E3: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Quick Impressions

After waiting for about 1-2 hours to get into the Nintendo Booth and about 1-2 hours just to play Metroid Prime 3, I’m here to give you the 411.

First thing, you use the nunchaku and Wiimote to control Samus on her new mission. The demo had players going through the over world and under world of a planet (I think it’s Zebes, for reasons that will be obvious later). Player use the ‘mote to point and shoot, while the D-Pad on the ‘mote is used to access different weapons and the scan visor. The nunchaku analog stick is used to move Samus, and the Z and C buttons on it are used to scan objects and activate ball mode. Also, a new feature in the game (activated by using a quick jerk of the nunchaku controller) is Samus’s grappling beam, which she uses to break barriers and disarm enemies. Players of the demo went through a couple areas, were assisted by an ice-gliding hunter and eventually treated to a timed boss battle against… Ridley. As one might expect, many joygasms were had.

The game looks very clean and smooth, but truth be told, the graphics didn’t floor me at first (even though Nintendo says that visuals aren’t what’s important, Zelda and Mario Galaxy say otherwise). I overheard many people exclaiming that it looks like Halo, and that’s a fair deduction. The colors seem a bit darker this time around, and the enemies attack you in swarm while covering themselves as well, so it would seem that the AI is very Halo-esque. What floored me was the boss battle against Ridley. During said battle, players found themselves falling towards the core of the planet with a distance meter telling them how far they were from the creamy center of death. How cool is a battle with Ridley while falling through the air towards a molten core? Exactly as cool as it sounds.

As for controls, they were innovative, but they weren’t perfect. Before all the Nintendo fanboys faint, let me just say that were only using one sensor that was mounted to the TV, so I didn’t get a chance to calibrate it specifically to my (diminutive) height. Also, since the demo was on easy mode, the attendants let me know that the game needed bigger than normal motions to register, but that that option can be tweaked. It took a little while to get use to the 2-controller controls, but I eventually found it to be very comfortable by the time I got off the machine. There were two points were the controls went crazy, but that was because I was too close to the TV (says the attendant). Also, the grappling beam didn’t always register (1/6 of the time nothing happened), but it could’ve just been the sheer amount of Wiis in the room that caused these problems. With a little tweaking of controls and a less crowded area, I felt that I would have been right at home with MP3, but alas, I will have to wait until it’s launched to see if that’s true.

After waiting for about 1-2 hours to get into the Nintendo Booth and about 1-2 hours just to play Metroid Prime 3, I’m here to give you the 411.

First thing, you use the nunchaku and Wiimote to control Samus on her new mission. The demo had players going through the over world and under world of a planet (I think it’s Zebes, for reasons that will be obvious later). Player use the ‘mote to point and shoot, while the D-Pad on the ‘mote is used to access different weapons and the scan visor. The nunchaku analog stick is used to move Samus, and the Z and C buttons on it are used to scan objects and activate ball mode. Also, a new feature in the game (activated by using a quick jerk of the nunchaku controller) is Samus’s grappling beam, which she uses to break barriers and disarm enemies. Players of the demo went through a couple areas, were assisted by an ice-gliding hunter and eventually treated to a timed boss battle against… Ridley. As one might expect, many joygasms were had.

The game looks very clean and smooth, but truth be told, the graphics didn’t floor me at first (even though Nintendo says that visuals aren’t what’s important, Zelda and Mario Galaxy say otherwise). I overheard many people exclaiming that it looks like Halo, and that’s a fair deduction. The colors seem a bit darker this time around, and the enemies attack you in swarm while covering themselves as well, so it would seem that the AI is very Halo-esque. What floored me was the boss battle against Ridley. During said battle, players found themselves falling towards the core of the planet with a distance meter telling them how far they were from the creamy center of death. How cool is a battle with Ridley while falling through the air towards a molten core? Exactly as cool as it sounds.

As for controls, they were innovative, but they weren’t perfect. Before all the Nintendo fanboys faint, let me just say that were only using one sensor that was mounted to the TV, so I didn’t get a chance to calibrate it specifically to my (diminutive) height. Also, since the demo was on easy mode, the attendants let me know that the game needed bigger than normal motions to register, but that that option can be tweaked. It took a little while to get use to the 2-controller controls, but I eventually found it to be very comfortable by the time I got off the machine. There were two points were the controls went crazy, but that was because I was too close to the TV (says the attendant). Also, the grappling beam didn’t always register (1/6 of the time nothing happened), but it could’ve just been the sheer amount of Wiis in the room that caused these problems. With a little tweaking of controls and a less crowded area, I felt that I would have been right at home with MP3, but alas, I will have to wait until it’s launched to see if that’s true.