How an essential theme of the Metroid series can be re-explored without covering the same old ground.

Empowerment has always been a defining characteristic of Metroid. Playing as Samus Aran, gamers have undergone the transformation from immobile weakling to near-omnipotent force, several times over, as they have delved deeper and deeper into the series' many foreboding caverns. What made this process unique was that it was not merely the result of ascending through numerical levels, nor only a matter of amassing health and ammunition expansions, but rather it involved learning new, gameplay-altering abilities. The design of Metroid's worlds has been shaped around these abilities in order to craft gameplay sequences out of open exploration without relying exclusively on basic devices such as locked doors and keys.

Metroid's sublime intertwining of level design and character abilities was at first groundbreaking in the 1986 original, before becoming fully and magnificently realised in 1994's Super Metroid. Following an eight year hiatus, the formula made a very welcome return in both Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. However, the relatively prolific output of Metroid games from 2002 to 2004 seemed to raise questions regarding how much further this template could be fruitfully applied. Some began to bemoan the contrivances that routinely robbed Samus of her abilities, leaving players to gradually reclaim them (along with a few new ones) throughout the course of her adventures. What once had been fresh and exhilarating was now starting to feel like going through the motions.

Powering Up from 1986 to 2007

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption attempted to disrupt the kind of progression established in its predecessors by leaving a significant number of Samus' core abilities intact through the game's opening sequence, meaning that those left to be acquired during the game proper were somewhat more original in nature. Furthermore, the Corruption/Hypermode mechanic promised a very different take on the theme of empowerment. Rather than Samus simply becoming incrementally more powerful throughout the course of her adventure, she now had intense destructive power accessible to her at almost any time, but this came at the price of health and a risk of death if overused.

Ultimately, Corruption was less than entirely successful in its attempts to freshen up the series. The ostensible risk-reward element of Hypermode failed to truly materialise, with its meaningful use remaining mostly situational. Perhaps more crucially, the original abilities severely lacked the broad applicability of their 2D era-rooted forebears, feeling more and more like elaborately disguised versions of the keys and locks that the series had commendably avoided depending on in the past.