Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

[bamthedoc]

Those of us lucky to have a Wii and high speed Internet woke up this morning to find the blue LED drive flashing. This was a friendly letter from Nintendo to tell us that a free channel has just become available, and what a channel it is! Those of us who have been keeping up with the series have probably already seen several screen shots, but the Wii makes accessing high fidelity preview videos just that much easier. We don't have to have a paid subscription to some gaming news site, like GameSpot or IGN.

In the first release, we have two videos and two wallpapers available for viewing. The point of having wallpapers available for viewing remains to be seen. It's the movies, however, that should immediately catch your attention. They are actual in game footage files! These aren't externally captured like the garbage you see on gaming news sites. These are high-fidelity video captures of what's going on in game.

Personally. I was leaning off my seat watching this footage. The first video impressed me for the many different in game screens you get to see, even delving into the introduction to the game and the voice acting. Now. I've heard some pretty ho-hum things said about this. "Welcome to the 20th century Nintendo." being one of them. I won't even begin to say how many franchises have destroyed their characters' images by suddenly introducing voices to these traditionally unvoiced icons. *cough*Sonic*cough* However. Samus Aran seems to be the one character in this game with no voice, and that may or may not be a bad thing. What little was shown in the introductory clip showed above average voicing. You could feel the emotion the characters were talking with, and that is something we should be very much enjoying.

Why go on about this? In my personal experience, there have been no better FPS created. The Metroid Prime franchise, in my opinion, rivals or beats such greats as Golden Eye 64 and Perfect Dark. I know Traditionalists will argue that Metroid Prime is a platformer, but that's just because it's deeper and more engaging than any FPS experience brought before.

This game is on my Top Three list for the year, right along with Super Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl. Beside them, I am also anticipating Bioshock, Fall Out 3, Starcraft II, Persona 3, and a few others that escape my mind. Just to silence some guesses, Assassin's Creed and Heavenly Sword not only did not make my list but did not do a thing to impress me, and don't get me started on how ho-hum Halo 3 is.

All I have left to say is a question. Is it really possible to wait 14 days, two whole weeks, of anticipation and excitement? It would appear Retro Studios has pushed out a trilogy which is breathtaking in visuals, scope, and story.