[GameCube] Metroid Prime 2 - Echoes

Good God, took me long enough, didn't it?

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Developer: Retro Studios
Platform: Gamecube
Genre: Adventure

So, this game was released about three months ago. By all rights, I should have beaten it a while back, but my schedule has been screwy and I had a lot of other games to get around to in the meantime. However, I have now finally completed it, and it was a ride absolutely worth taking. For those of you looking to get your Metroid fix, you couldn't have hoped for a better sequel.


Story

Sometime shortly after defeating the Space Pirates and escaping Tallon IV in the original Metroid Prime, Samus Aran is contacted by the Galactic Federation and is offered a support contract for a team of troops sent to the nearby planet Aether. It seems, about one week prior, a squad of Galactic Federation Marines spotted a Space Pirate vessel entering Aether's atmosphere, and they engaged pursuit down to the planet's surface. Upon landing, they demolished the Space Pirate platoon, but their ship was badly damaged in the process and they needed to set up camp in order to repair the vessel. After a few days, radio contact with the team ceased and nothing has been heard from them since.

Samus is asked to head to Aether and lend support to the GFMC troops. If the team is beyond help (meaning dead), then the Space Pirate threat is to be investigated by Samus on Aether until a support team arrives to wipe them out.

Upon approaching the planet, Aran sees that the entire world appears visually unstable. The entire globe seems to phase in and out of existence, shifting between two polar "light and dark" extremes. Entering the planet's atmosphere proves to be much harder than expected. Violent electrical storms rip through the sky, causing interferece with her ship, forcing her to make a rocky emergency landing. Upon exiting her ship and further exploring the planet, she locates the Galactic Federation team, all slaughtered by an unknown assailant. Further exploring the region, Samus encounters a wise race of creatures native to Aether, named the Luminoth. Asking for assistance from these pacifistic creaures, the bounty hunter is informed of several things: 1) Their planet has been invaded by the Space Pirate scum that Samus has been fighting since her first mission. They have apparently come in search of Phazon to mine, which was their objective on Tallon IV. 2) While the Space Pirates are certainly a threat, they are not the ones responsible for the slaying of the Galactic Federation Team that Samus came in search of. Another native race of Aether, a violent, dark breed of creature named the Ing are responsible, and they are at fault for far more wrongdoing than simple murder.

Samus learns that Aether itself is being ripped apart by the Ing. They are the physical, intellectual and spiritual opposite to the Luminoth, so much to the point where their very presence has caused a disturbance in the fabric of reality itself. The odd phase-distortion that Samus had seen when approaching the planet is a result of two wholly separate versions of Aether itself, each fighting for dominance. These two separate worlds, named Light Aether and Dark Aether, for the sake of convenience, are constantly vying for superiority over the other, and as such they are causing the entire planet to break down. While the Luminoth are passive, kind creatures, intent only on living peacefully, the Ing desire nothing less than to slaughter and devour every last thing in existence. In desperation, the Luminoth beg of Samus to aid them in defeating their foes, for if they are not stopped here, they will surely spread throughout the remainder of the galaxy, destroying everything they encounter. Alone, as usual, Samus steels herself for battle against impossible odds.

However, if the odds didn't seem stacked against our heroine quite enough beforehand, Samus has one other nasty opponent to deal with during her travels. Dark Samus. In the last moments of her previous mission, Samus lost her powerful Phazon Suit to Metroid Prime during their final battle. As the inner catacombs of the Phazon Crater collapsed around her, she escaped, leaving the Phazon Suit and her apparently dead opponent behind. However, as she escaped the planet's atmosphere on her ship, her discarded armor suddenly sprang to life, apparently now possessed by the undying will of Metroid Prime itself. Since Samus' escape, Dark Samus has pursued her across the galaxy to Aether with the sole intention of humiliating and destroying the bounty hunter. Before Samus can rightfully close this mission, she will have to face her dark counterpart and lay the doppleganger to rest.

So, right off the bat we can see this is a very different situation than past Metroid games. In previous entires, Samus almost never had contact with non-hostile, intelligent life-forms, and NPC characters were simply out of the question. In Echoes, the bounty hunter is in regular contact with the Lumninoth, and as such, her cast of allies is much greater than it has been in previous games.

On top of that, the plot is vastly different from anything Samus has had to deal with in the past. The Space Pirates really only provide a reason for Samus to be on Aether in the first place, and in the end, they along with their Metroid captives play a very minor antagonistic role. The Ing Horde is the main source of opposition in this entry, and they are not an enemy to be taken lightly.

The overall development of the plot in this game is handled in similar fashion to that of Metroid Prime. In Echoes, there are a substantially greater number of cutscenes than there were in the previous game. The first really striking cinematic you'll see is the video footage file of the GFMC squad being torn apart by the Ing Horde. After that, there are a number of cinema sequences that certainly expose some of the larger plot elements, however the overall story of the game is told through your Scan Visor, as you hunt for Luminoth Lore entires, Space Pirate logs and other vital scans necessary to devloping the plot. As in the first game, this is completely optional, and if you don't particularly care about Aether's backstory, you don't need to hunt these scans down. However, they provide a ton of interesting information and add an incredible number of layers onto an already atmospheric situation.

All in all, the plot is great. It's a pretty unconventional setup for a Metroid game, and the history surrounding the war and it's battling races is just too cool to explain with any sort of brevity.


Gameplay

Echoes adopts an "evolution, not revolution" approach to the functionality of the game, meaning that it handles basically the same as the first game, only with a number of improvements and additions.

The most fundamental of the alterations made to the gameplay is the Light/Dark theme that permeates the entire mission. Throughout the span of Samus' stint on Aether, she will be constantly moving between the Light and Dark versions of the world in order to progress. In order to travel between dimensions, she must find portals loacted at numerous specific places across the globe. These portals are permanent, and 90% of them open both ways.

The differences between Light and Dark Aether are striking. Light Aether is very much a ruins. You can see that it was once a beautiful, flourishing planet, filled with magnificent structures and brimming with peaceful life. However, since the arrival of the Ing, the war has torn the world apart. The once-beautiful structures of the Luminoth have been eviscerated, and the world is now filled with hostile life-forms and natural dangers. It is certainly a place of light, but it is a ruined one, and it feels nearly dead.

Dark Aether, on the other hand, is just seething with vile life. The place is so corrupt, so dark and so negative that the air itself takes on an acidic quality, burning Samus' armor every second she stands in it's atmopshere unprotected. In order to combat this, Samus has a few things at her disposal. In the first portion of the game, she must rely on Luminoth Light Crystals and Light Beacons left behind by invaders during their last skirmishes against the Ing. These pieces of technology create "air bubbles" that protect her from Dark Aether's corrosive effects. In fact, the light emitted by these artifacts is so pure, so powerful that it will gradually heal Samus' shields just from standing in it. Once Samus makes it about a third of the way through her mission, she is granted a new set of armor: the Dark Suit. This new suit cuts the corrosive effects of Dark Aether's atmosphere drastically, making it much easier to traverse the gloomy wilds. The Dark Suit does not completely nullify the damaging effects, but it makes the damage barely noticeable, as her shield energy depletes ever so slowly.

Beyond that major gameplay component, Echoes' fundamentals are basically the same as those in Metroid Prime. The game still takes place primarily in 1st-person, from behind Samus' visor. You still have an arm-cannon, lock-on feature, four beam types, four visor types, Morph Ball mode and all of the other abilities and upgrades from the previous adventure.

However, a lot of new things have been added. Near the start of the game, Samus has a healthy selection of her weaponry from the previous game still at her disposal. However, very early on, during her first encounter with the Ing, she is swarmed by the dark monsters and nearly all of her suit's abilities are stolen, forcing her to brave the first part of the game armed only with her Power Beam, Beam Charger, Scan Visor and basic Morph Ball, without bombs. Throughout the course of the game, she must re-locate all of her lost equipment and earn a ton of new stuff in the process.

The most noticeable of these new additions are her new beam types. In the original, she had her Power Beam, Wave Beam, Ice Beam and Plasma Beam to choose from. In Echoes, all but the basic Power Beam are replaced. Instead, our heroine is given the brand new Dark and Light Beams, as well as her final beam weapon which I won't spoil for you here.

The functionality of these new beams works in tandem with the Light/Dark World theme of the game. The Light Beam obliterates dark enemies, while the Dark Beam smashes light enemies. Using these weapons against opposite-aligned enemies will make much quicker work of them than the underpowered Power Beam, but there's a catch to using them. For the first time in Metroid history, Samus' beams have an ammo limit. Her Power Beam is still exempt from this, as you can use it however much you like. But, the Light, Dark and final beams all consume ammunition in order to use. This particular gameplay aspect put a lot of people in a frenzy, simply because they had become used to the idea of not having to worry about any ammunition except for Samus' missiles and Power Bombs.

To be totally honest, I didn't find the ammo issue to be that big a deal. Granted, if I had my choice, I would have voted for no ammo limit, however I can see the resoning behind implementing it. The Light and Dark Beams are both powerful juju. You can make quick work of some pretty tough enemies if you're using the right beam, and without some kind of ammo restriction it would be too easy to just abuse the hell out of them. The ammo limit infuses a certain amount of balance into your usage of the beams, and looking at it that way, it's perfectly understandable why Retro chose to use it. Plus, it's not like ammo is scarce. You find extra ammo everywhere, and the only times I ever honestly found myself out of firepower were boss battles (and even bosses give you more ammo) or if I went for long stretches of time without switching out my beams.

However, to be completely fair, I can think of a number of ways that the ammunition situation could have been handled better than just slapping an ammo limit on the guns. I won't go into detail, for the sake of brevity, but if anyone would like me to elaborate, just ask and I'll be glad to do so.

Beyond her new beams, Samus also gains two new visors that replace the Thermographic and and X-Ray Visors from the previous game. The first one she recieves is the Dark Visor, which gives greater visibility in darkness and allows her to see cloaked or invisible enemies. The second one is the Echo Visor, which sees pure sound, allowing Samus to loacate quick-moving and invisible enemies and to locate and interact with sonic devices. Of the two, thematically I like the Echo Visor more. The soundwave effect is particularly cool-looking, and I just like the idea of a sonic visual system in her suit. The Dark Visor, however, is the more practical of the two. It's more useful in more situations, and it's generally easier to see your surroundings. With the Echo Visor, if there aren't enemies or sonic devices around, you're going to see a lot of black.

All in all, the Visors are pretty badass. The Dark Visor is intended to replace the Therm Visor, however it's just simply not as cool as it's predecessor. The heat signatures from the various creatures in MP1 was just an incredible touch, and as neat as the Dark Visor is, it just can't compete. The Echo Visor is made to replace the X-Ray Visor, and in my opinion, it's a hell of a lot cooler. The ripple effects and sonar waves are a lot more interesting than the X-Ray Visor's stark-white display.

Beyond her beams and visors, Samus also gains a number of other new options, and I won't spoil any of them for you except for one. Echoes sees the anticipated and long-welcome return of Samus' infamous Screw Attack and Wall Jump abilities. They are both perfectly handled, pulling you out to a third-person view in order to control them, and it genuinely handles as smoothly as you can possibly imagine. Absolutely flawless. My only honest complaint would be that you don't actually recieve the Screw Attack until late in the game, and as such, you don't get to spend much time with it. Regardless, it is still an awesome addition to the game and it was handled better than I could have ever imagined.

Aside from Samus' new abilities, our heroine will be encountering a number of new environmental additions as well as an entirely new cast of enemies and bosses.

Throughout the various regions of Aether, Samus will encounter Kinetic Orb Cannons (read: Morph Ball Cannons) which can fire her over long distances while in Morph Ball form. In general, Samus will be spending a lot more time rolled up into a ball, because Retro has seen fit to really boost the hell out of the side-scrolling Morph Ball puzzles and Spider Ball sections. Honestly, these sections are some of my favorite parts of the game simply because of how creative they are. You'll be using your spider ball to attach to large enemies and bomb their weak points, you'll be attaching to the broken remains of a suspension bridge in order to cross a large ravine, and you'll be using air jets and aquatic gravity to traverse these areas underwater.

The enemies and bosses have also seen a lot of improvements over the original as well. To be blunt, this game does not really do much to coddle you in the early stages. The difficulty level of the beginning of the game is about equal to that of the middle of the first game, and the difficulty ramps up appropriately. Now, that's not to say that it's a hair-pullingly difficult game. It's completely fair, but it's not a cakewalk. I died a number of times against most of the bosses, and even a few times against normal enemy encounters that I was too cocky to adequately prepare for.

The enemies are all much more intricate and detailed than those from the original. You'll fight a nasty breed of creature called a "Grenchler", which is essentially an electrically-charged enhacnement of the Baby Sheegoths from the first game. However, these guys can jump long distances, they can fire bolts of electricity from long-range and they can beat the hell out of you with their horns and spikes. Then you've got nasty enemies like the several types of Ing that you encounter. These guys can be a real treat. The primary Hunter Ing are massive, spider-like creatures that can dissolve into shapeless dark plamsa and move around the area with agility and speed. Even more threatening is when a normal Light Aether enemy like the Grenchlers I mentioned above, or just your garden variety Space Pirate becomes possessed by an Ing. Should that happen, the creature's physical parameters, abilities and danger level will increase exponentially, turning a routine encounter into a deadly battle. Overall, the enemies in this game are a very threatening bunch, and there are plenty of them to go around.

In addition, Echoes sees the inclusion of a very large selection of mini-bosses and a healthy dose of massive region-bosses to deal with. These guys can range from the lightning quick Boost Guardian, to the puzzling Spider Guardian (fought entirely in Morph Ball form) to the massive and terrifying Quadraxis, the four-legged mechanical behemoth that stands watch over the Sanctuary Fortress. And then there's also Dark Samus to think about. You end up fighting it several times throughout the course of the game, and it poses a nasty challenge each time. You need to be lightning-quick and constantly on your toes in order to take it down.

All in all, the gameplay is superb. Perfectly balanced, great challenge, tons of exploration, lots of fantastic puzzles, amazing bosses and a list of new abilities so awesome it can make a grown man weep. My one big complaint is that whole ammo thing, and that's simply because I can think of ways that Retro could have handled it better.

I'll keep the rest of the sections as brief as possible.


Graphics

Outstanding. Echoes is a graphical improvement over the original in every way. Higher poly-counts, better textures, better effects, more enemies per screen, bigger models, bigger environments, better animations, better lighting. You name it, Echoes does it better.

As was the case in the first game, Echoes' strongest point of graphical presentation lies in the art. Every single section of Aether, no matter how obscure the location, no matter if you'll ever return to that tiny-ass room again, is brialliantly detailed and looks completely different from every other location in the game. Just stand looking at the gears and moving parts used to make up something as simple as an elevator. The amount of detail is just unparalelled. Echoes stands as a testament to the fact that Retro Studios is home of the most talented group of artists in the videogames industry, and after spending a few hours with this game, that fact will become blazingly apparent to you.

If I have one gripe with the visual presentation, however, it's in the the region themes. In the first game, you had the desert ruins area, the lava caves area, the arctic tundra, the dark mines, and the rainy thunderstruck overworld. In Echoes, the overworld and the second region, Agon Wastes, look almost the same. They're both desert-like areas with a lot of abandoned machinery. The region variation doesn't really kick in until you hit the third area, and even then, it's not as stark a contrast as some of the areas from the first game. I'm not saying that I don't like the locations in the game, but I am saying that I wish the variety had been a little more diverse. Thankfully you've got the Sanctuary Fortress and all of Dark Aether to provide you with a healhty amount of contrast.


Sound

Like the graphics section above, anything that Prime did, Echoes does better. Better music, better sound effects and even more voice acting than the original had.

I guess my one big complaint would actually be with the voice acting. In my opinion, there isn't enough of it. It is my position that Samus should just simply never speak, like Link and Mario, because she is intended to be an avatar for the player. However, like my complaint with Paper Mario 2, I firmly believe that Nintendo needs to get off of their asses and give the rest of the characters some actual voices.

In Echoes, the Luminoth speak in text, but they have a voice sample that plays while they're speaking, much like the samples used in The Wind Waker or Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. They're there to give you an idea of what the character's voice sounds like, but they don't actually speak any full lines. That is disappointing, and it kind of pulls you out of the moment. The only full-dialogue segments in the game are that scene I mentioned above where the GFMC squad is getting torn apart by the Ing (and the voice-levels are too quiet anyway) and a female voice that tells you when you've recorded a new scan in your logbook. Other than that, it's non-commital samples from the Luminoth, a lot of grunts and similar noises from Samus, and the regular growls and screeches from the enemies.


Flaws

1) The plot is almost entirely based around scanning things. I love this, but others might not be so curious as to feel inclined to search for the plot insetad of having it just handed to them on a plate.

2) I can think of better ways that the ammunition situation could have been handled. Ask if you'd like me to elaborate.

3) I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with the Screw Attack. Getting it so late in the game didn't leave a ton of time to play around with it.

4) The regional variation isn't quite as diverse as in the first game. The first two areas are very similar to one-another, and the third one, while certainly different, is not nearly as huge a departure from the rest of the regions as the Sanctuary Fortress is.

5) Nintendo, you're sitting on a several-billion dollar stockpile of cash, you have no debt and you consistently turn a profit on software and hardware sales. Stop being so cheap and give us some real voice acting, dammit.

6) I can't think of another place to mention it, so I'll do it here. As awesome as this game is, and as much as I love everything about it, the main reason that I'm giving it the score it's getting is because of this. Metroid Prime was a kick straight to the balls. It was a completely fresh, new perspective on the series and it was the perfect realization of the Metroid franchise in a 3D medium. Echoes is missing some of both of those things. The punch-to-the face newness isn't there as much because the first game already took care of that. On top of that, the game is such a thematic and atmospheric departure from the rest of the series that it doesn't have as much of the nostalgia-factor to rely upon. Those two things makes it a little less dear to me than Metroud Prime is Don't misunderstand me, though. If Retro chose to hang onto nostalgia and just make another standard Metroid game in the vein of Metroid Prime, I would have liked it a lot less than I do. I love the new direction that Retro took with Echoes, and I wouldn't have wanted them to change anything about it. I'm just more attached to the nostalgia of the first game.


Overall

Well, I commend you for reading through all of that. I think it would be a safe bet to assume that this is the longest review I've ever written. I'm gonna need to figure out how to start cutting this stuff down, otherwise I'm going to be writing 2-billion character-long reviews in a few years.

If you're looking for my short and sweet opinion of Echoes, here it is. It is absolutely one of the best games on the Gamecube, and absolutely one of the best that I have ever played. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only GCN game I would consider better than it would be the original Metroid Prime. Echoes does a lot of stuff better than the first, and if I was capable of giving you a completely detached, un-involved and non-emotional review, based solely on facts and concrete evidence, Echoes would be the better game. However, I am not capable of that. I am a human being, and this is my opinion, not a fact sheet. In my opinion, the original Metroid Prime beats out the sequel by a mere fraction of a point.

On it's own merits, however, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is a phenomenal game, and anybody who claims to have any sense of taste would be doing themselves a trememdous favor by picking it up as soon as possible. My higest recommendations.

Score:9.7