Post by THE DERP MASTER on Aug 3, 2012 23:29:17 GMT -5
Once upon a time in Texas, Retro Studios was tasked with bringing five games to the Nintendo GameCube. Retro, back then, was a pretty small company, and they initially had trouble creating at least five games for a new, unreleased system. So eventually, they ditched four of the games to focus exclusively on one; a new Metroid game. Originally envisioned with a third person perspective, Metroid Prime was being smoothly developed... until Shigeru Miyamoto came along, and in true Miyamoto fashion, flipped a tea table, telling Retro to redesign the game to support a first person view. This caused most of what Retro had already made to be done all over again, and when the game was finally revealed to the public, people thought it was a terrible way to transition Metroid to the next generation. Fans said their childhood was now destroyed, and analysts predicted that the game would be Nintendo's biggest flop since the Virtual Boy. Then the game was released, and Retro simultaneously around the entire world shut everyone right the hell up. It was seen as a masterpiece, the perfect evolution of the series, and Retro's reputation went through the roof. With demand for a sequel higher then ever before, Retro released Metroid Prime 2: Echoes in 2004, an even bigger success then the original game. When Nintendo showed Retro what they intended to do with the Wii's control scheme, the third Prime game; 'Corruption', had a development process as long and tortures as the original, in order to get the control scheme absolutely perfect. Were all those extra months worth it to make the perfect Metroid game? Why don't you read the rest of this review and find out?
*Insert overused Falcon Punch joke here*
It's been six months after Samus Aran rid planet Aether of its evil Ing invaders, destroyed the dark counterpart of the planet, and killed her own evil clone, Dark Samus... or did she? Turns out, when Samus left Aether, the Space Pirates caught wind of the massive amounts of Phazon on the planet and harvested all of it for their evil schemes. Little did they know that they had also harvested the remains of Dark Samus, and when they transported her into the storeroom of their ship with all the other Phazon, Dark Samus was able to revive herself by absorbing it all. Once she eradicated almost every Space Pirate on the ship, the few remaining worshipped her as a goddess. It was then that Dark Samus had revealed her master plan; corrupt the entire universe with Phazon via the use of 'Leviathans', massive seed-like Phazon capsules that could spread Phazon all around a planet in a matter of days. After successfully defending Norion from one of these seeds, Samus awakens from a month long coma to find out that Dark Samus' own unique Phazon has infected her, and while this does make her more powerful, continued use of the Phazon could 'corrupt' her. (And by that, I mean 'kill' or 'make her a Dark Samus clone') Now, it's up to Samus to rid the galaxy of the Leviathans, and destroy Dark Samus once and for all.
Oh, and it makes her suit very glowy and pretty.
One look at this game and you can clearly see that Retro spent a long time to make this game look as pretty as possible. Texture resolution, draw distance, polygon count... the game looks better then any other game on the system. Hell, it'll probably rival some early Xbox 360 games, maybe even be flat out better looking. Samus' newest suit, the PED suit, has been designed and created superbly, making it the best looking armour to date Samus has ever worn. The Space Pirates have been completely overhauled, and look better then ever before. Sure, they've got nothing compared to the Covenant, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Another major point of the graphical power is the bloom lighting, a shading technique that makes light very shiny and envelop the outline of objects in light, making the game look much more realistic and pretty. It makes charging up your arm cannon a thing of beauty. How it's able to do all of this and yet stay at 60 frames per second without ever dropping remains a mystery. However, something I found particularly odd, and something I've only just noticed, is that the heads up display doesn't scale with the aspect ratio of the TV your using. So, if your playing in widescreen, everything inside Samus' helmet is stretched and blurred, and it becomes hideous. Circles (Planets on your map) look like ovals, and squares look like rectangles. Oh well, at least there's a set of lights at the top of the helmet to say how much battery charge you have left, so I guess that's useful.
Told ya it was a thing of beauty.
Quick! Think of something that never belong together. If you thought 'Nintendo' and 'Voice acting', you're a winner! Despite that, this is probably Nintendo's first ever attempt at a fully voiced game, and damn was it a fine one. The script and execution are surprisingly good, although Samus herself still doesn't speak. (Well, unless you count grunts and squeals of pain as voice acting) Music is another highlight of the game, and while all the music is great in its own way, the ambient music is the greatest of them all. Each planet has its very own ambient music, each of them very unique and very fitting for the planet that you hear them on. Bryyo's music sounds powerful and intimidating, with low tuned instruments and a deep, low pitched male chorus, fitting Bryyo's perilous and lava strung landscape. Elysia's music features a harp among other instruments and a mid pitch female chorus, heavily maintaining the mysteriousness of the planet, and the part of it where you explore; SkyTown, a floating city in the sky. The Pirate Homeworld is basically the same as Bryyo's music, but without the chorus and much more scary, sounding like something you'd hear on a sci-fi horror film. And in most of the music, you have a chilling heartbeat constantly thumping.
Running away, huh? You're smart.
The control scheme is the best ever seen in the Metroid Prime series by far. Aiming is done through the use of pointing the Wii Remote at the screen, allowing a great deal of precision and speed. Aiming isn't the only thing that benefits from the unique controls. Jumping in Morph Ball mode, a task that was normally tedious and annoying in past Metroid games because you needed to wait for the bomb you set to go off in order to jump, is now easy as pie thanks to the Wii Remote, which lets you jump by simply flicking the Wii Remote upwards. That said, there are a few gimmicky uses of the controller, like pressing switches and pulling levers. The prime focus of the game (See what I did there?
) is to explore the planets you're tasked with saving. That said, most of the game is closed off at the start of the game, making it seem fairly linear at the start. Furthermore, all the equipment you have at the start sucks, and the pace is quite slow. So while it may seem a bit underwhelming at the start of the game, whatever you do, keep playing. Towards the end of the game, when all the areas are able to be explored and you have all your stuff, that's when the game becomes truly exciting. The game is fairly easy outside boss battles, where the enemies, in true Nintendo fashion, are downright idiots, though they're quite hard to kill. Not because tough or anything, they just have a lot of health. Boss battles is where Prime 3 really shines. They're challenging, creative, and downright awesome to fight, although a few bosses are sadly repeated with just a few variations. Multiple difficulty levels are present, Normal, Veteran, and Hypermode, which is unlocked by finishing the game. Normal is incredibly easy, especially when you get more energy tanks. Veteran, although considerably more challenging then Normal, is still a walk in the park for experts. Hypermode, though, is a massive pain in the ass. Even I couldn't finish it. Speaking of Hypermode, that's also the name of a new ability in Prime 3. Holding + for a second will make Samus enter Hypermode, making her invincible and her beam attacks (And eventually, her missiles, grapple, and Morph Ball) deadly, but at a cost. Using Hypermode will drain your energy with each shot you fire, so you can't abuse it. Not only that, but if you stay in it too long, you'll die. Aww...
Soon after saving the galaxy, Samus was abducted by aliens.
Without a doubt, this is the best shooter on the Wii. Hell, it IS one of the best shooters ever created. The controls, the graphics, the music, the exploring... it's all perfected in this glorious ending to the Prime trilogy. If only the same could be said for Other M... I mean, it had so much potential, it could have been better then any of the Prime games, but... oh, sorry, I'm going off topic.
Graphics: 9.5/10
Sound: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Lasting appeal: 8.5/10
Overall: 9/10
Sound: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Lasting appeal: 8.5/10
Overall: 9/10
