoying enemy that requires Hyper Mode to kill, and demands your attention with long-ranged, fast attacks. The second and biggest area in the game, SkyTown, also makes you go through these railways which force you into quick aiming minigames and make you restart from the beginning if you get hit- they're extremely obnoxious. The map gets pretty hard to read too, oftentimes, and that sucks because rooms are somewhat hard to distinguish at times. Going through these levels the first time is great, they're gorgeous and full of interesting stuff, but backtracking is a thankless chore, and the game still requires it at time and encourages it at others. Something it deserves praise for though is how it handles the series' traditional endgame fetch quest- previous Metroid Prime games essentially locked most of its collecting until it told you to do so, but Corruption makes the area where you'll use these collectibles available early, and gives you goodies and directions for the macguffins, encouraging the hunt to happen a lot more gradually. It's great fun and definitely the best way they've done it. Something I don't like is how many power-ups are just given to you, I think about half the E-Tanks in the game are literally or nearly literally just put in the main path for you to bump into with zero effort- bit of a shame, after Echoes' elaborate puzzles (which this game does admittedly have a few of).
The last thing to touch upon is the story, so expect spoilers for the first act of the game, and maybe vague allusions to things that happen after. That said... come on, did anyone think the hunters were going to stick around? The intro takes such effort to introduce them all as quickly and as much as it can that it's basically spelled out to you that they'll all meet grisly ends, and indeed, by the time you're knocked out and wake up, they've all been corrupted by Dark Samus, and serve as antagonists, one per area. They're all pretty cool in concept but it all just happens so quickly that I can't help but not care. I'd have loved to see more of Gangrayda's envy of Samus, or Rundas' friendly rivalry with her, but they're all three gone so quickly, and when they're back they're just very very evil and die in the span of one scene. Even if you didn't figure out that something like this would happen, by the time you fight Rundas, the first of the three, it's pretty clear the other two are gone too, and the game never plays with this knowledge in any interesting way. It'd be great if one of the three managed to survive and help you, only to maybe fall to Phazon later, or if one overcame the Phazon corruption, or died but left you a message, I dunno. It'd be cool even if you could learn more of their pre-corruption exploits, but as it is, they're just mid-bosses with a lot of preamble, and that's kind of a shame, especially because Nintendo's previous attempt to introduce rival bounty hunters also flopped pretty hard.
The rest of the story is... fine? I think it straddles a good line, making Samus still very professional but giving us some insight on her feelings, unlike the previous two games where she was frankly just a player avatar most of the time. But, I dunno, it's just Samus fighting a big alien evil guy, no real interesting developments. I like the lore of the various planets, probably my favorite of the three games, despite Echoes' tough competition. I dunno. I'd like to say that Corruption is, in its own way, a worthy sequel to the previous two Metroid Prime games, but I don't really believe that it is. It has some good ideas, some bad ideas, and sort of fails to fall together into a product that's as cohesive and effective as them. It's not committed enough to being an action game to succeed in that regard, and it's not a good metroidvania, so it's sort of nothing at all. But hey, at least it's not Other M.
Except, does it really? As I said, Corruption's goals are pretty different from the other games: it's clearly trying to be a more linear and narratively focused game first, and a metroidvania second. Action with a side of exploration, not exploration with a side of action, while still keeping the Metroid spirit. This is... fine, frankly. Fusion does something similar, and I quite it like that game. And Corruption's combat is... alright! It's the same basis as the rest of the series, with the removal of beams to switch between (not such a bad thing, in my personal opinion, but the loss of hidden weapons kinda sucks, especially in a game that has you do more shooting) and the addition of Hyper Mode, which a lot of the combat relies around- you sacrifice 99 hp, and get to briefly do a whole lot more damage. Even with what I'm about to say, this is definitely the Metroid Prime game I had the most fun fighting in, though mostly because of the bosses. The problem with the core combat is that Hyper Mode quickly goes from an emergency tool that you only use when needed to the strongest weapon in your arsenal, and eventually becomes the only thing you'll ever be doing. 99 HP quickly becomes a smaller and smaller portion of your overall health as you get more E-Tanks, and when enemies get strong enough to do more damage than that in half a second, you'll be popping it on every fight, multiple times. It's just too strong of a tool- you can hammer down on a Space Pirate for 20 seconds before taking them out, all the while their friends pelt you with bullets, or you can go Hyper Mode and wipe the entire squad in half that time. Luckily bosses need to be made vulnerable before you can deal damage to them and are balanced around Hypermode, so that isn't a problem there. In fact, I must once again commend the overall design of some of these fights- they've got the puzzle element you'd expect from the series, requiring you to figure out the right combination of actions to make the boss vulnerable, but they don't let up on a mechanical level either, asking you to execute your strategy efficiently and quickly, all the while demanding some good aiming and dodging. Great stuff.
Something worth noting is that I played on Hard and at the beginning, I thought this game was going to be a real challenge- several fights in the end of the first area got me to struggle quite a lot, which I welcomed, but the difficulty loosened up pretty quickly, with the exception of the occasional boss encounter. Something else to note is I played this game on Dolphin, using PC FPS controls. It was a great experience, but it does prevent me from commenting on the game's use of motion controls, which are a very important element of it. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed combat more if I had to physically yank enemies' items and weapons away, rather than just pressing a button to do so. A thing that I can comment on, though, is Samus' Gunship, which is very weird- a whole Visor slot is sacrificed to being able to command it, and the first upgrade it gets is the ability to bomb enemies. This is really cool in theory, but completely pointless in practice. Even among the wide open areas where you'd expect this ability to be usable (which given this is still a Metroid game, are few and far between), the ship can only be used in a few of them, to the point that I don't think I actually ever remembered to use it on an enemy once. There's even ammo expansions for the missiles as pickups but I couldn't fathom ever using them often enough for those to matter. Feels like they had the idea but then never figured out how to implement it.
Where I think Corruption really falters, though, is the level design. Again, it's not a problem to make a game less open, but this is taking the worst of both worlds. First off, progression is not only 100% linear, but spelled out to you by some NPC over comms- there's an option to turn off hints, but bafflingly that only removes the marker over the area they tell you to go to, not the actual dialogue and cutscene that points you to that area. In Prime 1/2 you could choose to go in entirely unassisted, here you'll be babied no matter what. But that might be for the best, because frankly backtracking in this game sucks. A game like Super Metroid handles its world by having side rooms spin off a central, shorter path- you may want to explore every branch of this tall room in Brinstar once you first reach it, but when you're done with that you can just go through the center room any time you pass by. It's smart- it focuses a lot of content in side areas so backtracking is quicker. Corruption does the exact opposite to an infuriating degree. I mean look at this shit, it's literally a straight line from the beginning to the end, and you'll have to go through that a few times, especially if you backtrack for collectibles. Even just on the first time through, you'll need to go back through these levels on your way out, a lot of the time. And those collectibles are worthless, a lot of the time. Ship Ammo upgrades mean basically nothing, and missiles are nearly vestigial in this game- I think just mashing attack does more damage than them, by the endgame. MP1 and 2 made the missiles more valuable thanks to the super missile attack, and encouraged you to look for upgrades for your beam weapons, E-Tanks and ammo expansions, which were all either pretty cool or pretty vital- 3 has very little of that.
It just feels bad, especially with the long load times between rooms, and the game straight-up enjoys making backtracking miserable. When you've beaten a boss, areas will be repopulated by a very annoying enemy that requires Hyper Mode to kill, and demands your attention with long-ranged, fast attacks. The second and biggest area in the game, SkyTown, also makes you go through these railways which force you into quick aiming minigames and make you restart from the beginning if you get hit- they're extremely obnoxious. The map gets pretty hard to read too, oftentimes, and that sucks because rooms are somewhat hard to distinguish at times. Going through these levels the first time is great, they're gorgeous and full of interesting stuff, but backtracking is a thankless chore, and the game still requires it at time and encourages it at others. Something it deserves praise for though is how it handles the series' traditional endgame fetch quest- previous Metroid Prime games essentially locked most of its collecting until it told you to do so, but Corruption makes the area where you'll use these collectibles available early, and gives you goodies and directions for the macguffins, encouraging the hunt to happen a lot more gradually. It's great fun and definitely the best way they've done it. Something I don't like is how many power-ups are just given to you, I think about half the E-Tanks in the game are literally or nearly literally just put in the main path for you to bump into with zero effort- bit of a shame, after Echoes' elaborate puzzles (which this game does admittedly have a few of).
The last thing to touch upon is the story, so expect spoilers for the first act of the game, and maybe vague allusions to things that happen after. That said... come on, did anyone think the hunters were going to stick around? The intro takes such effort to introduce them all as quickly and as much as it can that it's basically spelled out to you that they'll all meet grisly ends, and indeed, by the time you're knocked out and wake up, they've all been corrupted by Dark Samus, and serve as antagonists, one per area. They're all pretty cool in concept but it all just happens so quickly that I can't help but not care. I'd have loved to see more of Gangrayda's envy of Samus, or Rundas' friendly rivalry with her, but they're all three gone so quickly, and when they're back they're just very very evil and die in the span of one scene. Even if you didn't figure out that something like this would happen, by the time you fight Rundas, the first of the three, it's pretty clear the other two are gone too, and the game never plays with this knowledge in any interesting way. It'd be great if one of the three managed to survive and help you, only to maybe fall to Phazon later, or if one overcame the Phazon corruption, or died but left you a message, I dunno. It'd be cool even if you could learn more of their pre-corruption exploits, but as it is, they're just mid-bosses with a lot of preamble, and that's kind of a shame, especially because Nintendo's previous attempt to introduce rival bounty hunters also flopped pretty hard.
The rest of the story is... fine? I think it straddles a good line, making Samus still very professional but giving us some insight on her feelings, unlike the previous two games where she was frankly just a player avatar most of the time. But, I dunno, it's just Samus fighting a big alien evil guy, no real interesting developments. I like the lore of the various planets, probably my favorite of the three games, despite Echoes' tough competition. I dunno. I'd like to say that Corruption is, in its own way, a worthy sequel to the previous two Metroid Prime games, but I don't really believe that it is. It has some good ideas, some bad ideas, and sort of fails to fall together into a product that's as cohesive and effective as them. It's not committed enough to being an action game to succeed in that regard, and it's not a good metroidvania, so it's sort of nothing at all. But hey, at least it's not Other M.
The final entry in the original Metroid Prime trilogy has higher ambitions than the previous two combined. These ambitions were so high that they had to be divided between multiple planets, each with a fraction of the finesse of the originals, and glued together with spit and twine.
This thing needed more time in the oven. And a bigger oven.
This thing needed more time in the oven. And a bigger oven.
Big step down from the previous 2 but still pretty solid
Nintendo really made their own Halo game on the Wii of all places
A weird step back from the first two. Still a great game on its own but the flow of exploration and progression is just so disjointed. A very solid game, but definitely the odd one out.
i mean, it's fine! there's cool stuff in there. it's definitely trying to be halo a little too hard, though, and that's reflected in the much less complex exploration and stronger focus on spectacle and set-pieces. it's also really, really easy.
An extremely solid game.
Level design is great, combat is good, there's few bangers in the soundtrack, the graphics have this really nice blur that I love.
They focus a little bit more on the cinematic side and storytelling in this game, which can be seen in the story of course but also in the game mechanics as interaction with the motion controls.
The primary focus is in the exploration just as in the previous game.
I hope this game will be released on Switch so more people can play it.
Level design is great, combat is good, there's few bangers in the soundtrack, the graphics have this really nice blur that I love.
They focus a little bit more on the cinematic side and storytelling in this game, which can be seen in the story of course but also in the game mechanics as interaction with the motion controls.
The primary focus is in the exploration just as in the previous game.
I hope this game will be released on Switch so more people can play it.
This might be a hot take but MP3 is my favorite out of the trilogy. I will always praise the decision to expand the Metroid world and make it more fleshed out.
7.8
Least of the prime trilogy. It tries to add some (much needed outside of comics) lore but at the same time muddies itself. The first around 1/3 was too linear then the rest was throwing you back and forth for the sake of it just to fulfill it's genre. Also two of the planets whilst somewhat cool were also considerably a let down considering what they are.
Least of the prime trilogy. It tries to add some (much needed outside of comics) lore but at the same time muddies itself. The first around 1/3 was too linear then the rest was throwing you back and forth for the sake of it just to fulfill it's genre. Also two of the planets whilst somewhat cool were also considerably a let down considering what they are.
This was my introduction to the Prime series. This game is excellent, but packs the most punch if you play the games in order.
I couldn't get into this. It's interesting on paper but didn't translate well for me. The first time I played this a senile elderly woman went crazy at my apartment. So it really makes me think of her taxidermy goldfish. And that's not what should come to mind when thinking of a game.
Tem controles bem melhores que os antecessores, entretanto, não me fisgou tanto quanto o primeiro. O ponto alto é o uso do wiimote, realmente valeu a pena.
Not a great end to the trilogy