Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

When Space Pirates attack a Federation ship and infect the part-machine part-organic supercomputer network with a virus, Samus is tasked to travel to each planet that houses a supercomputer and purge the infection.

During her mission, she and all her fellow bounty hunters get corrupted by a powerful substance called Phazon that she learns to keep under control. The other bounty hunters aren’t that lucky, and she’s tasked with killing all of them too.

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Through its campaign the game takes Samus to different planets and locales, each designed in a way that’ll leave your jaw hanging. Whether it’s a mysterious violet cloud hovering overhead, or a thousand organic-looking spiked spheres lining the walls of a labyrinth, the game actually manages to impress you even with the limited graphical power of the Wii.

You’ll see layers upon layer of gorgeous nebulas and planets in the space sequences, and when on a planet you’ll be surrounded by an environment that’s both interactive and aesthetically pleasing. even though the game’s visuals pale in front of its next-gen competitors, the way Retro Studios has juiced the Wii’s hardware without a single framerate hiccup is truly commendable.

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Just like the environments and backdrops, the gameplay has enough elements to make you feel like you’re playing many different games at once, all of which have been strung together brilliantly. For instance, Samus’ suit allows her to morph into a ball that can roll through tight corridors and narrow crevices. You’ll spend a good portion of your game solving some intelligently designed puzzles using this feature.

At other times you’ll have to use context-sensitive action to unlock a door or rip a shield off an enemy. One thing that impressed me is the way all these elements work together to form a seemingly complex (but essentially simple at its core) whole.