Developer: Retro Studios | Publisher: Nintendo | Released: 26th October 2007 | Price paid: £27.55 | Bought at: Tgrav.com

The last of a trilogy always creates a horrible feeling. Not just because you know that, according to the Rule of the Trilogy, it'll be better than the second one, but not quite as good as the first one, but because you expect a huge send off, and it's not always delivered. That, and you know that even if it's amazing there won't be any more sequels. Metroid Prime 3 is definitely a good third though, and one which ends the mini-series better than I'd actually expected.

First of all, the controls. You simply can't talk about a Wii game without mentioning the controls, and the simple fact about MP3 is that (surprisingly) they are very good. I had been a bit sceptical beforehand, thinking the comments about its amazing controls were just Gamespot and IGN hype-mongering, or the product of a little under-the-table donating, but they are incredibly simple to use, easy to get used and... Dare I say it... Better than Metroid Prime's original controls! I don't think I'd go as far as saying it's better than dual analogue yet, but it certainly is an improvement over MP's now rather dated control scheme. There are three levels of sensitivity, the highest making your view slide around all over the place and the lowest presumably making it impossible to turn around, I never bothered trying it. The default setting seems to be the best to me and it feels about right when you're using it, but I did occasionally wish there was something slightly more sensitive, maybe something in between Normal and 'Expert', or just a sensitivity slider rather than 3 pre-set options... Either way, like I said, it works far better than expected and it's incredibly easy to get used to.

Graphically speaking it's nothing majorly exciting, being a Wii game, but it's definitely a big improvement over the previous Gamecube games, and it's almost definitely the best looking Wii game so far (Until Friday when Mario Galaxy comes out). The game seems to have quite a glowy-blurry-ish style to it, certainly not helped at all by the vast amounts of Bloom lighting on everything (Though it's still not anywhere near as bad as Halo 3). It seems a bit strange at first, but it's certainly nice to look at and it does give everything a really nice alien feel about it. The style of the areas has also moved back towards the first Metroid Prime's thankfully, with lots of ancient looking ruins and organic areas instead of metal everything and an enormous sea of purple as seen in Metroid Prime 2. The only slightly annoying thing is that the beginning of the game seems to specifically deceive you about the variety of the rest of the game. The first planet (Well first real planet, since the first is Federation infested and feels more like a tutorial level) has several areas, each with a different theme, though still maintaining the overall style of the planet in each one. This makes you think that each other planet will be the same sort of thing, and I got pretty excited wondering what each planet would have in store, but in reality all the others have one or two areas that look the same. A bit disappointing really, and it sort of felt like they were going to flesh out the other planets a bit more but just... Didn't bother in the end...

The planets themselves... It's hard to decide whether they're better or worse than having one very large planet. On the plus side it makes the areas feel less confined. The game feels much bigger, despite probably being much smaller in reality (I completed it in 14 and a half hours on my first go, with almost 100% of the items, compared to about 20 hours for the first Prime) and technically it means you're backtracking through the same areas less than you would be if there was only one planet. The main downside is that when you DO backtrack, you're ALWAYS backtracking to your ship to fly to another planet, or another area of the same planet. There was a particularly annoying part where you have to head back to your ship, fly to another planet (Going through an incredibly drawn-out Wii-mote-using in-ship interface to do so) get one upgrade and then go all the back. The whole thing probably would have felt much better if they'd streamlined the process so that it didn't take as long to get to where you're going even after you've got to your ship, but as it is it never breaks up the game too much and like I said I still can't decide whether it's better or worse. The way the areas linked up in the original Metroid Prime felt cool, and made it feel more like one big planet, but I suppose I should really stop comparing them. Or not.


The combat is another thing that I'm undecided on. Despite concerns of the new controls making it far too much of a 'shooter', MP3 moved back towards the first Metroid Prime by making the majority of the enemies quick and easy to kill, and relatively easy to ignore if you just want to quickly run through a room to get to the next area. That was definitely a good thing, as one of the main problems with Metroid Prime 2 was overpowered insects that required precious ammo to kill with anything resembling speed, but at times the combat does feel overly simplified. The beams are now all stacked on top of each other, meaning that there are no longer enemies with weaknesses to specific beams (Or if there are you have no choice but to use the one they're weak against) and obviously no resistance to specific beams. Personally I found the choice between weapons one of the best things about Metroid Prime, as it added a slight element of thought to the shooting, whereas now many gunfights just end up being a case of whether or not you can bash A fast enough to make your thumb bleed. The charge shots also seem to be incredibly underpowered, so there isn't really any choice about whether to go for a few charged shots, or to just bash fire, since bashing A always brings you out on top. The missiles are possibly the worst downgrade of all though. They feel insanely slow both to fire and to actually reach their target, and the homing seems to have been toned down hugely so that a lot of the time they simply miss. Even against the few 'beam resistant' Space Pirates I usually found myself just mashing A because that STILL ended up being faster and easier. So basically, less shooting, which is good, but the shooting is worse, which is bad...

I could probably go on for hours comparing this game to the previous Primes, going on about how much better it is than MP2 and going on about how it's not quite as good as MP, but in the end the verdict will still be the same. It's a damn good game that comes as close as we could have really hoped to capturing the magic of the first time you played Metroid Prime, and probably the first really essential game for the Wii. At times it may feel like they spent a bit too much time on some things (Why did we need 12 hundred different grapple upgrades, and several enemies that require grappling to kill?) and not enough on others (DAMN Retro for teasing me with the RIDICULOUSLY small snowy ice area!) but no game is perfect. Not even the first Metroid Prime. So how on Earth could this one be?