Samus Aran was one of the first (if not the first) female hero in videogames, and was one of Nintendo's earliest staples, and has appeared on many of Nintendo's systems throughout the company's history. It was only a matter of time before Samus made her way towards the Wii, and does so with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption an evolution of the Metroid franchise, or is the game backtracking and going through the same motions as always?

THE STORY SO FAR
You play as Samus Aran, a bounty hunter who battles all the evils of the universe, ranging from metroids to Space Pirates. When Samus first started the Prime series back on the Gamecube, she ran across a new foe in the way of Phazon, an element that polluted and corrupted the wildlife of the planet. Phazon continues to be a thorn in Samus' side, as the evil Dark Samus from Echoes is back, and Phazon continues to threaten the galaxy. Will Samus manage to stop the Phazon plague before it corrupts the galaxy…and herself?

The Metroid series has never been about the story, though later games tried harder to include story into the events of the game. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Metroid Prime 3 from here on) starts off with a fair amount of story, and it is here at the beginning when it feels like maybe things will be different, and perhaps this won't be the same Metroid that fans are quite familiar with by now. Though it has more story than any other Metroid game before it, it's still not enough, as events either mean very little on an epic scale, and a lot of the story is somewhat secondary, as you have to work a bit to fully gather all the information.

We can't stand the scanning visor made famous in the original Metroid Prime game, as it's too cumbersome and does nothing but hamper and bring the overall flow of the game to nothing more than a crawl. Imagine engaging in a firefight with a Space Pirate to the death, constantly dodging and firing at each other, and then you have to stop everything just to scan them so you can get some info about them. Imagine running through an environment, stopping at every little graphical detail you see, and scanning for the chance to experience a little more of the story. A player should not have to go out of their way to work for a game's story, as it should flow smoothly and naturally from beginning to end, being presented to the player in a way that doesn't require work. If you love doing that, however, Metroid Prime 3 continues the scanning tradition.

GAMEPLAY
Like most of the Metroid games, Metroid Prime 3 is strictly a single-player game that has you playing as Samus Aran as she tries to stop Dark Samus and the Phazon plague.

Most of the Metroid games have certain staples that happen game after game, namely the exploration and constant backtracking you have to do in order to move through the game, and the way in which Samus always seems to go from galaxy badass to chump in the span of a few minutes, all because she fell for a trap and something happened to strip her of all her most previous moves. In terms of Metroid 3 evolving and changing the Metroid formula up, it's good to see that Retro Studios know how to change some things up for the better.

If you're tired of Samus constantly being stripped of all her powers when a Metroid game first begins, you'll be happy to know that Samus starts as a badass, and only gets cooler and better abilities as the game goes ahead. The game still follows the franchise habit of not letting you get to certain areas until after you've found the right weapon, but at least many of your skills are around from the beginning, like being able to turn into a ball, double jump, and use your grapple arm.

Combat works well in Metroid Prime 3, being easily the best controls of the series since the Prime trilogy started. You'll use your nunchuk to move Samus around, turn her into her sphere form, and lock-on to an enemy by holding the Z-button. The nunchuk also becomes important when you need to wrestle away a shield from an enemy, swing like Tarzan, or interact with some switches; target an object, flip the nunchuk forward to extend your grapple beam, and yank back to pull an object away or down. Meanwhile, you'll use the Wii remote to control Samus' vision, moving the Wii remote to have Samus look up and down and side-to-side. The Wii remote also controls Samus' jumping, her blaster firing, missile shooting, and map controls. The system works well, but is far from perfect and at times is pretty faulty. The tracking of Samus' vision doesn't move as fast as it needs to and will get jumpy and uncontrollable if you move your remote too far away from the Wii sensor bar. Another problem comes by way of the targeting system, which you activate by holding a button down, where the slightest slip of the button causing your lock-on to break, and sometimes your target will just break the lock-on by no fault of your own. Why? Beats us, but it does, and happens quite frequently.

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