[Wii] Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

For those who watched the Nintendo E3 conference, you saw a few glimpses of what the game looked like, but how will it play?

Here are some impressions, as posted at Gamespot:

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The visuals in the game are looking sharp and staying true to the sleek art direction that was introduced when the Metroid Prime series kicked off on the GameCube in 2002. The most striking feature was simply the scale of the level we saw. The facility, as seen in the intro cinematic, appeared to be a sprawling complex that had seen better days. Upon landing, Samus disembarks and gets a brief status update from soldiers posted to the platform her ship is resting on. Once you're up to speed you head out to do you business. The brief portion of the level we played focused on Samus exploring the installation and taking on enemies.

While the basic action in the demo was the standard Metroid fare, how you got on with it was all-new thanks to the Wii controller. Much like our Tokyo Game Show demo, the game relied on the main controller and nunchuk attachment. We moved Samus with the analog stick while we did our looking and aiming by simply pointing the new controller. The B button shot her primary weapon and, when held down, charged up for a power shot that sucked in nearby items. The directional pad fired missiles. Scanning was tweaked a bit with a translucent reticle coming up that you could "lock" by hitting the C button. When locked onto an enemy you'll be able to perform the same actions you always could. When locked onto an item you can scan you'll have to hold down the A button to initiate it. The Z button initiates your morph ball.

While all of the above is pretty much how you'd expect the control to map out, the grapple beam is a cool use of the controller's unique attributes. In the demo we came across objects that featured the beam icon above them, handy tip off to use the beam. The mechanic for the beam was pretty cool. We had to lock on to the object then fling the nunchuk which caused Samus to fire a beam out at it. Once we had it on our line we used the analog stick to pull it back towards us. Once the debris was cleared we had our chance to engage in some morph ball puzzle solving that was initiated with another use of the controller, simulating Samus' hand manipulating a switch. We "grabbed" a handle, pulled it back, twisted it and pushed it back into a socket with a fair amount of precision.

As far as the visuals go, the game is purring along as smoothly as its GameCube predecessors and benefiting from a nice sheen of graphical effects that enhance the already impressive look. Right now what we've seen is a solid evolution of the visuals and effects from the Prime games on the 'cube, but we expect the game to continue to improve as development continues.

More impressions can be found over at 1UP.

Screencaps from the game will probably be posted tomorrow, as soon as the gaming press can get their hands on the game.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

IGN has some new gameplay videos up.

From the looks of it, turning will be hard to get used to. Hopefully Retro will be able to tweak that a little bit before release.


EDIT:

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May 10, 2006 - In an interview with the Retro Studios team, IGN Wii learned today that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will indeed be a launch game for Nintendo Wii. Developed from the ground up for the new platform and its unique controllers, Metroid will arrive alongside The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess offering up a first-party double punch when the console ships this holiday season.

Like its predecessors, the game will not feature an online mode for competitive multiplay -- however, support of the system's 24-hour-connection is under consideration. This would allow Nintendo to push upgrades and additional content to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption owners with wireless connections even when the console is switched off.

Retro Studios also confirmed that Metroid Prime 3 will depart from the light and dark world setup introduced in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and instead feature large areas to explore on multiple worlds. Though Samus will use her new gunship to travel between planets, players hoping to pilot Samus Aran's new gunship may be disappointed to hear that they will not be able to pilot the ship themselves. Travel between areas likely occurs only in cutscene form. That's not to say that the ship doesn't feature a large role in the game, however. Retro hinted at a new visor mode that lets Samus command her ship from the ground. For example, she can use the gunship uplink to blow up obstacles in her way and gain access to new areas.

Though the other visors are still being kept a secret, Retro did confirm that the X-Ray visor will return and play a bigger part in both combat and puzzle solving. Used in conjunction with a new beam that is able to shoot through walls, players will be able to detect obscured enemies and take them out safely.

The developer is also hard at work on polishing the graphics in the game to make it a noticeable step up over the previous titles. Retro has added new bloom effects and much more complex particle systems for even bigger fireworks. The target framerate for the final game is a smooth 60 frames per second.

From IGN

Too bad about no online mutiplayer, but HOT DAMN it's a launch title!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I doubt that will happen, especially when they can just fall back on the fact that the Wii supports SD cards.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it, does the Wii even have USB ports?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

But Guru, how will I ever poke the stick into that thing if it looks graphically accurate?

Ah, back on topic...uh, comes out tomorrow. Yeah.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Slayer X

Just a quick mini-poll how many people are using the Jump <-> Fire button switch? I am, don't know why Nintendo added a trigger that they're not going to use for immersion purposes. They had no issues using it properly on the N64. So yeah, speak up if you are like myself. ^^

I'm thinking about doing that. Only because I was in a firefight with some lizard guy and kept jumping when I wanted to shoot.

Also, has anyone tried the friend thing? It looks like you can swap save games or something.

I was speaking idiomatically.