Metroid Prime 3: Corruption – Nintendo Wii review

Is it three times a lady for the series?

21 November 2007 17:30 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Answering the call of hardcore gamers for games that don't involve improving your brain power, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption makes its way to Nintendo's Wii. But is there a market for a First Person Shooter on the cutesy console? We get gaming to find out.

The game takes place 6 months after the events of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and follows bounty hunter Samus Aran as she assists the Galactic Federation in their fight against the Space Pirates, despite being slowly corrupted by the mutagenic material, Phazon.

However it's not all bad being infected with a disease as it means that gamers now have a whole array of bolt-on extras to play with as they pick them up through the games levels.

On the Nintendo Wii for the first time, gamers will have a new control system to master which involves the Nunchuck and Wii Remote. As with Zelda on the Wii, the Nunchuck is for moving around while the Wii remote for turning and blasting aliens with the crosshairs.

It's fairly straight forward and easy to master and you can press the Z key on the Nunchuck to hone in on the bad guys a little quicker.

As for gameplay, it's battle stations as usual with spaceships and planets playing out as the backdrop, however, frustratingly, it does take time for the storyline and the action to eventually kick in, there is no dropping you straight in at the deep-end.

Different to most shooters is the ability to turn your character into a ball (those women are nibble aren't they), which not only allows you to get around the levels quickly (something that's very handy), but also find secret areas to explore and collect more booty.

Verdict

A hardcore game on a console that's not really geared for it graphically is a hard mix some will struggle to accept and coupled with sloppy AI that saw some aliens running the same route in circles as we tried to chase them down makes for a disappointing experience.

It's not an overly bad game, far from it, it's just if the Wii is your second console to the Xbox 360 or PS3, then we say let the big boys handle the killing sprees.

Halo 3, Gears of War and Resistance Fall of Man this isn't.