Metroid Prime 2 Echoes - Reviewed!!!

Now that I have a nintendo Wii, I'm going back and playing all the gamecube games I missed along the way. First up, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

Video game review:
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

You may have missed the after-credits shocker at the end of Metroid Prime, but nevertheless, if you played the first game, this disappointing sequel is your fault.

Because I don't like to lay into games right off the bat, let's start off with some things that I like about the game. It's still Samus, and Samus is still pretty darn cool. It's also still Metroid, and Metroid, despite having the kind of music that makes me want to curl up into the fetal position and cry, is pretty darn cool. Puzzle design: excellent. Art: completely sweet. Weapons: a little contrived, but honest to its predecessor and well executed. In fact, almost all of the things that earned Metroid Prime my "Greatest FPS of all Time" award are, in fact, in MP2:E. Which is why it is so painful to say that this sequel is not, at all, the greatest FPS sequel of all time.

That honor would have to go to Half Life 2, maybe Quake 2, maybe even Time Crisis 2. But now is not the time to be giving out awards to the heroes of bygone days (Hector would sweep the older brother awards); now is the time to severely critique the design of the game I am currently enduring the frustrations of.

Frustration 1: Difficulty. Difficulty in itself is not something to judge a game on. If it is too hard throughout, it's probably not designed for you. If it's too easy throughout, you are probably not the target audience. Difficulty deserves nothing more than a passing mention by a reviewer, used more to establish their own level of skill in case a reader wants to buy everything a reviewer likes/thinks is just right on the difficulty-meter.
But Echoes, oh Echoes. Echoes has badly designed difficulty. One of the first enemies that you meet in the game is the Lego version of the bugs from Starship Troopers. It is small, it is nearly unable to kill you. It takes 12 shots to kill.

TWELVE SHOTS.

This little bug thing takes almost as much damage as a metroid before breathing its last.

Also, every enemy has learned the magnificent skill of juking the z-targeting. So you get maybe 3 shots in before it's dodged to the left, and you're no longer locked onto it. Juking is not new to the genre. I firmly recall those big guys from Unreal dodging everything I shot at them. Heck, the Cyberdemon walked out of the way when I shot at him. That might have been random, but I missed a LOT. But you know what was different about those games? There was a way to MOVE SIDEWAYS.

There's a reason why the xbox and ps2 had 2 analog sticks. YOU NEED TWO STICKS TO AIM AT MOVING THINGS. Metroid Prime, realizing that it had but a single stick at its disposal, added the best part of the 3D Zelda games: Z-targeting. Echoes is the evil stepmother of Z-targeting, forcing it to clean the fireplace instead of going to the ball where it could make some handsome prince (me) very happy.

And I can guess why. It's right there on the main menu screen. Right next to options. It reads "Multiplayer." It is my firm belief that Metroid Prime didn't have multiplayer because of Z-targeting. Where's the fun or skill in clicking faster than your opponent? Echoes doesn't just make the enemies wise to z-targeting either. Targeting itself is ruined. You don't just have to be close to the enemy to lock on, you have to already be on it. And if you're off by the tiniest amount on the y-axis, hitting Z will just mess with your view, with no attempt at all to target something.

In Prime, I used to be able to walk into a room, hit Z and the fire button a bunch of times, and kill the shriekbats that flew from the ceiling. In Echoes, doing the same thing fires at the floor several times as shriekbats stab me in the face.

At least multiplayer will be skill-based. But I can't help but think that positioning and strategy would have made multiplayer fun even with z-targeting. Isn't the strategic element what makes rainbow six multiplayer, and gears of war multiplayer so much fun? Meh, I don't even know anymore.

But enough about that, here's the real problem: built-in-lag.

Who makes a game where the environment hurts you? Where you have to go stand in a certain spot for a minute and a half to regain your life after every 20-second fight?

And what the hell made them think that was a good thing to mix with loading-timed doors?

The doors in Prime were brilliant. There's no visible loading of new areas, because you have to wait for the doors to open. They don't open until the next room is loaded, but it's easy to believe that it's just an old door that needs to charge up some power to move (or something). I loved it.

But in echoes, while you're waiting, you're losing health. I literally DIED waiting for the door to open, because the door was around the corner from the nearest safe spot, and I didn't want to wait at the health spot, since I was returning to the light world anyway.

That probably made very little sense unless you've played the game.

Basically, if you loved Prime, and want to know what the hell was up with that hand thing, then you have to play Echoes. But it should have been called shadows, because it is a pale facsimile of Metroid Prime. Oh man that was clever, I love me.

Final Score: 2 plys.
Memorable quote: "I'm probably not going to finish this."
-s