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Metroid Prime. For over a decade I had people telling me I should play Metroid Prime, that it was no ordinary first person shooter. In fact, according to Nintendo, it wasn’t a first shooter at all: it was a “first person adventure.” Unimpressed with the fancy language I purchased the game and proceeded to play it. Things started off kind of slow despite the fact the opening level seemed more than content to relive the opening to Super Metroid but by the end of the game I was surprisingly sold on the fact that not only Metroid Prime was good, Metroid Prime was actually great. It contained the same exact feel of a 2D Metroid only in a 3D setting. No small feat.
Needless to say I was ready for more and Prime was willing since there were two more games. However, as I was trying to locate a reasonably priced copy of Prime 2 in the kind of condition that would appease my boarder line psychotic collecting standards I ran into an opinion about Echoes on YouTube by The Gaming Brit that really attracted my attention. Whether he wanted to or not, the Brit actually built up Prime 2 to be something special. With my opinion of the original game so high this is the kind of thing I wanted to hear. Anyways, I was able to obtain Echoes from a friend up in Canada but the game sat on my shelf for two months until I saw a video review of the game by somecallmejohnny from the Super Game Bros which was much more negative. Watching this video I could see how some of the things he was talking about could be annoying, but a six out of ten seemed to low considering he gave Metroid II a six and a half – a score I strongly disagreed with. This is nothing new as I fail to agree with many of his scores (Zero Mission and Fusion aren’t THAT good…) but now I was really curious of what Prime 2 had to offer. Whose opinion did I agree with more?
The first thing that really strikes me about the game is how flaccid the opening is. Looking for the federation vessel and fleet is really uninteresting and is just a sorry excuse to get Samus on Aether. Prime cheesed out and used a ton of nostalgia in its opening but we have the opposite situation here and the quicker you get through it the better. This doesn’t mean the game immediately gets better once you meet U-Mos because it doesn’t. It’s really hard to explain why Samus’ quest to return the light to Aether remains in neutral for so long. At first you think it’s the locations - that the maps aren’t up to snuff to those in the first game - but the further you get the more the game disproves that theory. The main areas aren’t really interconnected with one another like other Metroid games until very late in the game, and even then these alternate routes don’t prove too useful. Then there’s Dark Aether which sounds interesting until you explore it. For the most part the dark alternate of the Luminoth’s world slows down an already slow experience making the first half of the game a real test.
In the dark world we meet the Ing, the source of Aether’s woes. Now I’m sure this is a pretty pessimistic point of view, but am I the only that finds the Ing to be uninteresting? They are an obstacle and little else to me whereas the space pirates were brilliantly fleshed out through logs in the first Prime which are in a frustrating, short supply this time around. The capper is the Ing are more interesting when they posses more unorthodox beings (like Quadraxis!) then when they attack in their more common forms. Personally I think the way they bubble around before taking shape has to be one – if not the – ugliest effect in the entire game. Having them move around in more of a mist would have been much more effective.
The only thing that gives the conflict with the Ing any measurable kind of gravity are the logs left by deceased Luminoth warriors. Well, that and the game’s boss fights. The boss fights are easily the games candy and are even more complex than they were in the previous game. You’d think this might become a problem since it almost was in the first game but the game manages to pull it off. And really, that phrase – manages to pull it off – pretty much sums up Echoes. Around every corner Echoes does something that is downright irksome, something its predecessor didn’t do. Yet for all the grief it causes it manages to survive somehow. Is it dumb luck? Is it ingenious attention to detail? I don’t know. But whatever it is Echoes is damn lucky it’s there are this would be a sophomore slump of mammoth proportions.
However, just because the game makes up for its grievances near the end (where it actually creates a few new ones) does not mean I will go easy on it. Yes, Prime 2 is a good game, but it’s not a great game. Most of the fault lies with the games semi-irritating structure but then that’s what makes this game stick out among the other titles in the franchise. There really isn’t another Metroid that feels as detached as Echoes. I wish I could say that’s an endearing quality but it’s not, and that’s why as a game it scores significantly lower than the original with me.
So in the end the game really isn’t what expected or got from either video I referenced in the opening paragraph. I’m not really disgusted with it yet I am far from wanting to have its hypothetical love child. When all is said and done the game is just kind of there, a product that has the potential to be great but doesn’t quite get there because all of it’s notable features/changes are also negatives.
7/10
