Metroid Prime 3: Stupid Story

Chief Samus?

The weird thing when you look at the similarity between Metroid Prime 3 and Halo 3's conclusion is that Metroid Prime 3 came out first (they were August and September respectively in the US). So is that Halo's story is scarily like Metroid's, or is that both of their stories are like every other military-based trilogy ever?

Sadly, Corruption is not the Last Crusade desperately needed after the trilogies overly dark Echoes*. It doesn't follow any of the rules of trilogies. It doesn't hark back to the spirit of the original or cleverly bring the story full circle at all, rather it brings a lot of extra plot and character elements that serve to almost ruin the entire Metroid Saga, whether it be Prime or not.

Back when there was Metroid, Super Metroid, Prime, and even Fusion I was excited about the group of scientists that were part of the Galactic Federation**. I'll be honest, what excited me the most was there resemblance to Weyland-Yutani (the nefarious corporate entity from the Alien universe), illustrated best by their dangerous experiments with Metroids and Metroid DNA and the disregard they had for any consequences. Fusion for the first time included Space Marines and through them the game told us a bit about Samus' military influenced past. However somewhere between Metroid Prime 1 and 2 the Galactic Federation and these Space Marines became one and the same, and because just about everything about Corruption is decidedly western, these Galactic Fed were then portrayed as gruff American grunts whose only solution was invasion.

A Storied Story

At the outset Metroid Prime's Phazon saga seemed exciting. Prime started by telling us what the Space Pirates were first really after and then unveiled more of the secrets of the Chozo and Samus's strange armour. By the end of Prime we were beginning to know the true nature of Phazon. At the beginning of Echoes we learnt that Phazon had spread itself to other planets, and then throughout the game we were woven into a nice self contained plot of war between the Luminoth and the Ing (which bought in the Chozo for good measure). However somewhere along the way we were introduced to Dark Samus and this is where the problems began. Dark Samus was never really fleshed out in any way; she was just depicted as an anti-samus. It was hard to understand why or where she fit in. In 3 we now learn Dark Samus was created by Phazon, or rather the planet Phaaze, but why would a bio-form intent on corrupting the entire universe create a doppelganger of a lowly Bounty Hunter? Granted she is a legendary bounty hunter but as 3 shows, Samus is hardly the biggest of the Bounty Hunters you meet in the saga and she does have known weaknesses. Why not just create a huge living monster out of Phazon who doesn't have the same inherent weaknesses as your adversary?

Although Dark Samus did bring about one of the most successful parts of the story: the in-fighting within the Space Pirates caused by the god-like worship of Dark Samus***. Prior to this the Space Pirates were your classic 1 dimensional villains. No one really knew why they were after Metroids or even for that matter what Metroids actually did. The biggest fault with Corruption's narrative is that I imagine it takes great skill to create back-story for a story that didn't really exist in the first place. Back then story in games was nowhere near where it is now: games were looked on more as experiences rather than interactive adventures. The original Metroid's biggest hooks were saving your game, and walking left.

One thing Corruption does well is the Elysian area. It introduces the Chozo into the story and looks and plays exactly like a Metroid game should. If the whole game was like that I'd be happy. As it was I had to put up with a lackluster musical score, two almost identical escort missions involving endless space pirates, and a rush of suit upgrades at the beginning of the game followed by an almost complete lack of them at the tail-end of the game. Playing Corruption brings up a lot of questions, like: 

What are ship missile expansions for?
You only ever use them in I think two scripted set pieces and you never need any more than what you're first allotted. 

Why bother giving me loads of energy tanks if they're not even used in the final section of the game? 
Going into Phazon Hyper Mode makes them largely pointless.

And why do each of the planets have to be so goddamn small? 
The total area of the game probably doesn't even add up to that of Prime 1.

Metroid Prime: Corruption is a really excellent first person shooter, with some of the best controls I've ever come across for the genre. It just also happens to be one of the worst Metroid games ever made.

Danny

* It was so dark it had its own dark world.
** The Galactic Federation were setup as a kind of interplanetary UN.
*** This wasn't the only example of God-like worship in this game: The Elysian's worshipped the Chozo, who were labelled as The Creators. On account of discovering their planet and creating their civilisation.