3.5/5 ★ – Sefferson's review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

On its own, Metroid Prime 3 Corruption is a phenomenal game. This game really pushed the Wii to its absolute limit, and came out so early into the console’s lifecycle it’s honestly impressive just how far it pushed it. Visually, it is the most impressive of the Metroid Prime Trilogy (ignoring Metroid Prime Remastered, obviously), and yet, that fidelity comes at a cost. While Metroid Prime 1 and 2 have their fair share of corridors, Metroid Prime 3 is almost entirely corridors. If you take a look at the map of any of the unique planets you explore in this game, you’ll notice just how few open areas there really are. Each area is laid out as one hallway that connects to another, slightly bigger more wide open hallway. They are the best, most detailed and gorgeous hallways you’ve seen, but they are still hallways nonetheless. This isn’t much of a problem when you initially work through a planet, as the story laid out to you through scans and the addition of the other Hunters is interesting and keeps the pacing going pretty solidly. The real issue with this world design becomes apparent as you backtrack through the planets to collect the Energy Cells in order to reach the final area. Backtracking is an inevitability when it comes to Metroid games, and the first two Prime games nailed this. Unfortunately though, Metroid Prime 3 drops the ball here. Second visits of planets isn’t nearly as interesting as the first visits are, as the action that funneled you through is now basically gone. Because of the impressive visuals of the game, opening doors takes a lot longer than the first two games, which makes it so a lot of the time you’re just waiting for doors to open as you work back through each planet. Traversing from one landing zone to another in this game is also rather clunky. When you’re in your ship, you can view a map of specific portions of planets, but not through the landing screen, you have to open the map manually, and then close that screen, open the landing screen, choose a landing spot and hope you chose the right one for where you want to land. While the Elevators in Prime 1 and 2 were easier to tell where you were going to go, and made it a lot easier to route the Metroid trademark Big Sweep™️ at the end of the game. Unfortunately for Prime 3, the longer it takes for you to do that Big Sweep, the more the flaws become apparent. Most enemy encounters rely on you doing one of two things. Either enter Hypermode to deal with enemies that are infused with Phazon, or use your Grapple Lasso to destroy weakspots. You can’t just run past these enemies like you could in Prime 1 and 2 because of how long it takes for doors to open, so you’re just doing the same thing over and over while trying to find any pickups you might have missed on your first run through an area. The boss fights in this game range from some of the best in the series, to some of the worst and least memorable in the series. I genuinely don’t even remember the boss for the Elysia Seed. Bosses force you into Hypermode a lot to hit small weakspots that aren’t open for very long, which can result in the bosses taking much longer than they should, as it’s very easy to get caught waiting for that weak spot to be open again because you missed it. It’s very hard to keep a steady hand in this game, because mashing the A button doesn’t pair great with the aiming of the Wii Remote. I genuinely think the Wii Remote controls are great, but there are times where they get more in the way than anything. All of this, plus some really, really unnecessary motion controls, creates a mixed bag of a game. It has some of the most interesting and beautiful environments in the Prime Trilogy, some of the best story telling in the Metroid series period, but it’s all held back by frequent issues. Those issues don’t detract from the overall experience too much, but by the 7 hour mark I just wanted it to be over. I was tired of thrusting my Nunchuk forward to use Grapple Lasso in every encounter. I was tired of waiting for doors to open, I was tired of navigating the same hallways over and over. Everything started to blend together and feel the same. I spent significantly longer with Metroid Prime 2 on these playthroughs, and yet Metroid Prime 3 felt like it took so much longer. Definitely the weakest entry in the Prime series, and now that I’m older and playing through these games again, I can see why it’s the one I’ve only beaten twice now. It’s still a solid game, it still gives its all to keep its own identity. It knows what it wants to be, and it commits to that idea. It’s just a shame that the Wii really holds it back, both in terms of technically, and from a gameplay perspective because of all the random motion control gimmicks.