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The next planet - quite literally infested with Space Pirates - shows exactly the architecture one would expect of the pirates: sharp, crude, unfriendly, red. Claustrophobic corridors link rooms that are nothing but utilitarian, in some places riddled with trip-wire laser alarms. Planetwide acid rain (which will kill Samus in short order until getting a protective suit upgrade) completes the ambience of this shithole of a planet.
Lore on the Pirate Homeworld tells a different side of the ongoing story, as well as some parts that were previously untold. It begins with their operation on Aether and frustration at the Galactic Federation for harvesting their precious phazon there. As if that wasn't bad enough, they soon discover that the stores of phazon they are shipping home in their flagship Colossus hide Dark Samus herself, who brainwashes some of the crew and destroys the rest.
The 'Disciples' as they call themselves have converted to complete zealotry in serving Dark Samus. She reveals to them her home planet, deep in the blackness of distant space: Phaaze, the living planet, the origin of all phazon. She displays her ships, the Leviathans. And the Disciples see an opportunity to assist her, by augmenting the wormhole-hopping phazon ships with pirate armor and weapons. They now have common goals: the pirates wish to annihilate their enemies, the Federation, and Dark Samus seeks nothing less than total galactic conquest.
Dark Samus bequeaths upon the pirates a seed, to turn their planet into phazon, just as Phaaze is. Pirates who would not cooperate were shot. Pirates who displayed anything less than unwavering loyalty to Dark Samus were shot. Some of them were shot, just because. They crafted their plan, to drop seeds onto planets in the heart of the Federation: Norion, their main naval platform; Bryya, their source of fuel gel; and Elysia, the listening post that spied on the stars and endangered the pirates' location. Of course, you know the rest of the story up to now.
Two of my cooler upgrades are an X-ray Visor, and a beam weapon that can shoot through certain materials (most often used in pirate armor plating). In particular, one variety of Space Pirate can cloak itself and is heavily armored, but when using the X-ray Visor, a weak point just under its helmet plating is apparent. BOOM, HEADSHOT! And they fall down instantly. It's unspeakably satisfying.
Not long after landing on the Pirate Homeworld, I received a distress communique from a GFed trooper taken hostage from the strike on Norion. He gave me his location and indicated that he knew how to get to the seed, and the whereabouts of vital suit upgrades. So I went and saved him - but it turned out to be Gandrayda in a shapeshifted disguise. This was an interesting boss fight, as she frequently transformed into other creatures that I had already fought, including some basic pirates, the first boss of the game, Rundas and Ghor from before; she even morphed into Varia Suit Samus for a good part of the fight. In her dying moments, she took Samus's current, exact form, at which Samus could only turn away in horror.
But, the mission must go on. The Disciples have protected the entrance to their seed very well, and so the Federation, while launching a full-scale assault on the surface of the planet, lends assistance in the form of munition troopers. The road to the seed is perilous, and at the end, an armored door requires several explosive charges to penetrate. There are 12 bombadiers to start; four of them must make it to the end alive. This section of the game requires that you keep the munitions experts alive, which typically just entails distracting the pirates and killing them as fast as possible, but is a real adrenaline rush.
Guess who's waiting to keep you from the seed's core? Ridley is back, and this time he is all hopped up on Phazon. He goes by Omega Ridley now. Not a particularly tough fight (the other two seed guardians seemed much more difficult), but Ridley is just fun to beat up on. Upon defeat, he pretty much exploded, shooting massive waves of phazon right into Samus. Now she's sitting at 75% phazon corruption, and her face in the visor reflection does not look good at all, a blue tinge everywhere and her left eye gaining an altogether unhealthy glow.
Next thing I know, the Feds are telling me that the surveillance equipment at Skytown has calculated the origin of the Leviathans, e.g. the location of Phaaze, and we're ready to hijack a Leviathan in orbit around the Pirate Homeworld - Phaaze is too far for "conventional space travel," and Leviathans are the only things capable of traversing wormholes. Absolution is just about at hand.
I also looked a little more at the Extras today. I copied my save file onto an SD card, smuggled it onto my housemate's Wii, and used it to embezzle Friend Vouchers - sending them to myself, and piling up Green credits. Then I made a backup of my save, so I could buy some Extras, take a look, then revert and check out some more. The art galleries are fairly unimpressive, with only a handful of neat images; but the Bonus stuff is really awesome. One unlockable is a Screen-Shot tool, that you can use at any time in-game, and it saves a screenshot to the Wii message board (ready to Wii-mail to your friends!). And the dioramas are fully 3d-rendered scenes that may not have actually happened in the game, but look damn cool.