Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time; I’ve mentioned this several times before. It has two sequels, however, that I don’t talk about as much. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was released in 2004, only two years after the original, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was released another three years after that in 2007. I always said that the first Prime was the best game, and every release only gets more and more disappointing after that. Prime is the best game of all time, Echoes is pretty good, Corruption is, eh, not bad, and anything after that we don’t talk about.
For years, Echoes seemed like a dumbed-down version of its predecessor. The structure was more clear-cut, your objectives were spoon-fed to you, and enemies were frequently facsimiles of those found in earlier games. The elements of the game that were new, on the other hand, were tedious: two different versions of the map for a light world/dark world effect, ammunition levels for beam weapons, and multi-phase bosses that seemed endless. When I played Echoes, I felt like I was playing a more “game-ified” version of Metroid Prime. I wasn’t experiencing a world anymore. This felt like a video game.
In the last two or three years, however, I’ve re-evaluated my stance. Echoes is a greater evolution of the genre than I’d originally given it credit for. It innovates in ways I never realized and it challenges the player with tasks they maybe weren’t expecting. This is how you make a goddamn sequel.
Let’s break it down.
What do I mean when I say “the structure is more clear” and “your objectives are spoon-fed to you?” Well, Prime has no clear objectives. You need to get inside the Impact Crater to beat the game, and the hurdles you need to clear before that are all over the place. Go here, grab something, now go here, grab something else, now you can go back here, pick this thing up, and so on. It is, in many ways, a glorified scavenger hunt. True to the Metroidvania genre, there was a lot of exploring and backtracking in order to figure out where to go. Echoes, on the other hand, gives you a clear quest minutes after landing on planet Aether. You must go to each of the three sections of the planet and take back the energy that was stolen by the Ing. This nefarious race of spider-monsters live in “Dark Aether,” a toxic mirror-image equivalent of the planet that exists in another dimension due to an impact from a radioactive meteor. By stealing the energy from the peaceful Luminoth’s temples, Aether will cease to exist…forever consumed by its dark echo.
The player is given a clear call to action right up top. Save the planet from succumbing to the darkness by retrieving the energy in each of the three “levels” in the game. This ran counter to everything I loved about the first game. I liked the lack of levels! I wanted one big long adventure, not three small ones! What I didn’t realize at the time, however, was that this was ultimately a way to expand the game, not contract it.
Metroid Prime is a lot like Super Metroid in structure; one big, long mission with no definitive levels. There is a pretty big difference between the two games, however. Super Metroid can be completed, if you know what you’re doing, in about four hours. Metroid Prime, on the other hand, takes about twelve. At three times the length, Prime can be pretty demanding in testing your determination.
This is the brilliance of Echoes that I originally missed. There are not three different levels in this game, there are three different games back-to-back-to-back. Agon Wastes is its own game, as is Torvus Bog, as is Sanctuary Fortress. All the staples of a Metroidvania game are still there: the exploration, the backtracking, etc. However, the game is broken into these segments to keep the game from being crushed under the weight of its own scope. When you fold in the Light World/Dark World mechanic, you effectively double the size of the map without doubling the resources needed to make it. The result is three Metroidvania adventures all packaged into one cohesive world. Now, the player has a better ability to remember where they are after a week off from the game, the map is more digestible, and the overall quest is more streamlined.
It's bigger, but not overwhelming.
The cracks in the foundation only reveal themselves when you need to leave your mini-game mid-game. This happens twice, once in Torvus Bog (when you get the Seeker Missile) and once in Sanctuary Fortress (when you get the Power Bomb). In both instances, you leave one area to travel to a previous one, thereby poking a hole in the new structure. The backtracking actually feels out of place in this case! These are the only two circumstances where emulating the predecessor actually ends up weakening the game. Luckily, they are the only two egregious flaws, save for the fetch quest finale.
Okay, so we’ve addressed my first complaint: the structure. But what about these other gripes? Did I really need to have my beams restricted by ammo counts? And why are these bosses so hard?
Echoes, I feel safe in saying, was ahead of its time. The developers realized two things about the first game that could be improved, even though no fans or critics cited them as actual problems. These two issues, the beam ammo and boss battles, are actually both tied to the same fundamental goal: getting the player out of their comfort zone. In Prime, each beam is an improvement over the last. The Power Beam is a generic laser, the Wave Beam is stronger and will sometimes stun enemies, the Ice Beam is stronger still and will usually freeze enemies in their tracks, and the Plasma Beam is so powerful it can eviscerate enemies that used to be genuine headaches. Once you got each beam, there was little need to go back to the old one unless you were fighting an enemy with an explicit weakness. Now, in Echoes, your ammunition comes at a cost. Your Light Beam and Dark Beam are both equally powerful, with different perks, and the Annihilator Beam (a light/dark combo) is especially powerful, but depletes both sets of ammo. You need to manage your resources more carefully, think through your attacks, and plan ahead, lest you get caught at the mercy of an unforgiving villain who won’t go easy on you just because you’re depleted.
Likewise, the boss battles are now structured in a way that forces you to use nearly every tool in your tool belt. Previous Prime bosses had pretty clear strategies that you could use the whole battle through. Echoes, however, isn’t nearly as consistent. First use your missiles to stun an enemy, then your Sonar Visor to locate its weak point, hit it with a blast of dark energy, then morph ball over to it, drop a bomb, etc. The intricacy of the boss battles rewarded players who diversified their strategies and got familiar with everything Samus had to offer. These fights weren’t slogs of endless shooting and dodging…they were nuanced chess matches of give and take, culminating in one of the most rewarding boss battles of all time (Quadraxis).
This, plus their overall punishing difficulty, came at a time when video games weren’t challenging me to play differently. I had never been forced to think this complexly and I had never ever been told to “git gud.” Come at me, Dark Souls!
Over the years I’ve learned these negative emotions I’ve had in the back of my head are actually some of the game’s best selling points. Turns out these cons were pros all along. This only improves things since, hey, the game already had pros of its own. Let’s talk about some of those!
This is as much of a “dark, weird sequel” to Prime as Majora’s Mask is to Ocarina of Time. The use of color in this game, from dark purples to violent blues, creates an atmosphere as horrifying as it is beautiful. The idea of a hollow recreation, an echo, of something once vibrant and lively can be seen in everything from landscapes to enemies. The overall theme of light versus dark is woven into every molecule of the world. The artistic elements of this game are tight.
It’s taken me years to fully appreciate this work of genius. Some elements, like the structure and difficulty, never clicked in my head until recently. Other elements, like the ending fetch quest and two moments of backtracking, are genuine negatives, even if they are tiny in the grand scheme of things. I never disliked this game, but I never hailed it as the masterpiece that it truly deserves to be recognized as. I’ll probably never love it as much as the original Metroid Prime, as I just have too many emotions tied up with it, but I’ll now gladly hold this up as the pinnacle of gaming that it truly is. Echoes improves on elements of its predecessor, pushes every last inch of the envelope, and demonstrates what it means to be a honest-to-God sequel. This is Metroid Prime 2, dammit!
Not some shallow echo of the past.
Post Script
You didn’t think I’d talk about a Metroid game without discussing the music, would you? Tsk tsk! No, Echoes has a soundtrack that’s every bit as gorgeous and haunting as any. So, without further ado, here are my favorite tracks from this installment.
Submerged Temple – This is the best track in the game, maybe of the franchise? It’s a Super Metroid remake and it perfectly captures the mood of what Metroid is for me. It’s eerie, it’s lonely, it’s longing. I could (and do) listen to this song on repeat for hours on end.
Temple Grounds – Now we tune in for an entry that’s happier than most. Why? The temple is on its last legs as the Dark World threatens to consume it in its entirety! Well, there is a certain optimism and majesty in here that fills me with resolve. This is going to be a quest worth embarking on!
Quadraxis – This was one hell of a boss. He’s a defensive mechanism gone rogue; an AI taken over by the Ing. A technological marvel in an environmental nightmare, this fight is both ingenious and demanding, and the music reflects that masterfully.
Title Theme – There is no feeling in the world better than sitting in a dark room as the tendrils of a Metroid game reach out of the screen and suck you into their world. Hyperbolic? Maybe a bit. But I’ll be damned if I don’t love listening to this song and preparing for the mission ahead of me.
Luminoth Energy Controller – With so many amazing tracks still in the game, why would I pick this one? It’s a mood, basically. Quiet and subtle, there is a hint of magic in this subtle jingle that makes you feel like right mix of anxiety and ambition.
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