Corruption, like Prime and Echoes before it, displays some of the most beautiful and atmospheric art direction in the gaming industry. On the technical side, though, I'm hard-pressed to say whether there's as much of a visual leap between Corruption and Echoes in near geometry as there was between Echoes and Prime—though there can be no doubt that Corruption fills the horizon with actual structures as opposed to the simple matte paintings in Echoes. So much detail and polish has been put into each game, that there comes a point where "more" becomes irrelevant. There are, however, some visual anomalies I feel the need to address—namely, what's up with the humans?
There is no question that Retro can design some fabulous looking aliens. Also, Samus (her head at least) looked great at the end of Prime. Since then, however, the human designs have left me disappointed. Personally, I don't like Samus' Zero Suit look, but aside from that, the bare-faced humans seen in Corruption cause me to cringe a little. They have oddly proportioned faces that seem vertically elongated. The animation also felt stiff and robotic at times, and lacking in punch at others (Admiral Dane's melodramatic gestures seemed particularly weightless).
The presentation of the numerous (for Metroid) cut scenes also felt a bit uneven with the voice acting adding new pitfalls. None of the dialog was poor, though most of it was merely average. One thing that happens with voiced dialog is that lines that read perfectly well can sound corny when actually spoken aloud; along these lines, the admiral and the marines/crew tended to be on the low end for dialog, though I thought the bounty hunters and Aurora Units were wonderfully portrayed.
Corruption also offered up a new rendition of the Space Pirates that I have to address. I did not care for the new look of the pirates, but it is what I didn't hear that really let me down. When I first battled the Space Pirates in Corruption, I felt something was missing and I didn't know what. It wasn't until the bridge battle on Norion, where Rundas got involved, that I identified what was absent. That ferocious and defiant roar that so personified the nature of the pirates, was gone. Now, upon death, they simply and politely fell over without the meekest utterance. What the hell, Retro? Even their theme seemed lesser, more whiny, a weaker aural presence all around—which is unfortunate as, combat-wise, Corruption is mostly about the pirates.
In Echoes, the elements of Navigation, Traversal, and Combat all seemed to take big steps forward over Prime, in Corruption, everything seems to have taken a step back. I have to put Traversal in the primary position this time. There is a simplification of the worlds that promotes a faster pace, making travel quick and mostly painless. This streamlining comes at the cost of Navigation, however, which I put as the weakest element within Corruption. I counted roughly 26 puzzle rooms, and most of them felt like the game was going easy on me. (One brilliant exception, however, was a lateral thinking puzzle involving the moving of a golem's head and a huge battery in order to gain a power cell. I wish there had been more like that.)
There were around 29 Morph/Spider Ball courses, consisting mainly of quick little tracks. The Spider Ball itself is acquired late in the game so there are only a few magnetic rails, and none display the imaginative diversity enjoyed in Echoes (though the one in the Hall of Golems is a personal favorite). Areas tend to be smaller and basic in design, consisting mostly of straightforward corridors with little need to navigate challenging terrain. Branching paths are a relative rarity. The Aurora Unit telling me what I'll find in any given environment from the outset also puts a damper on the sense of discovery.
Combat is very prominent in Corruption, but I feel it is due to a lightened presence of the other elements. There are actually fewer engagements with significant enemies in Corruption than there were in Echoes (probably a good thing), and the variety of enemies is definitely lesser (a bad thing). There are no grenchlers or sheegoth here that you need to maneuver around to get that shot off. There are no bloggs that require careful timing to affect that kill. There are no elementally vulnerable beasties requiring astute beam switching or machines to dispatch with a multi-missile lock on strike. In Corruption, pretty much everything succumbs to just being shot lots and lots, or tugged on with the Grapple Beam.
That's not to say combat is a bore. The directness and precision of using the pointer and motion controls comes to the rescue, making combat quite interactive. It's not a replacement for the loss in variety, but it's still fun in a visceral sense. Unfortunately, many of the boss fights don't live up to the epic struggles of games past. Most of the boss battles are of the simple "shoot the big red target" variety. The usage of different visors is downplayed while the use of the Grapple Beam to pull on loose armor is perhaps overplayed. There are no beams to switch and missiles play little to no role. As a result, most of these battles consist of no more than frantic shooting.
In Echoes, Retro tried to add an ammo management strategy to the combat with the Light and Dark Beams. In Corruption, a similar concept is tried with with the PED Suit. In this game Samus has the ability to go into Hypermode, a Phazon-enhanced state that heavily increases her damage dealing capabilities and makes her invincible. This state must be managed carefully, for allowing it to overload can result in death. Simply engaging Hypermode costs a full Energy Tank. Exploiting Hypermode and managing it properly adds a strong tactical element and challenge to Corruption... but only if you play the game on the hardest difficulty setting. I found the Veteran difficulty too easy to really make full use of Hypermode, and the Normal difficulty setting isn't even worth discussing. Also, possibly as a side affect of Hypermode, most regular enemies take too many hits from Samus' normal weaponry to go down. As a result, it feels less like Hypermode has an increase above the norm in power, and more like Samus' regular arsenal has been nerfed.
Now, finally, we get to the odds and ends. Corruption takes the Prime formula and really mixes it up with some results I like a great deal. It intersperses the free-roaming exploration segments with short missions that have a definitive goal. Although I felt the exploration was handled too lightly, I thoroughly enjoy the variety brought in by the missions, like figuring out how to build a nuke and escorting bomb-toting marines.
I also really liked the uses for Samus' ship. Sure, calling in an air strike was rather weakly implemented, but using the ship to haul around huge pieces of scenery for large scale puzzles is a brilliant gaming element I want more of. Ultimately though, it is the ship's simplest use that I find has the most impact. I can not stress how fantastic it is to just hop into the cockpit, punch in a destination, and fly there. The ship replaces the traditional Metroid elevator, and that is wonderful. Why? Because it is an elevator that can go anywhere, not just from point A to point B, it can go to any point.
Metroid games are adventure games, and one basic element of the adventure is revisiting old areas with new toys to do more exploring and item collecting. The bane of exploration is backtracking. In Metroid, it is not unusual to crisscross the entire planet multiple times, and that's a lot of walking. My biggest complaint about Echoes concerned all of the walking: marching through a series of rooms, taking an elevator to a new area, marching through more rooms, taking another elevator, and maybe finally getting to the general vicinity of my goal. Echoes tried to address the issue of all this travel by making sure every area had an elevator to every other area, but there was still a whole lot of walking. How much would the tedium of travel been decreased if I could have just flown straight from Torvus to one of a number of conveniently placed landing pads in Agon? I don't think the impact of convenient ship travel on game pacing should be underestimated, and for that matter, I'd also like to see warp points return in future Metroid games. The surprise of warping into Bryyo Ice, of stumbling upon such an unexpected location, was a high point in Corruption.
The last thing I want to discuss about Corruption concerns the collection of Power Cells, Corruption's variation on the Key Hunt. This is how it should be done, folks; the last game in the Trilogy gets it ever so right. First off, rather than just sitting incongruously around the environment, the Power Cells are a part of it. Unplugging them often has a consequence, like setting free a swarm of metroids. Also, they are easily picked up through the natural process of exploring the world, and in at least one stellar example, the act of acquiring one takes thought and planning that fits naturalistically into the setting. Finally, the Power Cells actually do something—they are tools used to explore one of the most interesting locations in the entire game. What a wonderful incentive to collect every last one of them.
Corruption sought to close out the Prime trilogy with a bang and I'd say it succeeded. I have to hand it to the good people at Retro and Nintendo for the willingness to experiment with a tried and true formula. If you aren't willing to risk a miss, you'll never discover a new hit. All of the Metroid Prime games offer up a wealth of new elements that can only enrich this treasured series.
This concludes my revisit of the Prime trilogy. Join us again tomorrow for a look at Metroid II: a game little-played but hugely influential on the rest of the series.
There is no question that Retro can design some fabulous looking aliens. Also, Samus (her head at least) looked great at the end of Prime. Since then, however, the human designs have left me disappointed. Personally, I don't like Samus' Zero Suit look, but aside from that, the bare-faced humans seen in Corruption cause me to cringe a little. They have oddly proportioned faces that seem vertically elongated. The animation also felt stiff and robotic at times, and lacking in punch at others (Admiral Dane's melodramatic gestures seemed particularly weightless).
The presentation of the numerous (for Metroid) cut scenes also felt a bit uneven with the voice acting adding new pitfalls. None of the dialog was poor, though most of it was merely average. One thing that happens with voiced dialog is that lines that read perfectly well can sound corny when actually spoken aloud; along these lines, the admiral and the marines/crew tended to be on the low end for dialog, though I thought the bounty hunters and Aurora Units were wonderfully portrayed.
Corruption also offered up a new rendition of the Space Pirates that I have to address. I did not care for the new look of the pirates, but it is what I didn't hear that really let me down. When I first battled the Space Pirates in Corruption, I felt something was missing and I didn't know what. It wasn't until the bridge battle on Norion, where Rundas got involved, that I identified what was absent. That ferocious and defiant roar that so personified the nature of the pirates, was gone. Now, upon death, they simply and politely fell over without the meekest utterance. What the hell, Retro? Even their theme seemed lesser, more whiny, a weaker aural presence all around—which is unfortunate as, combat-wise, Corruption is mostly about the pirates.
In Echoes, the elements of Navigation, Traversal, and Combat all seemed to take big steps forward over Prime, in Corruption, everything seems to have taken a step back. I have to put Traversal in the primary position this time. There is a simplification of the worlds that promotes a faster pace, making travel quick and mostly painless. This streamlining comes at the cost of Navigation, however, which I put as the weakest element within Corruption. I counted roughly 26 puzzle rooms, and most of them felt like the game was going easy on me. (One brilliant exception, however, was a lateral thinking puzzle involving the moving of a golem's head and a huge battery in order to gain a power cell. I wish there had been more like that.)
There were around 29 Morph/Spider Ball courses, consisting mainly of quick little tracks. The Spider Ball itself is acquired late in the game so there are only a few magnetic rails, and none display the imaginative diversity enjoyed in Echoes (though the one in the Hall of Golems is a personal favorite). Areas tend to be smaller and basic in design, consisting mostly of straightforward corridors with little need to navigate challenging terrain. Branching paths are a relative rarity. The Aurora Unit telling me what I'll find in any given environment from the outset also puts a damper on the sense of discovery.
Combat is very prominent in Corruption, but I feel it is due to a lightened presence of the other elements. There are actually fewer engagements with significant enemies in Corruption than there were in Echoes (probably a good thing), and the variety of enemies is definitely lesser (a bad thing). There are no grenchlers or sheegoth here that you need to maneuver around to get that shot off. There are no bloggs that require careful timing to affect that kill. There are no elementally vulnerable beasties requiring astute beam switching or machines to dispatch with a multi-missile lock on strike. In Corruption, pretty much everything succumbs to just being shot lots and lots, or tugged on with the Grapple Beam.
That's not to say combat is a bore. The directness and precision of using the pointer and motion controls comes to the rescue, making combat quite interactive. It's not a replacement for the loss in variety, but it's still fun in a visceral sense. Unfortunately, many of the boss fights don't live up to the epic struggles of games past. Most of the boss battles are of the simple "shoot the big red target" variety. The usage of different visors is downplayed while the use of the Grapple Beam to pull on loose armor is perhaps overplayed. There are no beams to switch and missiles play little to no role. As a result, most of these battles consist of no more than frantic shooting.
In Echoes, Retro tried to add an ammo management strategy to the combat with the Light and Dark Beams. In Corruption, a similar concept is tried with with the PED Suit. In this game Samus has the ability to go into Hypermode, a Phazon-enhanced state that heavily increases her damage dealing capabilities and makes her invincible. This state must be managed carefully, for allowing it to overload can result in death. Simply engaging Hypermode costs a full Energy Tank. Exploiting Hypermode and managing it properly adds a strong tactical element and challenge to Corruption... but only if you play the game on the hardest difficulty setting. I found the Veteran difficulty too easy to really make full use of Hypermode, and the Normal difficulty setting isn't even worth discussing. Also, possibly as a side affect of Hypermode, most regular enemies take too many hits from Samus' normal weaponry to go down. As a result, it feels less like Hypermode has an increase above the norm in power, and more like Samus' regular arsenal has been nerfed.
Now, finally, we get to the odds and ends. Corruption takes the Prime formula and really mixes it up with some results I like a great deal. It intersperses the free-roaming exploration segments with short missions that have a definitive goal. Although I felt the exploration was handled too lightly, I thoroughly enjoy the variety brought in by the missions, like figuring out how to build a nuke and escorting bomb-toting marines.
I also really liked the uses for Samus' ship. Sure, calling in an air strike was rather weakly implemented, but using the ship to haul around huge pieces of scenery for large scale puzzles is a brilliant gaming element I want more of. Ultimately though, it is the ship's simplest use that I find has the most impact. I can not stress how fantastic it is to just hop into the cockpit, punch in a destination, and fly there. The ship replaces the traditional Metroid elevator, and that is wonderful. Why? Because it is an elevator that can go anywhere, not just from point A to point B, it can go to any point.
Metroid games are adventure games, and one basic element of the adventure is revisiting old areas with new toys to do more exploring and item collecting. The bane of exploration is backtracking. In Metroid, it is not unusual to crisscross the entire planet multiple times, and that's a lot of walking. My biggest complaint about Echoes concerned all of the walking: marching through a series of rooms, taking an elevator to a new area, marching through more rooms, taking another elevator, and maybe finally getting to the general vicinity of my goal. Echoes tried to address the issue of all this travel by making sure every area had an elevator to every other area, but there was still a whole lot of walking. How much would the tedium of travel been decreased if I could have just flown straight from Torvus to one of a number of conveniently placed landing pads in Agon? I don't think the impact of convenient ship travel on game pacing should be underestimated, and for that matter, I'd also like to see warp points return in future Metroid games. The surprise of warping into Bryyo Ice, of stumbling upon such an unexpected location, was a high point in Corruption.
The last thing I want to discuss about Corruption concerns the collection of Power Cells, Corruption's variation on the Key Hunt. This is how it should be done, folks; the last game in the Trilogy gets it ever so right. First off, rather than just sitting incongruously around the environment, the Power Cells are a part of it. Unplugging them often has a consequence, like setting free a swarm of metroids. Also, they are easily picked up through the natural process of exploring the world, and in at least one stellar example, the act of acquiring one takes thought and planning that fits naturalistically into the setting. Finally, the Power Cells actually do something—they are tools used to explore one of the most interesting locations in the entire game. What a wonderful incentive to collect every last one of them.
Corruption sought to close out the Prime trilogy with a bang and I'd say it succeeded. I have to hand it to the good people at Retro and Nintendo for the willingness to experiment with a tried and true formula. If you aren't willing to risk a miss, you'll never discover a new hit. All of the Metroid Prime games offer up a wealth of new elements that can only enrich this treasured series.
This concludes my revisit of the Prime trilogy. Join us again tomorrow for a look at Metroid II: a game little-played but hugely influential on the rest of the series.