Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

[Twitch]

Samus Aran returns as the greatest female bounty hunter in the universe in this sequel to the highly successful Metroid Prime. This time Samus must travel to the Planet Aether in the Dasha region of the galaxy after having received a mission from the Galactic Federation to locate the troops that they have lost contact with on Aether. Upon arrival on the planet Samus finds the Federation forces wiped out along with most of the planets local inhabitants. Once she begins to investigate she finds that long ago a race called the Luminoth settled upon Aether, and turned the planet into a beatiful place for them to live and for many generations they lived peacefully until they tracked a meteor on a collision course with the planet, and they could do nothing to stop it. Upon crashing into Aether the meteor spread a veil of darkness over the planet and opened up a dimensional rift which spawned a second planet, which in turn spawned an evil race of symbiotic creatures the Luminoth called the Ing. The Ing soon decimated the Luminoth and left but one of them remaining . Soon a Federation ship chasing a Space Pirate frigate landed on the planet only to be obliterated by the Ing and that is where our heroine's story begins it's new chapter.





GRAPHICS
The graphics in the game are excellent with Retro Studio's doing an astounding job. They're quite realistic for the environment that the game exists within, with the character design's being well thought out as well as the new enemy the Ing being quite well thought out.


SOUND & MUSIC
The music in classic Nintendo fashion of late and in the same style as Metroid Prime is a recreated version of the soundtrack of the original Metroid game on the NES circa 1986 which makes for some excellent nostalgia. The creature noises are excellent as well with a few of them scaring the shit out of me at times of late night gameplay. There is nothing ground breaking about the sound or the music but who really plays an FPS for the music and sound effects ?

MULTIPLAYER
This is the first game of the Metroid series to have a multiplayer mode, and it has two variations of it.

Deathmatch: The deathmatch mode of Echoes is the same as any other game , the goal is to eliminate every other player and be the last one standing, with the choice of time or frag count to determine the winner of the round.

Bounty Mode: In this mode the object of the game is to collect the most coins either within the set time limit or collect the coin limit. Each player begins the round with a set amount of bounty coins and will drop them when attacked, there are five types of coins each worth a higher value and what coin is dropped depends upon the amount of damage taken.

Upon starting in each of the modes the players begin with, the basic power beam, as well as the Morph Ball, Boost Ball, Spider Ball, Grapple Beams, Space Jump Boots, and Bombs. There are four types of power ups, health whic comes in 10 and 30 points values, the missle launcher, the Randomizer whcih will as the name suggests give you a random power up including, unlimited ammo, temorary invulnerability or invisibilty, super-power weapon strength or even more obscure weapons like Death Ball or Hacker Mode, you can also find pickup crates which hold the Dark beam, Light Beam, Annihilator Beam, or Power Bombs.

My friends and I personally found this multiplayer expect hours of fun.

PLAYABILITY
The game itself is excellent fun for hours upon hours and has put a new spin upon the reclamation of the technology. Whereas in the first Metroid Prime Samus lost all of her Power Suit expansions through an exploision, this time she's lost all of them through the Ing absorbing them and in order to get them back you must defeat an Ing with that attribute, I found the Boost Ball and Spider Ball Guardians hard to defeat with many a retry against them. Just like with the previous Prime there is a hard mode that can be played once the game is finished and it is rediculosly hard.


PROBLEMS
I have no gripes with the game but anyone else should feel free to post theirs to let other gamers no any issues with the game.


CONCLUSION
In conculsion an excellent game that is weeks of fun, for most people into it. and I'd whole Heartedly recommed it for anyone who loves the game series.

[The Avatar]

Before you even think of playing this game, make sure you have one thing handy: time. The game will certainly take it all up as the game will require around 30 to 50 hours of playing time to finish. Having said that, this game is well worth that time spent as it is one of the best shooters available on GameCube.

In Metroid, you play Samus Aran, possibly the weirdest named chick in the galaxy. You play a mercenary who is hired to rescue some stranded marines on a distance planet. However, during the landing on the plant Aether, your ship is damaged and unable to take off. This is where the fun begins, and the killing starts. You quickly discover that not all is as it seems, and that the planet Aether actually has a evil twin called Dark Aether. This Dark side has been at war with the light side and the inhabitants, the Luminoth (the native inhabitants of Aether) for many centuries. It looks like the Ing (the evil race that inhabits Dark Aether) are on the verge of victory. Only one person stands in the way of the Ing: Samus Aran.

GRAPHICS Score:95%
MP2:E makes great use of the power of the GameCube with rich detail in every aspect of the enviroment. The alien structures look weird and pulse as you would expect alien architecture to, the enemies are very intricate and also bleed when shot. There are many different classifications of objects in the game, with five main monster types: native creatures to Light Aether, native creatures to Dark Aether, Space Pirates, malfunctioning Luminoth technology and lets not forget the ING

As you progress through this game, if you spend some time scaning all objects, you will begin to unlock an image gallery. Here you can see the detailed concept drawings from the game. These drawings are really amazing and you can see how much effort went into designing the details of the graphics.

SOUND/MUSIC Score:91%
The sound effects in this game are great. Each monster has its own unique set of screams, movement noises, and attack noises. Each level has a great tune to set the mood, and the music also changes dynamically as you go into battle.

Samus doesn't have much to say during this game, which is a pity as it would have been great to hear her battle cry at least once in the game. Honestly, if you were running into battle with a giant mechanoid possessed robot, wouldn't you have some sort of scream, or catchy phase to say after killing it?
"Take THAT you bastards!"
But in a sexy voice maybe?

MULTIPLAYER Score:60%
Multiplayer was a little bit disappointing as it was very limited in it's scope. You can only play two game modes: deathmatch and bounty. Bounty mode is exactly like deathmatch except when a person dies, they drop money and you must collect the coins to win the game. If your playing a two player game, then there is no difference here to deathmatch.
There are no A.I. Bots that you can spawn to have a four player battle by yourself. And finally, there is no co-op mode which is such a let down. It almost seems like the guys at Retro Studios have done the bare minimum to get a multiplayer compliance in this game.

But there are some good things to be said for multiplayer in this game. There are quite a few arenas to play in, which is good, although you do have to unlock some of them. The multiplayer games are some what customisable. And, you can also use the ball mode in multiplayer which is cool. Other then that, multiplayer really doesn't shine here.

(RE)PLAYABILITY Score:75%
Such a long storyline tends to make game replays an awful big commitment. And even though this game has an ending that can be extended by getting 100% in all the scans, there really isn't much in the way of changing game play to warrant a replay of this game.
Once you complete the storyline, you can unlock hard mode to make your enemies do more damage and be a bit tougher, and you can also try to get that elusive 100% scan bonus. But that's it with the variance from your original game.

With so many options that could have been explored, like alternate endings or alternate gameplay(where you play for the dark Aether), it's a bit of a let down that Retro didn't take a shot at individuality.

CONTROLS Score:97%
Controling Samus was very easy to do, with the first level being dedicated as a tutorial for the rest of the game. The button layout is very well designed for switching weapons quickly and strafing around enemies can be done with ease because of a lock-on button that keeps you facing your current enemy.
Ball mode is also very easy to control and the camera changes from first person perspective to 3rd person. It would have been so much more fun if you could keep that 3rd person perspective while in normal mode, but as the trend of this game goes, it seems to have been left unexplored.

The controls get such a high score maily because of the menu system in the game. Retro Studios have designed one of the coolest menu systems I have ever seen in a game. Its a 3D menu and you have to rotate the menu to get your selection. It is very easy to navigate, and looks very nice to boot.

ATMOSPHERE Score:96%
So much work has gone into the concept of this game, and so the illusion of the world is almost perfect. It is really easy to get addicted to this game because of the atmosphere it generates with its lush deatailed enviroments, the good music and the excellent storyline to follow.

As you scan items and glyphs in the game, you acquire more lore about the world around you. This builds up into a huge database that you can access at anytime to get hints or just to brush up on specific enemies weaknesses.

WEB INTEGRATION Score:41%
You had better have a very fast connection for this website as its all flash and it takes ages to load. It does have a very nice layout, it copies the layout of Samus's helmet, so it tries to keep with the continuity of the game, but it just takes way to long to load. It's all very pretty, but dont even try to navigate this site unless you have patience for the flash system.

Since I dont have any patience, and I lost my temper after ten minutes of scanning random stuff and not finding what I wanted, I cannot give you all the details of what the site has on it. A Site Map would have sbeen such a great idea to add!!
To sum up, I really did not like the web intergration of this game at all, as it was an utter pain in the bum.

OVERALL Score:79%
Metroid Prime 2:Echoes is a good game to add to your collection. Its got an in-depth storyline, a visually stunning world and some great game concepts. However, if your sick of the old formula that games now days tend to follow, then you may want to give this game a miss as its all standard action that has been done thousands of time before. It does do it well, but once again if your sick of formulaic games, then this game will get borng very fast.

Even though this game is fun to play and addictive, I ultimately found it very disappointing because of the lack of inovation that could have made this game one of that all time greatest games, but was left alone because of either money or apathy.

[BlueBoy]

The Avatar - Just a link to your review would've been fine.
Now it's looks like you're competing for "Best review of Metroid Prime 2", and that's just sad.

[Movius]

My Review:

it's no Metroid Prime 1

[The Avatar]

Nope, actually, Im just collating them. Me and Twitch seem to both have a GameCube.

Ive done the opposite with Super Smash Brothers Melee.

Instead of having 10 articles on the same title, it seems to me to have one title with multiple reviews. I don't know where this "competing" thing came from.

[BlueBoy]

I call it as I see it.

[The Avatar]

Well, you called it wrong. Im not competing with anyone.

[Hughie]

Wow, I'm surprised most of you guys liked the game so much! I'm gona have to agree with Movius. I saw it as a real let down after absolutely loving the first game. All the dark/light stuff just became annoying to me after a little while, especially when it's all the same enemies. I'd have to agree about the graphics, atmosphere and sound though, really spectacular stuff there. It was just the actual playing of the game I didn't enjoy:p

[The Avatar]

I never played the first one, and after playing the second one, I don't think I want the first one when there are so many other cool titles vying for my paycheck!

Alas, I have promised myself not to get a new game till the end of May. :(

[a|A]

metroid prime 2 is awesome
:D

I loved the first one ( replaying it atm )
and the 2nd one is just as good.

yeah, the dark/light thing takes a bit of getting used to. but once you've got the hang of it, its really quite neat ( and once you've got the suit that protects you from dark energy its no problem at all ).

Its better than mp1 in many ways because you dont spend nearly as much time trying to find stupid chozo artifacts. ( who hides shit inside a rock, honestly! )

I think its a brilliant game