Corruption may be the weakest of the Prime trilogy, but it's still a great game regardless. I will admit, the extended opening(s) had me a little nervous. The initial focus on shooting was off-putting, considering that the game's not much of a shooter, and the talking and in-engine cutscenes were jarring as hell, with some surprisingly bad sound design and mixing. However, once we're past that, oh boy is this a great time.
Corruption's levels are far more segmented than in prior games, separated by planets that Samus must travel to in her ship. While this segmenting has its downsides, namely breaking the feel of a single cohesive location, its upside is that Corruption manages to have environments as varied as the original Prime but without the suspension of disbelief required to believe that distinct biomes are but a short elevator ride away. The ability to land the ship at multiple points in a level allows for an ease of traversal that was appreciated.
I think Corruption might have the best implementation of an Artifact-hunt-variant, with its Energy Cells gradually opening up progression through a pretty tough area. Using these, you can achieve the main objective without collecting them all, or go there way before you need to for some collectables.
Presentational elements are generally outstanding across the board, with brilliant art design and the same immersive touches that made prior games great. The music is back too with the same cheesy-sci-fi-synths-meet-distorted-chants grandness, and I still love it, though perhaps not as much as in Prime and Echoes.
Where does the game fall short? Honestly, the federation stuff is a bit of a mixed bag, with the devs taking a pretty uncritical eye towards them. They do something really fucked up and irresponsible during a time lapse, but the game doesn't seem to notice that the fault lies with them. Their presence also serves to undercut the atmosphere somewhat, though the game manages to be immersive despite this. And, yes, the game is more restrictive and accessible than prior titles. This is not intrinsically a problem, but with a series that has Samus fighting eldritch horrors on strange alien planets the straightforwardness of the game feels a tad mismatched.
Overall, I loved this. I was especially excited for it too, as this was the first of three major titles in the Metroid series which I had not played until now. Up next is Other M, which I'm hoping to at least enjoy as a curio.
Corruption's levels are far more segmented than in prior games, separated by planets that Samus must travel to in her ship. While this segmenting has its downsides, namely breaking the feel of a single cohesive location, its upside is that Corruption manages to have environments as varied as the original Prime but without the suspension of disbelief required to believe that distinct biomes are but a short elevator ride away. The ability to land the ship at multiple points in a level allows for an ease of traversal that was appreciated.
I think Corruption might have the best implementation of an Artifact-hunt-variant, with its Energy Cells gradually opening up progression through a pretty tough area. Using these, you can achieve the main objective without collecting them all, or go there way before you need to for some collectables.
Presentational elements are generally outstanding across the board, with brilliant art design and the same immersive touches that made prior games great. The music is back too with the same cheesy-sci-fi-synths-meet-distorted-chants grandness, and I still love it, though perhaps not as much as in Prime and Echoes.
Where does the game fall short? Honestly, the federation stuff is a bit of a mixed bag, with the devs taking a pretty uncritical eye towards them. They do something really fucked up and irresponsible during a time lapse, but the game doesn't seem to notice that the fault lies with them. Their presence also serves to undercut the atmosphere somewhat, though the game manages to be immersive despite this. And, yes, the game is more restrictive and accessible than prior titles. This is not intrinsically a problem, but with a series that has Samus fighting eldritch horrors on strange alien planets the straightforwardness of the game feels a tad mismatched.
Overall, I loved this. I was especially excited for it too, as this was the first of three major titles in the Metroid series which I had not played until now. Up next is Other M, which I'm hoping to at least enjoy as a curio.