Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Edited and updated Saturday, June 16th, 2007
Edited and updated Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007




It's 10:30 PM. Do you know where your Metroid is?



I've been playing a game lately. In a few words, Here is the sickeningly sweet, butterfly-infested tag of Things I Love Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is that game.

It's top-notch. A lot of people like Metroid Prime more. I like Echoes more. I'm gonna play the latest version of the Metroid series each year on my birthday, because I believe it's good luck. I'm just a tad superstitious when it comes to werewolves, zombies and luck. Not really- I just like the tradition. However, I contain not the willpower to wait till October to play Metroid Prime 3, which should be coming out January or February. Nintendo Wii will come out November 19th, with a $250 price tag. Get saving, Mom and Dad! Ahaha!...seriously.


In short, I give Metroid Prime 2: Echoes a 9.8. If you hated Metroid Prime, there's no sense playing this game.

UPDATE (June 16th): Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is coming out August 20th, 2007. I am going to wait until my birthday to play it.



NOTE: The pictures, obviously, do not do the game justice. Next time I play Metroid Prime 2, I will take my own photos- lots of them. Most/all pictures courtesy of IGN. By 'courtesy' I mean "thanks, suckers!" (uhh, emphasis on the thanks.)

Metroid Prime (other Metroid titles as well), is a game about a Bounty Hunter. The Bounty Hunter has a name.
That name is Samus Aran, pronounced three different ways.
Sam-us, Sah-muss, and Sah-moose. Aran is Air-in, Ah-rahn, or Uh-ran, and even Nintendo can't seem to agree. Personally, I pronounce it Sahmus Ah-rahn. As of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, it is Sam-us Air-in.




Samus is my favorite video game character. Sam Fisher comes close, but come on, he doesn't have a powersuit (plus he's all-console). And, SamUS has a "US" up on his name. That COMMIE!

Although the Prime games have a low replay value (generally speaking), they're still some of my favorites, even if I usually wait a year-plus between plays. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a silent protagonist. Samus is pictured left (uhh, above-left), in the famous orange, red, and cannon colored power suit. Update: Damn, I forgot how awesome she is in 3D.
Yes, in this case "cannon" is a color. Look at the shoulder pads! I just love the Varia suit. It does make Samus' features look exaggerated, but personally, I can live with that. If it works for her, it works for me.


Samus, as a child, had a Mom and a Dad. Then the Space Pirates came, pictured at right (the space pirates actually vary in appearance), and conducted a raid on Samus' planet, K-L2. Samus' Dad flew a ship, and Samus just happened upon the enemy 'general' and said "Hi." Their general was/is a dragon. (You know who I'm talking about.)

He went to [harm] Samus, but Samus' mom jumped in front of the blow, then Samus' dad kamikaze'd his ship near them, causing him (the dragon) to have to retreat. Samus ran away, I suppose, and then the Chozo came.

The Chozo are a race of creatures who think they're psychic, and who are technologically advanced- they are anthropomorphic, and have very noticeable large beaks. They found Samus on the planet and decided to adopt. They proceeded to one of their stars. I believe it was the 'planet' Zebes (ZEH-bess); in MP1, they talk about living on stars, so Zebes was probably a star. What? I don't know! I haven't played the other games yet!

Edit: Now that I've played Zero Mission, Samus did grow up on Zebes (or used to call it "home"). Need to play the rest of the games.

Later, some Chozo abandoned their technological life amongst the stars, and adopted the planet Tallon IV, where they became "one" with nature, then died (see what happens when you bond with nature?). Actually, a poisonous, meteoric leviathan hit. This is the planet Samus discovers in MP1, where Samus' history was uncovered, familiarizing the current generation of gamers, who haven't played the other Metroid games, to the Metroid series. Me included! It's not a very good primer, but thanks!

Anyways, on Zebes, they infused Samus with Chozo blood (to survive the atmosphere, or something), making Samus superhuman. They then gave Samus a Chozo Powersuit (battle armor), specially fitted. You see, the Chozo...they...look-a-too-much-a-like-a bird. Samus look-a-like...uh, a human.

Samus left to join the army, put simply. But that didn't work out, so Bounty Hunter under Galactic Federation payroll it was! Uhh, then Samus heard about the Space Pirates killing all the Chozo on Planet Zebes, which kinda struck a nerve...

Samus had all this pent-up anger (like I said, I never played the older games, this is the story I've heard), probably because the Space Pirates kinda caused Mom and Dad's death, then killed all the Chozo on Zebes (her adoptive parents). Putting the powersuit to good use, Samus set out to hunt down and kill the Space Pirates. You see, the Space Pirates are trying to take over the Galaxy. Can't have that.


Have I mentioned that Samus can turn into a ball? Yeah. It's called the Morph Ball, pictured left, and with it you can explore conveniently-sized holes in walls and stuff (It's supposedly 3' diameter.) See, Samus can't grab hold of things like Link can (not in 3D at least), can't climb either, so the Morph Ball is the preferred method of traversing areas. Well, at least in which a conveniently-sized obstacle course is placed, leading to the next room. Or a useless-to-everyone-but-Samus spiderball track. *cough*



------
Also, Samus is a girl. In the first Metroid game, everyone thought she was a robot (the powersuit, you understand, plus the instructions purposely misled you about her gender) until they beat the game in under three hours (I think), which then shows her in a bikini (it's in 8-bit).

Now, there were a lot of 'girlphobic' people (young, confused boys) who simply refused to believe that a girl could blow up an entire planet, and kill a dragon 3 times, and still to this day think she's a cross-dressing robot.
They're called idiots.



Metroid is one of the only franchises that has a respectable female protaganist. The only other one I know of (certainly, there are more) is Perfect Dark, although I'm not sure about Perfect Dark Zero- I'll have to get a 360 to see about that. I have heard that in the remakes of the old NES/Gameboy titles, they play up the fact that she is, indeed, a girl. I hope they don't do it too much. UPDATE: I played Metroid: Zero Mission and the only way they played up her being a girl was in her death sequence (Zero Suit), one sequence at the end (Zero Suit), and an ending picture which doesn't really count. But can any of that really be considered "playing up"?


I was shocked when I saw Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's cover art (pictured at right). Then I realized something (other than she looks the same in MP2 as MP3): everything was exaggerated to fit her shoulder pads. She looks a bit imbalanced in MP1. Still, it seems almost like she couldn't possibly fit into the suit, but somehow she manages...man, really, she goes from 100 to 50 to 100. That's like, 20 under, I think.

In-suit she looks better in MP2 than in MP1, but in MP1 her face looked tons better. In MP2 she looks very 'cartoony'...
You see, in MP1 she looked, ah, what's the word...well, her face looked so real, without being real, that she was at the "zombie" stage- where developers make things so realistic that your mind interprets them as human, not cartoon, thus they look eerie as they don't look human enough, and your mind is judging upon human standards. It's really interesting. It was one of the better facial renderings I've seen, but I definitely like her look better in MP2.

Strangely enough, another argument (I think more: rumor) was that Retro made her breasts bigger, but I just don't see it. We should all be grateful she isn't Lara Croft 2.0.

I have to admit, I am at a loss as to why she needs those visors on her chest. I mean, they look cool, and all...

Actually, that's a little creepy. Just a little. I mean,... Hey! It was originally designed for Chozo- maybe they need visors on their chest? Yeah that's it! Nothing creepy about that. Nothing at all!!!
---------


The graphics are beautiful, and the gameplay is fantastic (especially the controls- they own). You have unlimited ammunition in the power cannon, which is cool because you needn't worry about being weaponless; once your other systems are out (if ever) you can still fight effectively with it. The game gives you all the tools you need to ensure you're never outgunned and/or murdered. Radar, Morph Ball as an escape method, jumping, tracking system, etc. The weapons may get boring after a while, but that's up to you.

Edit: I'm not saying it's "easy, and that's what's good! LOL!", I am saying that you are given weapons to fight intelligently. That is huge in Metroid games for me: Spending time to collect upgrades, and thus empower yourself, and thus gain more control over combat situations. When I played Metroid: Zero Mission on Hard, and found that the missiles and energy were halved (instead of 100 each tank, 50 each tank), I was devastated. That so totally leaves from Metroid for me, it was just...well, devastating. I could not play past 15 minutes it was so bad- not hard, bad.


One of the greatest parts, without a doubt, is the Scan Visor. You scan things, hack things, it gives you info on enemies and bosses, unlocks doors (hacks the system), and you get to read about what the Space Pirates/other intelligent beings are doing. I just love it. Plus, you get a scan percentage- this percentage unlocks the photo gallery, you know, like 15% opens gallery #1, etc. Some people will find this need to scan boring. But like I said, you intelligently fight- and that's what I like.


Note: The rest of this contains minor spoilers, up to an hour or so in the game. It's mostly just the story, shouldn't be anything horrifyingly revealing.


The game starts out with a distress call from some Marines. It seems to me that Marines never, ever bring enough ammunition. Examples: Doom, Resident Evil, Metroid Prime 2, Ammo Lost, and Wasted Shells: The Animated Drama. A Marine using ammo is pictured at right. Samus heads to the planet, called Aether, by behest of the Galactic Federation. Samus is their #1 "Hunter." Darn right she is.


Upon reaching the planet, your ship crashes, of course. The first scratch! Darn! Anyway, you're off to explore. The first thing you shoot (other than the wall, on a whim) is a... some type of webbing.

A bit further, and down a good bit, it leads to the Marines' makeshift base; they kinda struggled before dying, it seems. There are about 29 of them total, spread all over. Like peanut butter. They were waging a war on the local residents, creatures which are basically a mix between spiders and ants; they have no queen, and somehow spin 'webbing'-like stuff, living in a colony. Eat things, of course. They're called Splinters, if I recall correctly. Which I do.

You solve a few puzzles, then the dead Marines get possessed (parasitic possession, not demonic) by something, splattered with purple, and turned into Zombies! Oh my gosh! I don't know which of the three is worse!
Naturally, you start shooting them, because you enjoy having a brain.

...

The rest is edited out for the sake of not spoiling the game. I would have read a spoiler review on Halo three years ago, and now I'm considering getting an Xbox. Xbox gets a lot of the 3rd party support, and Ninty has its fabulous, mouth-watering, succulent, tasty first-party games, plus a lot of 3rd-party support- and the awesome controller which no other controller can compete with. So you get the best of both without supporting Sony.

Actually, I really have nothing against Sony. My camcorder is Sony. I just don't like them- not hatred, I just wouldn't buy their system; maybe a PS2. Their PS3 is an awesome machine capable of stunning things, just not for me.

In ending, I really like Metroid Prime 2.