tommy_lop's Full Review: Metroid Prime 2: Echos for GameCube
Well I picked up Metorid Prime 2 two years ago, and after playing about an hour shelved it because the dark aether part just bored me to tears, I was impressed by the demo that Nintendo had send me but after playing a large section of it I was bored. Well with MP3 coming out I decided I better play through 2, this time actually giving it a try. Unfortunately once again I am finding myself frustrated and bored enough of this game to shelve it without completing it. It’s amazing how a lot of little flaws can come together and wreck what ought to be an amazing game.
Story.
Aether used to be a peaceful place were a race of bug aliens called the Lumnoth lived, until a meteor smashed into there planet and created a dark version of it. An evil race called the Ing sprang up from this dark world and caused chaos. The Lumnoth went to war with the Ing hoping to use an energy gathering device to collect energy from Dark Aether and return it to it’s rightful place in light Aether but the plan backfired and the ing got control of the device. Now pretty much all but one temple in Light Aether has had it’s energy stole and once that temple falls the last of light Aether will be drained and vanished. Luckily for them a federation frigate has crashed landed on the planet and after several days of no contact the federation has send bounty hunger Samus Aron to investigate. After finding all the federation soldiers dead Samus finds the energy controller and is ask by the Lumoth to finish there war for them.
The game is a lot like the original Metroid Prime, while a few more cinematic scenes with more story telling do appear it’s pretty much up to you to uncover the mystery and the story by downloading logs and lore from the space pirates, federation troopers, and Lumenoth who have fallen to the ing. It’s a pretty good way of building in a pretty thick story in a game like Metorid where you don’t really want to be bothered by long story scenes.
Graphics.
Despite being 3 years old Metorid Prime 2 is still a beautiful game, while the first few areas are a bit boring compared to the original the game keeps getting more intense. One of the last areas I explored in the game was a futuristic fortress filled with advance weaponry. The other areas included a desert, a huge temple, and a bog. The level of detail to character and character animations are even greater then Metorid Prime, in the end MP2 has a lot of eye candy in it and never fails to be interesting.
There is also dark Aether to and while light and dark worlds have been done in adventure games like Metroid in Castlevania Harmony of Dissonce, Metroid does one up on the look of dark aether because even though it’s a clone of the place you have all ready explored it feels a lot more alien.
Sound.
The music like in most Metroid game is eerie both the new stuff they use in MP2 and some of the old stuff from the classic Super Metorid is all used wonderfully hear. The music gives you the feeling of desolation while the sound effects especially the screams of Metroids and Space Pirates will always make you jump when you hear them.
Gameplay.
Ok Sound and Graphics are good but what about the game play. Well here is were the mix bag with a gaint hole in the bottom comes into play. Ok first the good stuff, everything you liked about Metroid Prime is here. The controls are the same and you still will encounter 2d side scrolling morph ball puzzles. Like in Metroid Prime you will have a tutorial stage but when Samus meets her clone (see the end of Metroid Prime for this one) she will loose most of her items and will have to reclaim them. All the non linear exploration is here including the same map and hints featured in Prime.
There are also a few cool new weapons for Samus to use including one of my personal favorites is the ability to shoot 5 missiles at multiple target at one time. Taking a cue from the wind waker Samus can learn the ability to lock on to multiple targets by holding down the Y and charging your missiles. She can also shoot an enemy 5 times with missiles a cool power up. Other power ups include the light and dark beams, light world enemies are weak against the dark beam, and dark world enemies are weak against the light beam. Unfortunately a very un Metroid use of ammo is used here and to collect more ammo you have to kill an enemy using the opposite beam.
So where does the game fall apart well a lot of things that sort of annoyed me about Prime come with a vengeance, were they had been minor nothing that will kill the fun in MP in Echoes they return to be major problems. In the original Prime there was only one area that got to be to long without a save space and that was the Phazon Mines in which the first time though would take you a good half an hour between save spaces. Expect that to be even longer in MP2 Echoes. Worse is that there will be areas were after opening the door or getting a useful ability you will find your way locked and the only way to get to a save post is to defeat a boss. If the boss beats you it’s back to your last save to trudge through the area again and pick up the ability and try again. This gets insanely tedious especially with all the scanning to unlock bonus items this game makes you to.
But that isn’t the worst part, the worst part is Dark Aether itself. Yes Dark Aether the games major selling point and main gimmick. What’s wrong with it surely Metorid can do a Link to the Past with a parallel dark world. Yes games like Metroid can do that, in fact it’s not the first game of it’s type to do that, the all ready mention Castlevania Harmony of Dissonce did that and did it well. That’s not the problem despite a well crafted dark world Retro and Nintendo decided to do something absolutely retarded and it kills a lot of fun out of that world.
See in Dark Aether the environment is toxic to Samus and her space suit so she will have to spend most of her time in Dark Aether running from light beacon to light beacon slowly recharge her suit before going off and explore and do battle with the ing. This becomes tedious and I would wager a good 2 hours of the 18 hours I have played so far were in these light spheres just charging Samus suit so I would make sure I wouldn’t get killed and send back to the save spot I found 45 minutes ago. It just brings what would have been a cool world to explore to a complete halt, I was almost in tears every time I saw a dark portal I knew I had to go into. Dark Aether should have been something to excite me not give me long bouts of depression. Come on Nintendo think if I wanted to play a game were I just sit around and wait for several hours doing nothing I would play my copy of Mega Man network transmission.
You can also add in the back tracking also sucks because of some of the huge expansion of the world back tracking can be really annoying, has unlike Prime which had well thought out short cut, Prime 2 Echoes seems to be missing a few.
Bonus.
The amount of items you scan can be used to unlock art galleries with some cool stuff in them. There is also the first Metroid with a multiplayer, and how good is it. Well with the Wii out there is a funner game that can be played then this, it’s called have you and your friends hit each other in the head hard with the wii mote and see which one gets a concussion first. In other words it’s crap and seems to have been put in there because Nintendo was nervous about releasing this the same time has Halo 2.
What about MP3 Corruption.
I haven’t played enough of MP3 to really give a good judgment but it does look like Nintendo learn there lesson with MP2 and a lot of annoyances are gone. Taking a cue from Castlevania Portrait of Ruin rather then one large confusing world they give you the option of several smaller worlds to run around and your ship can be used to fly back from place to place. Also if you die in a hard boss fight you won’t be send back to the last save area rather you will start in the same room has the boss fight. While this does dumb down the Metroid experience so far I’ll take them over the problems Echos had.
Final Recommendation.
I liked Metroid Prime, and so far I have enjoyed MP3 (with the exception that it’s a right handed game and I am a very left handed person) however Nintendo and Retro just screwed up with Echoes. Between long recharge times in the dark world, having to actually hunt out ammo, and just plain annoying back tracking. MP 2 Echoes is a game that is just plain better skipped.
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