Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Upon landing on planet Aether, Samus finds herself in a battle between Light and Dark.

NA release: 15th November 2004
EU release: 26th November 2004
JP release: 26th May 2005
Developer: Retro Studios
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Score: 94%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

Metroid Prime 2 is a game that’s difficult to talk about without sounding overly negative. There are quite a few things that the game does that I don’t like, but there’s still enough of what made Metroid Prime amazing that it’s still a great game – the sense of exploration, discovering new powers and remembering where you saw previous places that these could be used. But because I’ve already gushed about all that in my Metroid Prime review it’s mainly the other stuff that’s left to talk about.

One thing that is done well is a sense of desperation. The planet of Aeuther – split into light and dark worlds – is in much more danger than Talon IV. The logs you read match this and the game overall is much more foreboding. This also bleeds into the difficulty of the game, with it being much more difficult than Metroid Prime, especially a few of the mid-level bosses. The flip side of this is that Retro Studios also extend this to the graphics, meaning all the levels are just dark, brown and grey.

It creates a strange situation where the splashes of purple in the dark world end up making it look more colourful and friendly than the light world, which is all round bleak. Only one area looks a bit different, but it’s still just a mechanical grey area. It makes the first few areas of the game bleed together, and there are no stunning sights like the first game. I think a much brighter light world would have enhanced the contrast a lot more – you’re trying to restore the light world and erase the dark, at least make it look like you’d prefer to be there.

The dark world does have one major difference in terms of gameplay, though. Until you get a few suit upgrades in, the dark world constantly hurts you. There are bubbles of light that you have to rush between (some of them have to be activated by shooting them). I actually quite like this aspect. The bubbles do heal you slowly, so it’s more of a case of planning your route between them, especially when you have to make a mad dash between some that have a significant gap between them.

The equipment is also themed around the light and dark concept, and I just really don’t like the guns in this game. They just feel like they shoot at different rates, with you switching over to deal greater damage to certain enemies. They also require ammo, which the game does give you plenty of (through a strange system of destroying enemies/crates to get ammo for the opposite gun), but it also makes you feel like you shouldn’t be using the guns unless you really need it. Then there’s a new powerful gun which uses ammo from both.

The visors are also another massive let down. You have the Dark visor, which doesn’t really explain what you do but just makes a few invisible things visible (so like a far less useful X-Ray visor), and the Echo visor, which is just to hit a few switches. There’s no fun details to see with them, unlike the Thermal and X-Ray visors from the first game, which both made the world feel more real and substantial.

But, despite these issues, the core concept of exploring a planet, getting upgrades and working out how to deal with enemies is still solid, and it’s still good that they attempted to do things differently – it’s just not pulled off as well as the first game.

Great

As the game slowly progresses you get a gradual feeling of empowerment as you become more familiar with your weapons, skills and the growing environment – and you gain an overwhelming swelling of pride as you overcome the game’s tougher mental challenges. In this respect, Echoes is an adventure of unquestionable majesty.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #101

Remake or remaster?

This needs a remaster more than Metroid Prime 1 did – redesign the areas to have a touch more colour and be more unique and the game would look much nicer.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.