Welcome Back

I am admittedly one of those casual gamers, but I guess when it comes to a select few, I get pretty excited when a new addition is added to a franchise. I like Halo, but never quite caught on to it, probably because of my devotion to the Metroid series, a devotion that goes back to Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo. 

For those of you uninitiated with the franchise, it's the story of bounty hunter Samus Aran, a mysterious blonde intergalactic warrior raised by an ancient bird-like alien called the Chozo. They created the fantastic suit for her that is capable of

transforming her into a ball, make her blast at high speed through stone structures, and shoot various weapons, one of the coolest being a kind of lightning lasso called a "grapple beam." The game has slowly expanded her universe since the original Super Metroid game, a puzzle crazy side-scroller that just might be one of the best video games ever created, due to its immersive and creepy atmosphere, and creepy, almost psychedelic visuals. I was one of those players that got hooked immediately, having just previously fallen in love with the Super Star Wars games. It was like playing in that same universe, only the Metroid game was vaster, with lots of exciting puzzles and power ups to find and solve. 

Despite the game’s huge success and popularity, the game skipped the Nintendo’s next console altogether. It’s apparent that either Nintendo didn’t realize how big of a hit another Metroid game would be, or that they had already lost faith in the system at the time they were thinking of rolling it out. 

Enter the Nintendo GameCube. Although many consider the system the worst of its consoles due to a lack of great third party titles, those of us who signed on did it almost solely to play another Metroid title.  

It did lack the creepy psychedelic feel of the SNES classic, however, and many fans opted not to play it, waiting instead for the also excellent Game Boy Advance scrollers. I have to admit, Zero Mission is quite excellent because it tells us how Samus came to be, and is the only game in the series where you can play as Samus sans the varia suit for part of the game. 

Nintendo was hot to get a second Prime out to hungry fans, and did so with Prime 2: Echoes. Echoes started showing problems. Borrowing too heavily from Crystal Dynamics Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver series, the game felt less like Metroid than a loose collection of other classic games. The last stage of the game did feature an awe inspiring temple in the sky that was mind blowing and worth playing just to see it. However, the later bosses in the game were incredibly difficult. I didn’t have the stamina to play a boss fight for 2 hours, and I don’t think it’s even very fun to do so. At first I found the new techno score annoying, but have to admit that the music grew on me.  

Corruption is the best of the Prime series – period. The studio finally found a way to infuse elements of the previous two titles as well as add the creepy, nostalgic atmosphere of the SNES title, and brought back a more cinematic, almost orchestrated sounding MIDI score. While the story is serviceable at best, the game feels more like Metroid than any of the other shooters to date, and the new abilities, partially due to the Wii’s control mechanism add thick layers of interactivity that make the game truly exciting. Users now have the ability to move to targets using the wiimote like an arcade shooter, and throwing the nun chuck controller around like Indiana’s whip to inflict damage on enemies, pull shields away, or swing about large chasms. There are 6 large areas to explore in the game, including 5 planets and a few large galactic ships. Samus has to use her ship this time around as well, calling it in for air strikes, picking up and moving large objects, or assembling a nuclear bomb. There are even power ups and upgrades for the ship itself.

Even if you’ve never played a Metroid game before, pick this one up and waste some time with the title. If you own a Wii- this is not a title to miss.