Sillen2000
1 review liked by Sillen2000
On a fundamental level, every 2D Metroid and all the Prime titles are some remix of Super Metroid’s formula. This SNES title is so foundational, and so exemplary, that the success of its sequels is defined by their ability to walk further and further from Super’s shadow. And I think the best Metroid games walk rather far.
Super Metroid isn’t even in my top five Metroid games — but that list includes the four 2D games that followed it. Part of what I love about Zero Mission, Fusion, Samus Returns, and Dread is that they all have a distinct flavor in their tone, concept and mechanics despite a familiar structure: in large part because there’s little hardware overlap between them. Zero Mission and Fusion, which share the GBA, manage to be radically different despite being on the same platform.
And then we have Prime 1, my second favorite Metroid game. It’s a masterwork. It is the reinterpetation of Super Metroid’s formula, it is perhaps the greatest Nintendo game to come out of the States. Retro Studios not only outdid Nintendo’s home teams, it provided a strategically essential GameCube experience. We love it now, but everyone hated on the GameCube when it was new. It was the kiddie console with kiddie games.
But then Metroid Prime happened. Prime didn’t change Nintendo’s fortunes but it was a fresh cog in Nintendo’s tactical machine which worked overtime spinning up games from Eternal Darkness to Geist to the Capcom 5 in the GameCube’s later years, desperately working to change the reputation of Nintendo’s little console.
So it’s no surprise to me that after Metroid Prime was lauded as one of the greatest games ever that its sequel would be a bigger, darker, more complex game with multiplayer — a sequel that would coincidentally launch just one week after Halo 2.
Going into Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, I was conscious of the fact that it would need to walk out from Prime 1’s shadow. Fusion did so after Super. But it did so eight years later on an entirely different platform. Retro had to do the same in two years, with the same engine, on the same console.
This was always going to be an impossible task.
Prime 2 loses this battle on two fronts: it’s both a seriously flawed game by its own merit and an inelegant experience whose flaws look even more apparent sat next to its predecessor, on the same shelf, the same memory card.
I understand the impulse to make Prime 2 bigger in every sense. In its boss encounters, in its map design, in its playtime hours. But there reaches a point where it all becomes too much when fused to such a repetitious structure: explore Aether for three keys to fight the energy’s keeper to unlock the next portion of the map to find three more keys to fight the next keeper to unlock the next portion of the map to find three more keys to fight the next keeper, only to need to find nine more keys to showdown with a boss gauntlet and careen past any meaningful resolution.
The game is oppressive in its repetition and thus noticeably too long. Everything feels artificial. Aether feels both too big and too cluttered, lacking the concise design of Tallon IV and the variety of its landscapes. A place like Torvus Bog is atmospheric but ultimately familiar — so many of Prime 2’s tricks lose their novelty in operating so close to Prime 1. The Echo and Dark Visors remix the same gimmick as the X-Ray Visor, for example.
Prime 2 does have the Light / Dark interplay to call its own, which is largely effective. It’s certainly the game’s strongest facet and a true illustration of Retro Studios’ design mastery. To overly these maps atop each other, to so often and so freely launch the player between them — it’s excellent spatial planning. It, and the many successful boss encounters, sell this sense of oppression that overtly and subtextually defines the game and the Luminoths’ plight.
But this is where Prime 2 falters by its own hand. The ammo juggling of the Light, Dark, and Annihilator Beams just cause more frustration than genuine tension, as do many of the unsuccessful bosses whose frustrating hitboxes, shaky gimmicks, and mammoth health bars halt the game’s pace.
Echoes simply lacks the clarity of vision that defined all that Prime 1 achieved. The question becomes: what does Prime 2 do right? The answer, then, is everything intrinsically good about Metroid Prime. Powering the experience are the same base design tenets that have Prime 1 safely in my top 20 games of all-time.
And there’s no doubt that Echoes has a lot of uniquely successful elements to call its own, from some truly brilliant art direction in certain pockets of the game to some masterfully grand encounters. The ingenuity of the Light / Dark Aether, the implementation of iconic power-ups like the Screw Attack.
It’s clear in the volume of ideas that Prime 2 posits that Retro wanted to do much more than just Prime again. But on an experiential level, Echoes just cannot escape the shadow of its predecessor with this set of ideas and uneven execution.
Super Metroid isn’t even in my top five Metroid games — but that list includes the four 2D games that followed it. Part of what I love about Zero Mission, Fusion, Samus Returns, and Dread is that they all have a distinct flavor in their tone, concept and mechanics despite a familiar structure: in large part because there’s little hardware overlap between them. Zero Mission and Fusion, which share the GBA, manage to be radically different despite being on the same platform.
And then we have Prime 1, my second favorite Metroid game. It’s a masterwork. It is the reinterpetation of Super Metroid’s formula, it is perhaps the greatest Nintendo game to come out of the States. Retro Studios not only outdid Nintendo’s home teams, it provided a strategically essential GameCube experience. We love it now, but everyone hated on the GameCube when it was new. It was the kiddie console with kiddie games.
But then Metroid Prime happened. Prime didn’t change Nintendo’s fortunes but it was a fresh cog in Nintendo’s tactical machine which worked overtime spinning up games from Eternal Darkness to Geist to the Capcom 5 in the GameCube’s later years, desperately working to change the reputation of Nintendo’s little console.
So it’s no surprise to me that after Metroid Prime was lauded as one of the greatest games ever that its sequel would be a bigger, darker, more complex game with multiplayer — a sequel that would coincidentally launch just one week after Halo 2.
Going into Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, I was conscious of the fact that it would need to walk out from Prime 1’s shadow. Fusion did so after Super. But it did so eight years later on an entirely different platform. Retro had to do the same in two years, with the same engine, on the same console.
This was always going to be an impossible task.
Prime 2 loses this battle on two fronts: it’s both a seriously flawed game by its own merit and an inelegant experience whose flaws look even more apparent sat next to its predecessor, on the same shelf, the same memory card.
I understand the impulse to make Prime 2 bigger in every sense. In its boss encounters, in its map design, in its playtime hours. But there reaches a point where it all becomes too much when fused to such a repetitious structure: explore Aether for three keys to fight the energy’s keeper to unlock the next portion of the map to find three more keys to fight the next keeper to unlock the next portion of the map to find three more keys to fight the next keeper, only to need to find nine more keys to showdown with a boss gauntlet and careen past any meaningful resolution.
The game is oppressive in its repetition and thus noticeably too long. Everything feels artificial. Aether feels both too big and too cluttered, lacking the concise design of Tallon IV and the variety of its landscapes. A place like Torvus Bog is atmospheric but ultimately familiar — so many of Prime 2’s tricks lose their novelty in operating so close to Prime 1. The Echo and Dark Visors remix the same gimmick as the X-Ray Visor, for example.
Prime 2 does have the Light / Dark interplay to call its own, which is largely effective. It’s certainly the game’s strongest facet and a true illustration of Retro Studios’ design mastery. To overly these maps atop each other, to so often and so freely launch the player between them — it’s excellent spatial planning. It, and the many successful boss encounters, sell this sense of oppression that overtly and subtextually defines the game and the Luminoths’ plight.
But this is where Prime 2 falters by its own hand. The ammo juggling of the Light, Dark, and Annihilator Beams just cause more frustration than genuine tension, as do many of the unsuccessful bosses whose frustrating hitboxes, shaky gimmicks, and mammoth health bars halt the game’s pace.
Echoes simply lacks the clarity of vision that defined all that Prime 1 achieved. The question becomes: what does Prime 2 do right? The answer, then, is everything intrinsically good about Metroid Prime. Powering the experience are the same base design tenets that have Prime 1 safely in my top 20 games of all-time.
And there’s no doubt that Echoes has a lot of uniquely successful elements to call its own, from some truly brilliant art direction in certain pockets of the game to some masterfully grand encounters. The ingenuity of the Light / Dark Aether, the implementation of iconic power-ups like the Screw Attack.
It’s clear in the volume of ideas that Prime 2 posits that Retro wanted to do much more than just Prime again. But on an experiential level, Echoes just cannot escape the shadow of its predecessor with this set of ideas and uneven execution.