The Good

The Environment Art and aesthetics - Retro still has simply the best talent in terms of crafting unique and amazing looking worlds. Bryyo, Elysia, The Homeworld, The Valhalla and Phaaze are amazing locales.

Creature/Machine Design - It's what makes Metroid, and especially the Prime series unique. Their artists were able to create some great Creatures and Machines that populate the worlds, both enemy and ambient. The Reptilicus and Moegnar Golems on Bryyo, the Steam Machines (lol) and drones of Elysia, and the otherworldly Phazon/Metroid creatures. Even Hunters like Rundas and Ghor looked pretty cool.

The Controls - The Wii pointer controls were definitely a major improvement from the original gamepad controls. Very intuitive and it made aiming and firing at multiple targets very easy. The interactions you could do, like welding, pulling/pushing levers and pressing buttons were also very cool I thought. Using the nunchuk to launch and retract the grapple beam was also brilliant.


The Average

The Level Design - Especially coming after Prime 2's superb design. Corruptions level design is definitely a downgrade from those highs. The primary problem of course is the intense segmentation of the levels into small bits and pieces, and while the connections within those areas are well made and done, the size just hobbles the design. In addition, a lot of the areas, particularly on Bryyo are extremely linear or simplistic in terms of layout. Another thing that sort of bothered me was that in the Map, the names of the rooms seemed awfully generic sounding compared to the more creative names that were used in previous games (most were often "passage to this room" or "main room" or something). Still some areas like the Valhalla and the Homeworld make good use of their layout.

Corruption/Hypermode - This gameplay mechanic, the idea of linking Samus' life to her power via Phazon definitely sounds more interesting on paper/concept than in execution. Hypermode, while making the player consider their energy more carefully when using this power, is not really well balanced and can either be too much firepower or too little energy. In addition, because of this, Energy Tanks are now often easily found and received by the player making regular gameplay often much easier than Prime and especially Echoes. Linking Hypermode to defeating certain Bosses was also kind of a misfire in terms of execution.

The Bosses - Honestly though, I don't think any Prime game has "great bosses" across the board. Prime 1's bosses weren't too memorable outside the Final two. Echoes had Quadraxis which was the pinnacle of Boss design, but super lame ones like the Alpha Blogg and Chykka. Prime 3 similarly has good and bad ones. The Good are ones like Meta Ridley, all three Hunters Rundas, Ghor and especially Gandrayda who is definitely one of the best bosses in the series, and

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Dark Samus/AuroraBrain

. The Leviathan guardians however were disappointing, Moegnar was just frustrating, Helios was boring and Omega was a retread of a previous games boss, though at least had you use new abilities to fight him.


The Bad

The Ship - The ship mechanic definitely is one of those things that sounds great on paper and in concept but just really fell flat in execution, or rather, just felt totally unnecessary, and in turn is responsible for the very limited scope of the level design upon relying on it. The ship's only use was just to ferry Samus from place to place, and anything else that it could do was just window dressing, as I doubt many called upon it's air-strike capabilities in game despite the ammo being part of pick-ups. It is definitely something that needs serious rethink or to be scrapped if a sequel is ever done. I'm not against Samus visiting multiple worlds, but they need to find a better way to streamline the process. Entering a ship I think was an extra layer of UX that was unnecessary.

Humanoid Character design - Retro's artists have one big black eye on their record, and that's their creativity and competency modeling human and humanoid characters. Everyone recoiled at Samus zero suit appearance at the special Echoes finale, and here in Corruption, while they've improved her a bit, it's not by much. In addition, other human characters, like Admiral Dane and the human mechanics/doctors/scientists just look terrible, as well as Gandrayda's humanoid face. They definitely need a better human character modeler in the future that's for sure. Even Dark Samus, while not human, suffered as her new "improved" form doesn't look like it compared to her more alien and unique form in Echoes, where as here she just looks like a generic "dark black/blue" suit of Samus (though I guess that's intentional as when Samus gets "corrupted" she turns into DS).

The Dialog-Cutscenes - Certainly you will not find anything as bad as the stuff in Other M, however, the cutscenes in this game that particularly involve Dialog (such as conversing with the Hunters or Dane) are very badly choreographed and animated. The characters look so wooden and stilted. In addition, several cutscenes definitely give off the feel of "trying to look cool" a bit too much or trying to copy other games. I think most players preferred how things were handled in Prime 1 and 2 with these sorts of scenes kept to a very bare minimum.

The Hint/Guide/Aurora System - I think everyone agrees that this game clearly "hand-holds" the player far far more than the previous 2 games. Aurora constantly is advising you on where to go next and what to do. It becomes annoying at a certain point and it definitely felt overdone. Contrast this to U-Mos in Echoes who only had to give you the basics of where to go and let you figure out the rest.

The Federation - It is understandable that Retro obviously was trying to make Samus part of the "big picture" with Corruption since this was supposed to be the "big epic showdown" and thus wanted her to interact with The Federation quite a bit. Unfortunately this detracts from what makes Metroid "unique". The sense of isolation is lost in lots of places and most agree that in the places where the Federation is kept out of sight is when things look good. The final assault by Samus and "keeping the squad alive" to the Homeworld Leviathan just felt so out of place.

The Scanning - In this case, I felt the scanning was just a letdown compared to previous games in terms of what was there and what was available, particularly anything that was not Lore-related. Very few pieces of architecture were scannable and lots of stuff were also combined into one generic scan. It just felt like they really held back compared to previous games and that was disappointing.

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somme said:

I loved the first one, found the second somewhat annoying and liked the third. The third was actually the only one I finished. I got right to the end of the first one several times but then something always came up.

I recently bought the bundle on the WiiU eShop but am really over motion controls at this point and the thought of waggling my arms around like I'm trying to land a plane is really putting me off.

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somme said:

I recently bought the bundle on the WiiU eShop but am really over motion controls at this point and the thought of waggling my arms around like I'm trying to land a plane is really putting me off.

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somme said:

I recently bought the bundle on the WiiU eShop but am really over motion controls at this point and the thought of waggling my arms around like I'm trying to land a plane is really putting me off.

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Verger said:

Glad to see you loved Echoes! Really underrated by many when it in fact has some of the best game and level designs around.

As for Corruption, yeah, it's definitely the "worst" of the series (though that's still better than most games). I described my thoughts about it in the OT:

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Prototype said:

You can play these games for 400 hours and not see everything.
Excellent series.

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Adam Prime said:

LOL what game were you playing!?! Literally the only motion controls in the whole game is flicking your damn wrist.

Landing a plane? Hahahaha!!!

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Prototype said:

You can play these games for 400 hours and not see everything.
Excellent series.

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