Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Nintendo GameCube
I haven't played this game since shortly after it came out back in 2004. I remember almost nothing about it, aside from being able to go back and forth between the light and dark worlds. I remember the game being difficult, and needing to look online to find out where to go next. I remember Dark Samus. I remember an area that had a Tron aesthetic going on. And I remember liking the first Metroid Prime more. That's about all I remember about the game.
Over 20 years have passed. I'm finally getting around to playing this game again. Special thanks to my cousin Ryan for loaning me his physical GameCube copy of the game. I stupidly traded my copy in several years ago because I had the Prime Trilogy collection for the Wii. Well, my Wii stopped reading the disc, so that Trilogy collection became useless to me, leaving me with no way to play Prime 2 (or 3, for that matter).
Let's see if my opinion of the game has changed after all this time.
Story:
I might take some heat for this, but I didn't really care about the game's story. Most of it is told through logs that you've scanned in. So you have to sit there and read what is going on. There are some computer rooms that have a dozen or so monitors, each one telling a little bit of the game's story. You have to stop, scan the monitor, read what it says, and then do the same thing for the next one. I'm sorry, but no. I'm not reading all that shit. It's not even that I don't like reading. I like novels. I read all the time. But I found it to be too disruptive here. Having to stop every ten seconds to read a bunch of text really breaks up the flow of the game. I'm here to play. I read everything for the first hour of the game, and then I just started skipping through everything. Oh well.
The basic gist is that Samus has arrived on an alien planet that's been overtaken by a mysterious, life consuming alien entity - just like the Chozo planet in the first game. But this tine, there is now a "dark world" that exists parallel to ours. Samus has to go back and forth between the dark and light worlds, transferring energy from the temples in the dark world over to the light world.... or something. A dark version of Samus tries to stop her off and on throughout the game. You end up defeating Dark Samus at the end and restoring life to the alien planet.
If people actually read this blog, they'd probably be flooding my inbox and shaking their fists at me for this gross, negligent, and completely inaccurate recap of the game's events. Oh well. Like I said, I wasn't really paying attention. I just wanted to play and keep exploring. Some reviewer I am!
Gameplay:
The first thing I noticed was how similar the gameplay is to the first game. The control scheme is exactly the same. The running, jumping, scanning, shooting, etc. It isn't until you start to get a little deeper into the game that you notice the differences.
The first major difference is the inclusion of the dark world. You can use portals to travel over to the dark side. Everything is bad there. Even the air itself hurts you. You have to use light bubbles as safe zones. You can stop inside them and they will refill your health. But as soon as you step out of them, your health starts to go down. It really helps add to the dark and oppressive atmosphere of the game. You truly feel like each time you enter the dark world, you have to move quickly and get things done with a sense of urgency.
Things you do in the dark world affect the light world. Like, if a bridge isn't lined up correctly in the light world, you can move it in the dark world. Then come back to the light world and cross over. The first time I played this game back in the early 2000s, this confused the hell out of me, and I needed an online walkthrough to get me through 90% of the game. But this time around, it clicked with me. I had a good time exploring and using trial and error to figure out what I needed to do and where I needed to go next.
That said, this game does start to drag after a while. As much as I liked this game, I was ready for it to be over at the end. The game sends you on a lot of different quests for hidden keys. At the end of the game, you need like 10 of them, and they are scattered all throughout the map. The clues they give you are extremely weak. And you need to use a special visor to see them, which makes them very easy to miss. This was easily my least favorite part of the game.
Aside from the light/dark world mechanic, this is still a fairly similar game to the first Prime. It carries over most of the original game's mechanics, but tweaks and improves things to make it a different experience. But the games are still very similar at their cores.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the original. All the backtracking and all the scouring for obscure hidden items all the time started to get old after a while. The world is huge, and the fact that there is a dark world with a vastly different map makes it even tougher to figure out where to go next. The game gives you hints, but I feel it doesn't help you out nearly as much as the first game. There were times when I had to let out a big sigh and say "okay, I guess I'll play this game" when game time came around each night. I had to force myself to get through it. That's something that never happened with the original. I was always happy to play it. This one, not so much.
Graphics:
I can't knock the game's graphics at all. For being an older game, it holds up great. It is bright and colorful. I love how the atmosphere switches to being so dark and oppressive in the dark world. The technology, the alien creatures, and the unique landscapes of the game all combine to create a very unique game environment.
The Tron-like temple area in the last half of the game, with all the see through walls and moving circuitry and pieces of equipment is an area that has always appealed to me visually. Same with the boss area on the spider ball tracks. I love the contrast of the glowing lines in the equipment with the dark cavern walls. The bosses in general in this game are large and magnificent, and a big step up from the original game.
Sound:
Close your eyes while playing this, and you could swear you are playing the first game. There's not much of a difference from what I could tell. The sound effects are still the same. There's still that techno beat in the background keeping you going. That beat really adds to the sci-fi feel of the game, if that makes any sense at all. The atmospheric music is on point. The classic Metroid musical jingles still play when you save or load the game. It all sounds really good.
Overall:
While I found more to criticize in this game than I did the original, I still enjoyed it. The world of the game is fun to explore. I loved finding new abilities and then using these abilities to unlock new things. The whole game is like one big puzzle box that you are constantly solving and unfolding as you move forward. It sounds great. It looks beautiful. It's easy to pick up and play. It all makes for a fairly satisfying experience.
The main criticism I have is mainly with the tedious backtracking and fetch quests you have to endure. I must have passed through some of the same areas hundreds of times throughout the course of my playthrough. Back and forth, back and forth. It gets tiresome, especially when you unlock a new ability and see that you have to go aaaallllllll the way across multiple maps to get to the area where you need to use the new ability. And this happens a lot. Many times, you can only get from one area of the map to the other by passing through the dark world, which makes navigating from point A to point B even tougher. And don't even get me started on the search for the temple keys again. That shit was vile, and it made me want to not play the game on more than one occasion.
Overall, I look back fondly on my time with the game, criticisms and all. In fact, I even started to miss the game after I was done playing it. Part of me wanted to come back and play it again because I wanted to be back in the game's world. But I didn't. I have other things to play. But the fact that it had that pull on me should tell you something.
Good game? Yes. Great game? Maybe. Excellent game? Ehhh. I gave the first game an A+. And this game won't even score in the A range. But just because it isn't as good as the original Prime doesn't mean much of anything in the long run. A B+ is still a pretty darn good score, and I'd still recommend this game either way.
THE GRADE:
B+
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