Ouverture du site officiel Metroid Prime 3 Corruption


Metroid Prime 3: Corruption begins as space-drifting heroine Samus Aran awakens from a cryogenic sleep to a fleet of Federation Ships. In a first for the acclaimed franchise, you take control of the character well before her feet touch the ground. Your initial mission is to guide her Hunter-Class Gunship to Docking Bay Five on the enormous battleship, S.S. Olympus. While you can engage its thrusters and tinker around with several of its in-cockpit gadgets, including a screen that tallies exactly how many kills you've amassed and even how many times you've shot your weapon, you don't ever really control Aran's ship so much as you select positions on a galactic map for it to fly toward. (Later, you'll be able to call the ship to Aran's side -- it can rain down extra firepower when necessary or, bare minimum, function as a portable save system, literally flying a save portal your way.) Before you've got a moment to ponder the fact that the game's epic storyline is delivered by way of genuine and very well acted voice work -- all the humanoid characters save for Samus have speaking parts -- the Space Pirates are attacking and soon after you're off on a quest to save the galaxy.

Right off the bat, you're going to notice several major differences between Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and its predecessors. The most immediately obvious are the graphical enhancements. Not only does Corruption run in both 480p and 16:9 widescreen (another first for the series), but it dishes out larger, more detailed environments, crisper textures, dramatically improved particle effects, depth of field blur, screen shakes, and what is easily the best utilization of bloom lighting in any Wii game to date. It may seem like a trivial inclusion to some -- games like Ico, for example, have developed visual styles that revolve around bloom lighting -- but developer Retro Studios has taken it to the next level. Environments, objects and particle effects alike are illuminated with a neon-like hue that fits exceptionally well within the game's science-fiction setting. Other visual additions are more pronounced. When bringing up Aran's scan-visor (activated by pressing the minus button on the Wii remote), you will now see the bounty hunter's face clearly reflected -- not just for a split second, as in previous titles, but permanently. That face may even show signs of change as you advance through the game.

Corruption is further differentiated from Echoes in that its environments are incredibly varied. You won't be exploring drab purple Dark Worlds in this adventure, which spans across multiple planets, each with a highly stylized appearance. Like the original Prime, you'll travel from space station to earthly locales that marry the high-tech with the biological. Retro has designed environments that we didn't think were possible on Wii -- walls with jutting pipes, holographic displays, sparking particles, and all of them multilayered so that you will be able to see pistons chugging back and forth beneath glass walkways. The effect is very impressive indeed. Just as impressive, though, is that Corruption runs at an uninterrupted, silky smooth 60 frames per second 99.9% of the time. Indeed, through the first third of the game, we only noticed one point where the fluidity dipped -- very momentarily -- below 60 frames. Since Prime 3's new control scheme enables a more intense shooting experience than previously possible, that speed goes a long way.

We were prepared to be disappointed by Prime 3's visual presentation because many of the early screenshots and videos designed to represent the title frankly did a poor job of it. However, the truth is that Corruption is the best looking Prime game to date and very easily Wii's flagship visual stunner. That honor may be handed over to Super Mario Galaxy upon its release, but for now Samus has earned it. For those who care, we'd like to point out now that Corruption does not run in full 854x480 resolution, but rather something closer to 825x470 -- it's still pro-scan widescreen, but it won't fill your entire screen. (The screens we posted with this story show the black borders, as the game may appear on some televisions.)

What of gameplay, though? How has that changed? Well, for once, Samus does not take some level of highly inconvenient first-stage battle damage that somehow results in the loss her extra special abilities. She starts with her trademark Varia Suit, which is equipped with morphball, bombs, double-jump and standard power beam. Within 10 minutes, she gains missiles, and only keeps upgrading from there. We're not going to spoil the upgrade system, but as any hardcore followers have very probably already spotted in numerous screenshots, Aran gains a new Phazon Enhancement Device, or PED Suit, that dramatically changes her appearance and works hand-in-and with Corruption's central theme. Aran is able to use this special new suit to go into hyper mode (by holding plus button), at which point time appears to slow down and she can unleash a powerful onslaught of gunfire, but it comes at a cost. If she stays in hyper mode for too long, she runs the risk of becoming corrupted and quite possibly dying. There's an integral balance required when going into hyper mode and it only increases as Samus progresses and enemies become more difficult.

Corruption plays better than any of its predecessors due in large to the new Wii control scheme. Unlike The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a game whose control scheme worked very well, but also felt like it originated from a GCN design, Prime 3 feels like it was designed from the beginning for the Wii remote and nunchuk. Some gamers complained that in the first two Prime games you could not move while free aiming. If you remember, you had to hold the right shoulder button on the GCN controller to look around. Not so in Corruption. Now, you move with the nunchuk's analog stick and can freely aim in any direction simply by pointing the Wii remote. There are three sensitivity settings designed for beginners, intermediate and advanced players, with the major difference being the invisible bounding box that defines when Samus turns becomes smaller (and hence she turns quicker) the more advanced you go.

If you ever follow any advice we give you, let it be this: don't even bother to try out any of the control modes beyond 'advanced.' It yields the fastest and most responsive first-person controls in any Wii game to date -- possibly in any home console game ever -- and it alone makes the experience so thoroughly enjoyable that you won't want to put the Wii remote and nunchuk down. Retro seems to have realized this truth and designed some characters around it. For instance, early on you will fight a series of flying antipersonnel drones called Aeromine; these nuisance bots huddle together in shielded groups, leaving only one unit exposed at a time. You will have to manually target and shoot down each drone in succession in order to advance.

We're not Wii newbies by any stretch of the imagination. We've played and completed games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor for Wii, both of which featured fairly speedy FPS controls adapted to Nintendo's remote and nunchuk. Metroid has them beat (and we won't even mention Red Steel). Targeting feels tighter and looking left/right and up/down quicker, and as a result you can effortlessly zip through locations while blasting away at enemies and objects. Critics have complained that first-person games on Wii have yet to prove their control superiority to those on other consoles, but we really do think that Prime 3 will open some eyes. That noted, even with advanced controls, Samus does not turn around as quickly as we'd have liked. It still takes the bounty hunter about two and a half seconds to perform a full 180-degree turn -- certainly fast enough for this adventure-heavy experience, but it's still not going to show mouse and keyboard users how it's done. Diehard Prime fans may be happy to know that Samus is able to retain the auto lock-on feature of old games, but those who want a little more manual control can additionally enable a free-look while auto-locked, effectively letting the bounty hunter remain locked onto enemies, but still manually target their specific body parts. The IGN Nintendo team initially had a split of opinion about which method was better. At first, only one of the editors was for the auto lock-on with manual aim method, but eventually everybody came around because of the added precision gained.

Retro has also utilized the Wii remote and nunchuk for context-sensitive actions that create very immersive play scenarios. Samus oftentimes interacts with environmental pulleys and levers, all pushed, pulled and twisted with the Wii remote. You'll actually make the appropriate gestures with the peripheral to perform these functions. For instance, you might have to pull backward on the Wii remote to pull a lever down, then twist left with the controller to twist the on-screen device, and finally push forward to lock it back in place. In our experience, these maneuvers work very well and do not feel at all gimmicky. You will also use the hunter's Grapple Lasso to latch onto objects and enemies To do so, you simply lock-on with the Z button and then make a quick throwing gesture with the nunchuk; once latched, you snap backward with the attachment to rip off wall panels, or even pull the tails off some flying enemies, quickly disposing of them. Again, these maneuvers work quite brilliantly. The only gesture that has given us some trouble -- albeit only occasionally -- is the one associated with morphball jumping. You can jump in morphball form by laying bombs the traditional way, but you can also hop upward while in ball form by flicking up with the Wii remote. It usually works and feels very responsive (indeed, you can roll and jump over objects very easily most of the time), but every so often it doesn't recognize the gestures. If you make distinct, exaggerated motions, you probably won't have any issues, but those with more subtle hand movements may encounter the drawback.

During the first third of the game -- the portion we're able to write about (and for the record, we completed Corruption in full earlier today after 20 spectacular hours of play) -- Samus explores the battleship Olympus, the futuristic planet Norion and the undeveloped Bryyon, with its fire pits and Chozo temples. Eventually, you'll journey to the Seed, where you'll do battle with a massive and thrilling boss (Prime 3 boasts some of the best boss battles in any videogame, period). All the locations are stunning in their own right and all are full of challenges that revolve around both blasting apart enemies and solving environmental puzzles. Samus will need to contract into morphball form nearly as often as she'll need to use her weapons, so if you're under the impression that the new Wii remote controls equate to a dumbed down or shooter-intensified experience, don't be. We're not going to reveal any further details about the content of the main game, except to say that its tale will ally Samus with and against some recognizable hunters and introduce her to the Aurora Units, gigantic semi-organic super-computers that power entire galactic networks. Might one of these brainy creatures amount to the mother of all enemies? You're going to have to play to find out.

Metroid Prime 3 features a very welcomed rewards system that some have compared to achievements on Xbox Live. As you progress through the game, you earn Samus medals for accomplishing various goals, from 500 kills to beating certain enemies and scanning items. There are differently colored medals for your various successes, and you can use combos of these achievements to buy special unlockable extras -- concept art, music, storyboards, stickers and bobbleheads, and even a screenshot tool that enables you to (by pressing up on the D-Pad) snap in-game photos and send them to friends over WiiConnect24. The game also uses WiiConnect24 to let you trade friend vouchers with players you've already added to your Wii system address book. Friend vouchers can be converted into friend credits, which are also utilized -- in combination with the other medals -- to unlock the extras. Indeed, the best extras can only be purchased if you trade friend vouchers with your buddies. For the purposes of our hands-on update (and eventually our review), we traded vouchers with our friends at GameSpy, and then we converted those vouchers into friend credits to buy, for example, the screenshot tool.

We're going to have the full review of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption shortly before the game ships, but we don't think you'll be surprised to learn that it's an amazing experience both mechanically and visually. If this is truly the end of Retro's magnificent trilogy, Samus Aran will have gone out on a very high note indeed.