Retro Studios had a lot on their plate going into development for their third and final game in the Metroid Prime trilogy: new hardware to master, new motion controls to wrap their heads around, the conclusion of a story involving Phazon and Dark Samus, and new ideas that didn’t fit into Echoes or Prime. The lengthier development time certainly spoke to these challenges: Nintendo originally pushed for a two-year cycle, the time between Prime and Echoes, but Retro wanted to make the Wii hardware sing. The motion controls proved more difficult to work out than originally anticipated. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was pushed back several times, first from November 2006 to April 2007, then again to August 2007. The game would not see a European release until October, and Japan had to wait until March 2008.

What players finally received was, again, a very different Metroid game. Totally unlike Retro’s sophomore effort, Corruption feels more akin to the original Prime in terms of environmental partitioning and backtracking, but because of the difference in storytelling method, is far the most linear and structured title of the trilogy. Samus is suddenly a part of a coherent unit of bounty hunters who work with and for the Galactic Federation. Voice acting brings life to characters that would have traditionally used text boxes to convey dialogue. While Samus herself remains silent, she does fly her ship quite a bit. Planet-hopping, initially brought in for Metroid Prime: Hunters, makes a return here with a new emphasis.

Samus PED Suit

Combat changed a bit: players no longer select different beams on the fly, rather, Samus' beams stack in power (rather like in Zero Mission or Fusion), thus limiting the amount of button-pressing the player had to do. The Grapple Beam gets new functionality as the Grapple Lasso, which uses the Nunchuk to pull shields from enemies and blast caps from doors.

Retro initially found the motion controls difficult to work with, but refined their ideas by creating a version of Echoes that would run with motion controls. Beam-stacking was implemented in Corruption to avoid too much button-pressing on the part of the player, the whole point of motion control is to impart a sense of immersion as well as making the gameplay more accessible. The results of Retro’s efforts were well worthwhile: the control scheme in Corruption becomes second-nature in no time, and is far superior to any gamepad or mouse-and-keyboard FPS controls.

The development team went above and beyond the call of duty in terms of art direction. During her travels, Samus explores four distinct planets, each one a unique environment. While one planet is ruled by pre-industrial lizardmen, another was lorded over by sentient Chozo-built droids who founded a city in the clouds. Samus is even forced to explore the hazardous Pirate Homeworld for the first time in the Metroid history. The Pirate's mechanisms are impressive, as is the acidic rain that damages her Power Suit until she finds an upgrade. The final planet, Phaaze, is brilliantly alien—totally devoid of non-organic structures and frightening in its unpredictability.

Pirate Berzerker Concept Art

Retro also takes pride in its creature design, and Corruption does not disappoint. The biggest complaint one could muster against the beasts of Talon IV and Aether was that Grelchers were basically re-skinned Sheegoths. But on the planets of Elysia, Bryyo, and Phaaze are populated by a wealth of strange extraterrestrials, some of which don’t even appear to be tetrapods. A few of my favorite creatures, like the Korakk, seem inspired by Wayne Douglass Barlowe’s excellent ”Expedition”.

Corruption also adds several new gameplay ideas. Samus is given a Phazon Suit early in the game that allows her go into Hyper Mode, a high-power, but high-risk offensive mode that makes her almost invincible to attack while powering up her own beam. However, Hyper Mode can also kill her if activated for too long. While useful for some battles, Hyper Mode is usually used to clear Phazon-based debris from environments. The Grapple Lasso isn’t the only new motion-based idea: once you obtain the Plasma Beam, you can solder electrical panels together. Many doors and mechanisms in the game require Samus to manually operate them by twisting the Wii Remote around. A number of Samus’ new powers, like the Seeker Missiles and some Phazon powers especially, feel like overblown keys that are useful for opening up certain passages but don’t have a lot of practicality in combat.

The game’s biggest gamble was the inclusion of voice-acted NPC’s, including rival bounty hunters and a gruff (apparently Texan) military general. Fans had mixed reactions to these interactions, though by the game’s two-hour mark, you barely remember the opening scene and all the spoken dialogue. More importantly, Corruption further details Samus’ involvement with the Galactic Federation: while the fleet wages war with the Space Pirates, Samus and her compatriots are sent on a mission to cure the Federation’s Aurora Unit supercomputers, which the Pirates infected with a Phazon-based virus. Watching Samus interact with Federation officers is jarring and unprecedented in a Metroid game, but as we’ve seen in the Metroid: Other M trailer, it will not be the last time she does so. While Corruption does see some firsts for the series, Retro wasn’t afraid to lay out the fan service. After his complete absence in Echoes, Ridley is back and more dangerous than ever, Metroids are more prevalent, and the Aurora Units bear a striking, if not purposeful, resemblance to Mother Brain.

The Aurora Unit

Moreso than in Echoes, the story of Dark Samus is told through detailed Pirate logs. After so many defeats at the hands of both Samus and her evil doppelganger, a select group of Pirates come to worship Dark Samus as a deity, and help to launch massive Phazon seeds, called Leviathans, from Phaaze toward other habitable planets so that Phazon may spread throughout the galaxy. Dark Samus is implied to be Phazon given consciousness for the first time, using its own power and the willingness of its Pirate servants to move toward a grim objective. The Metroid threat was bad enough, but the Phazon threat is huge, and the player is constantly driven toward their goal through reminders of the terrible price that will come with failure. Corruption does bring the series to a satisfying conclusion, though it leaves a definite cliffhanger that brings Metroid Prime: Hunters into the series canon. As Samus flies off into the sunset, she is followed by Sylux, a biomechanical hunter from that DS game.

What will the future hold for Samus Aran? I’m sure we’ll find out in Metroid: Other M, but in the meantime, Nintendo is releasing the Metroid Prime Trilogy on August 24th. All three games will be on one giant disk, and all will feature Corruption’s motion control scheme. You’ve been reading my rants about the series for three weeks now, but there’s no better way to experience the Prime games than back-to-back-to-back.