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Playing on SNES, GBA, DS, Wii, 3DS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4

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Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

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Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event

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Favorite Games

Super Metroid
Super Metroid
Portal
Portal
Undertale
Undertale
A Short Hike
A Short Hike

116

Total Games Played

010

Played in 2024

026

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Feb 25

Pokémon HeartGold Version
Pokémon HeartGold Version

Feb 18

Super Metroid
Super Metroid

Feb 16

Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime

Feb 08

Kirby's Epic Yarn
Kirby's Epic Yarn

Feb 03

Recently Reviewed See More

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is a worthwhile sequel to the original Metroid Prime. It’s great in all aspects. But in all aspects, there’s always something holding it back.

The level design benefits from an “open-zone” approach. Its an element I never minded from the original Metroid Prime, but the lack of backtracking in Echoes allows each main area to linearly build tension - whereas at its worst, Prime 1 could feel meandering rather than awe-some. Each area is more complex, not only in how you solve puzzles and traverse them, but also in the fact that we have a parallel “Dark Aether” to traverse, with its own unique challenges, mostly based on traversal (physical and dimensional). This is all quite good, but I think leaning into this structure would have benefited the game. The open-zones are great. Like I said, they build tension and awe moreso than the original Prime did. In nearly all three main areas, I had to leave midway through my excursion. I found that I’d get halfway through an area, get stuck, then the hint system would guide me to an upgrade in the Temple Grounds hub area. In the latter two of three areas, this happened, and the hint system is not nearly quick enough to activate. I would have much rather had the game send me on a hunt for this upgrade in order to unlock the area’s they’re first used in, so I hadn’t made progress, only to be whisked away from an area’s self-contained narrative. I like these new areas for how invested you get in them, but Echoes takes you out of that experience when you really start to get going.

As for the story, it starts with a lot of intrigue, and throughout, it’s a great motivator to explore the world. It is very repetitive, though. The Space Pirate and Luminoth Warrior Logs are well-written, but they failed to capture the same kind of awe I had for Tallon IV in this game’s predecessor. A war between forces of light and darkness, a world caught in “transdimensional flux” - that’s cool! I’d be quicker to forgive how quickly the Space Pirates get written off if the Ing were explored more. How I see it, For the latter two-thirds of Echoes, the Space Pirates are radio silent, which I think was done to show how the Ing are a big threat. I like this idea, but I think the Ing aren’t explored enough, and their presence is to dull. They can certainly be threatening though, even if most of their physical appearances are through the posession and mutation of other enemies. They’re very similar to Phazon in that regard - which I think is by design, they seem related to or made from the substance. Ultimately, I just wish the narrative had better payoff, because it sets up an intriguing mystery, and lots of different parties in the conflict. Its contemplative tone is similar to Prime 1 however, which I think is to its detriment. I’m shown great potential, but left disappointed by these aspects by the end of the game, which is never good.

The combat is unique! It controls similarly to its predecessor, but this time I found it spellbindingly clunky. The moments where its clunkyness is most obvious are the main area boss fights, but those moments are also the game’s most intricate mechanically and cinematic. The new enemies make good use of Samus’ abilities; the different takes on resource management made me play a little more cautiously; and overall I’d say has very little sore-spots. My beloved scan visor got a facelift I didn’t know it needed until now, it’s so much more convenient to use. The enemies don’t require these beams and visors as much as the first Prime did, and while I love the first Prime’s combat, I certainly didn’t mind this new approach - especially when there’s still plenty incentive to switch your mode of combat.

Overall, I liked Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, a lot. More than things that take me out of the experience, things that fail to get me invested in the first place are what hurt it the most. I wanted more moments like every appearance of Dark Samus; I wanted to see Space Pirates get decked in real time; I wanted to see the Ing as a bigger threat than I did; I wanted a more active story. The commonalities between Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2, are where Metroid Prime 2 fails. It experiments with the Metroid Prime formula, but I think it needed to stray further away from it than it did, to truly stand out as a riveting, unforgettable experience. As it stands though, I had a lot of fun with its increasingly complex environments, and encounters.

This review contains spoilers

When playing Metroid Prime, I found myself not only curious about its world and mechanics, but I found myself curious about our world. Its the kind of game that inspires me to learn more. There are some intense moments and some cinematic moments, but some of the best moments in the story exist in the fallout of that tension - clearing out a room of Space Pirates and spending time in silence reading their research logs, understanding more and more about them. On the complete opposite side of this example, loved returning to to the Chozo Ruins, being able to explore more of its catacombs and finding more writings the Chozo civilisation left behind in their struggle. How the story is being told, is just as important as the story being told.

The scan visor is a smart way to get you to learn about the world. Through it, you learn more about the creatures you’ll face in battle, swapping beams and visors to get a better hold of many combat encounters. You learn about how you can destroy and traverse the world, and you can read scripts left behind by the two dominating races on the planet of Tallon IV. The combat isn’t particularly deep, but the visors and beams give each encounter a unique quirk. When using the wave beam against the final boss, I found myself acting more acrobatically to weave around its attacks, due to the wave beam’s homing properties. In other encounters, the wave beam made me act more aggressively, because it stuns smaller enemies. The other three beams have this same kind of situational variety. At the bare minimum, for the more superfluous applications of each beam and each visor, they add that kind of frenzied panic to the combat which I appreciated a lot in Super Metroid. The scan visor often contextualizes how you’ll be using each beam/visor. Sometimes you’ll reason out to use certain beams against certain enemies, like the plasma beam against ice enemies. Other times, the scan visor will aid you in understanding what beams, visors, and by extension, strategies, to use.

Mechanically, the world is a pretty good translation of the 2D Metroid formula. Get an upgrade, find the path the game’s unseen hand is guiding you towards, repeat - with a few optional upgrades and artifacts to find for observant or replaying players. The last half of the game challenged me into thinking critically - I found it very fun to plan my route on the fly to maximize the amount of upgrades and artifacts I could find in the shortest amount of time possible. I think because of the third dimension, Prime can’t get away with as many well kept secrets as its 2D siblings, without them being impossible to find. Thankfully, I find that there are a lot more puzzles and activities that test your spatial awareness - even then, they can be a little simplistic and boring. In a game with a literal added dimension to it, the hint system is a welcome addition, and an even more welcome addition is being able to disable it. The physical world isn’t the most interesting visually or mechanically, but it has some fantastic setpieces, and uses Samus’ available movement well. Samus’ main visor, the one you’ll have equipped for most of the game, has a lot of impressive details to it, further grounding the user interface and “video-game-y” mechanics into the world’s canon, which I appreciate.

Metroid Prime, for me, more than anything, is about the environment and knowledge, and life. Every facet of it feels deliberate, and in service of its greater experience. The Space Pirates are insistent on their believed place in the hierarchy of the cosmos, taking all that they can from the Metroid Prime, augmenting themselves beyond health and sentience. Then, the Metroid Prime, subtextually, represents not a poison, but knowledge itself. Knowledge the Chozo knew to keep at bay, and knowledge the Space Pirates believed they could harness. Samus then, is a kind of succession, who drives away the last sentient beings from Tallon IV, and kills the memory of the knowledge they tried to control, like an empty earth burying the last remaining memory of a nuclear war that wiped out humanity - nuclear energy and waste, comparisons I think are inevitable to Phazon.

There’s a lot more to think about when it comes to Metroid Prime’s story. I think its told organically and does a wonderful job of building tension in the game’s narrative. I think it’s very thought provoking.

I think everything about it is great! The gameplay is not slacking by any means but the story truly elevates it. What I see as its overarching theme, it succeeds at conveying - delivering one of the most focused and immersive games I have had the pleasure to learn more about.

A short and sweet 3D platformer with DNA you can trace back to the more open-ended 3D Mario games. It's a fun return to the themes and mechanics of Celeste but in 3D. At only a little more than an hour long to 100% it, it manages to ground itself in the world of Celeste and explore most of its mechanics with finesse in that short time. I particularly liked how B-Sides from the original Celeste were integrated in this game (they’re like the FLUDD-less levels from Super Mario Sunshine!). Just about the only issue I had with the game is that the camera and depth-perception could've been a little more fine-tuned, but bleehhh they made it in a week and it works perfectly fine. It's free on itch dot io, and a no-brainer download for fans of Celeste. A very nice treat to start the new year!