What’s the game about: The conclusion to the Metroid Prime trilogy sees Samus battling her evil alter ego once more, along with rogue warriors, space pirates and the malfunctioning robot brains that rule the galaxy. Oh, and probably some metroids, too, somewhere along the line.

What’s new for E3: Pure, uninterrupted gameplay. We were able to go hands-on with two portions of the game, which reveal some big surprises. We already knew about the revamped control scheme; what we weren’t prepared for were some of the other changes — like the fact that this is one chatty game. The first 20 minutes of Corruption begins quite unlike any other Metroid game ever, with Samus in the cockpit of her spaceship. She enters a planetary orbit crowded with starships and is asked to input a security code to land on the fleet flagship. (Players perform all of these in-ship actions.) Once she lands, she treks through the large starship to meet up with a military officer who has summoned Samus as part of a team of bounty hunters whose mission is to undo the corruption that has infected the organic supercomputers that help guide the interplanetary government.

The meeting is interrupted by a space pirate attack and Samus is forced to battle her way back to the docking bay where her ship is located as pirates board the flagship and begin to attack. Her route is frequently beset by explosions — at one point a damaged starcraft smashes into a corridor shortly ahead of her, and a couple of crewmen are blown into space before a massive bulkhead closes to seal the vacuum-exposed area… forcing Samus to find a less direct route in the process.

It feels a great deal like the Pillar of Autumn stage in the original Halo, except even more dramatic and intense. The opening area serves as a tutorial of sorts as players become accustomed to the game’s controls, but it’s also no mere cakewalk — there are dangerous enemies present. In short, Retro is announcing its intentions with the game right up front: More action, more intensity.

The amped-up challenge is made somewhat possible by the new control scheme, which makes Corruption feel more like a standard first-person shooter than previous Primes. The nunchuk analog stick moves Samus about in the now-standard console control scheme (forward/back/strafe) while the Wii remote causes her to turn by pushing the targeting reticule to the edges of the screen. Holding down Z locks on to foes; moving while locked on causes Samus to circle-strafe. Lock-on also causes missiles (fired with the down button on the Wii remote) to home in on foes.

The second section of the game we played through brought us a surprise. Set in Skytown, a floating city on planet Elysia, this area marks a change for the Metroid series in that it’s not physically connected to the area immediately preceding it. A hallmark of the franchise has been its immense, labyrinthine world connected by tunnels and passages, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The layout of Skytown also feels incredibly straightforward compared to the Metroid norm, a series floating islands connected by rails. There’s a charming retro vibe to this area, with Samus beset by a series of simple droids commanded by a machine called Steamlord; this overlord remains hidden except when one of its minions has been downed in combat, at which point it reappears only long enough to repair the broken droid.

In addition to Samus’ usual combat and scan visors, we also caught a glimpse of a third visor which gives the appearance of night vision, although Nintendo’s rep wasn’t able to tell us exactly what its purpose was. More obvious was the usefulness of the grappling beam, which comes as standard equipment from the beginning of the game; not only does it allow Samus to swing to new areas, it can also attach to various objects and wrench them loose (with a real-world yank of the nunchuk attachment).

What we like: The faster, more fluid control scheme really changes the feel of Metroid Prime, but not for the worse. One of our biggest complaints about the past two games was that they tended to drag a bit toward the end, and that was partly due to Samus’ sluggish movement.

The new interface takes some getting used to — but what doesn’t? We needed a little time to get a handle on mouse-and-keyboard controls the first time we played a modern PC shooter; we needed a little time to learn to deal with dual-analog controls the first time we played Halo. But after thirty minutes, we were (mostly) controlling Samus as naturally as any other FPS hero.

Corruption’s visuals look a whole lot better than they did last year; clearly Retro has spent some time polishing up the game’s graphics.

Oh, and for those keeping tally of Metroid/Alien comparisons, you’ll be happy to know that Corruption begins with a computer error reading for someone’s cryogenic sleep. (And they totally killed Newt, those bastards!)

What we dislike: We’re definitely not sold on Corruption’s new approach to level design. Sure, it could be good, but a large part of what makes Metroid Metroid is the ability to backtrack, re-explore, find alternate paths and break sequence. Corruption really does feel like Halo in a lot of ways — not just the intro section, but even Skytown. Not in the good way, but rather in the “linear stage designs and frequent repetition of level elements” way. Did you hate Halo’s Library? Well, pilgrim, you may have to grit your teeth a little when you play through Skytown.

Now granted, the first two Metroid Prime games did have their problems, but that mostly centered around the fact that players were forced to retrace their steps through the entire game in mindless fetch quests. Streamlining the game could work, but many Metroid fans may balk at the radical change that Corruption seems to represent.

And the controls, while fluid and fast, are also a little cumbersome in places. Using the Wii remote’s + and - and 1 and 2 buttons still doesn’t feel natural, and the - button in particular is used excessively. Appealing though this new faster take on Metroid may be, the previous games‘ slower pace did make possible their complex control schemes. We’re not convinced that speed and intricacy necessarily make good bedfellows.

Finally, Nintendo didn’t actually let us see any of the “corruption” element — Samus can go into “hyper mode” to take down enemies, but risks permanently messing herself up if she’s hyper for too long — for which the game is named. Bad Nintendo! No cookie.

Originally from 1UP