Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Metroid Prime 2: Dark Echoes in Japan and Korea) is the second Prime game in the Prime trilogy. It is a direct sequel to Metroid Prime, although chronologically, it occurs after Metroid Prime Hunters. It was developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube. It is the first Metroid game to have a multiplayer feature.

Story
The game begins in Samus' Gunship traveling toward Aether, with a mission to rescue Galactic Federation troopers who had crashed onto the planet as well. As she enters the atmosphere, her ship is struck by lightning and the power fails. The Gunship is sent crashing onto the planet below, but regains power after crashing through the top of a cave. Samus begins the game with many of her abilities. While she is exploring the GF trooper's abandoned base of operations, however, she is sucked to Dark Aether after an encounter with a strange blue being that looks like her. There, vicious creatures, called Ing, attack her, and all her abilities besides her Morph Ball, Charge Beam, Power Beam, Combat Visor, Varia Suit, and Scan Visor are taken away.

Despite this, she continues her search of the GF trooper base, eventually finding their landing site, which has their burning ship, the G.F.S. Tyr, situated there. After watching their commanding officer's last entry log, she discovers all the trooper were brutally murdered by Dark Splinters. She moves on to investigate their deaths, but soon realizes she has reached the end of the line: the room that might continue her path is blocked by some form of shielding that is impervious to her weapons systems. However, she finds a missile launcher near the landing site, and after a short battle with some Dark Splinters, continues to explore the Temple Grounds.

Samus eventually makes it to the Great Temple, where she battles a Dark Alpha Splinter and recovers a mysterious "Energy Transfer Module", which, as she finds out from an alien Luminoth called U-Mos, is the key to the Luminoth's victory over the Ing. U-Mos sends Samus to Agon Sector, where she must recover the first of the four Dark Aether energies.

Samus does so, exploring Agon and Dark Agon, as well as the Space Pirate complex contained within both. After recovering a Temple Key and recovering her Space Jump Boots, Aran infiltrates the Pirate Base, coming face to face with Dark Samus. Aran gains the Dark and Light Beams soon afterward, going once again to Dark Aether to recover the two remaining Dark Temple Keys. Once doing so, she destroys Amorbis and recovers the energy of Dark Agon.

Once she returns to the Great Temple, U-Mos gives her the mission of going to Torvus Sector and recovering the lost energy there. Samus complies, exploring Torvus, which has a lesser, but still prominent, degree of Space Pirate invasion. This time, Samus faces the Boost Guardian to get the Boost Ball, the Grapple Guardian to get the Grapple Beam, and before facing the Alpha Blogg, she obtains the Gravity Boost while finding the three Dark Temple Keys and accessing Dark Torvus Temple. There, she fights the Chykka, obtaining the Dark Visor and the energy lost to Dark Torvus.

However, upon return to U-Mos, the great warrior tells her she has one more task: to go to Sanctuary Sector, a fortress high in the cliffs, where the last Energy Controller lies. There, Samus gains the last of her missing abilities, the Spider Ball and the Power Bomb, which she returns to Torvus to re-obtain. She then re-fights Dark Samus, acquiring the Echo Visor. Once she finds the Dark Temple keys, Samus faces Quadraxis, a Luminoth unit gone rogue, whom after defeating, acquires the Annihilator Beam and the third energy controller - that of the Ing Hive.

When she goes back to U-Mos, he, with the power Aether now has thanks to her, gives her the Light Suit, a suit that actually has the Light of Aether within it. Then, he tells her the most dangerous mission she'd have to complete on Aether: to obtain the final Energy Controller, hidden within the Sky Temple. To enter the Sky Temple, though, she must find nine keys, two in Dark Agon, two in Dark Torvus, two in the Ing Hive, and three within the Sky Temple Grounds. With much difficulty and complex strategy, Samus finds these keys, and enters the Sky Temple.

Within the Sky Temple, Samus faces the Emperor, a mighty behemoth that rules the Ing Horde. Although she is almost defeated, Samus prevails, and obtains the final energy controller. Within the energy, Dark Aether starts to fall apart, and with only eight minutes, Samus races down to the Sky Temple gateway, where she confronts her old arch-nemesis - Dark Samus.

Dark Samus and our heroine duel out to the death, but Samus utilizes the Metroid Prime's deadly flaw - an overload of phazon. Sometimes, Dark Samus bursts out Phazon blasts which Samus can collect with her Charge Beam and fire back at her. Once Samus does this continuously whilst watching out for the fiend's devilish attacks, she prevails. Although the Dark Samus tries to touch Samus and take over her suit, she vanishes into small blue sparks before this could happen (again). Samus then quickly activates a portal conveniently placed right next to the Gateway, and, before Ing can kill her, jumps through and back into Light Aether.

The Luminoth, glad that they have their planet back, rejoice and thank Samus. Samus gives them back their equipment (the Light, Dark, and Annihilator Beams, the Dark and Echo Visors, and the Light and Dark Suits) and returns to her gunship, where she takes off and flies off, into the vast darkness of space.

However, after Samus leaves, Dark Samus reforms out of Phazon energy in space near Aether. This is continued on in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Gameplay
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes retains many gameplay elements from the original Metroid Prime, a game that initially had met with mixed reactions from fans and critics alike when it was announced for the first time that it would use a first-person perspective; however, the original Metroid Prime was found to be true to the traditional gameplay of the Metroid series, focusing primarily on non-linear exploration, with occasional combats. Likewise, Metroid Prime 2 encourages players to explore huge scenes, solve puzzles and defeat enemies when they're present. Weapons, tools, and expansions can be obtained during the adventure, and progress is based on usage of those items and defeat of bosses.

However, Metroid Prime 2 also features new additions, including the exploration of an alternate world, new items and a multiplayer mode. Below is a brief explanation of those distinctions.

Light and Dark concept
Because Aether experienced a severe impact from a Phazon meteor, it suffered a dimensional division, resulting in the creation of an evil variation of itself, Dark Aether. During the events of the game, Samus has to explore both worlds in order to recover the Light energy Aether needs to subsist, and that was stolen by the inhabitants of the dark version of the planet, the Ing. While she can safely stay on Light Aether, she experiences harsher situations on Dark Aether, mostly because of its evil and literally damaging atmosphere, and can only survive within there if she navigates among spots of light known as Safe Zones and recovers energy with them. Samus can travel between Light and Dark Aether with the help of dimensional portals, activated only by certain weapons.

This concept of light and darkness is also reflected in the type of items found during the game. Replacing the traditional Ice, Plasma and Wave Beams are the Dark, Light and Annihilator Beams, able to damage different types of enemies according to the world they come from. The Dark and Echo Visors allow Samus to see, respectively, invisible materials and non-perceptible sounds, and the Dark and Light Suit help her to survive on Dark Aether during much longer periods of time.

The enemies also come into two versions: Light and dark forms, the latter being called Darklings. They are vulnerable to weapons that are of opposite nature to theirs, a very important detail to remember. It is advised that the Light and Dark Beams have limited ammo, something never seen before in previous Metroid game, so Samus has to find expansions to increase their capacities and, meanwhile, use her new weapons wisely (although she can recover ammo with the help of her gunship or an Ammo Station).

Multiplayer
Main article: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes multiplayer

Game style
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is commonly identified as a darker and more challenging game than its predecessor, the former being because of its plot device. With the story regarding Aether and the tragic past of the Luminoth, as well as the introduction of a dark and devilish dimension, the game features a certain concept of fear, death and corruption never seen previously in the series, an aspect that would later be extended in Metroid Prime 3. Samus, having never faced before an evil force like the Ing or Dark Samus (which are able to corrupt anyone and anything to force them at will to fight on their side), learns the hard way that the Space Pirates are not the only bad guys in the galaxy, and that the evil can be both present in many other forms, and as devastating as to nearly extinguish innocent civilizations. In fact, she notices that even the Pirates are vulnerable to the darkness the Ing bring with them, as even a Pirate can be turned into a Darkling in minutes.

The game also has a higher difficulty level than that of the first Metroid Prime. One of the reasons is the elements from Dark Aether, as not only its dark atmosphere is damaging: When it reaches a regular enemy, it corrupts it and the enemy is more powerful and resistant, its attacks are more devastating and it takes more shots to be defeated; for example, when a Splinter is corrupted by the dark atmosphere, it becomes a Dark Splinter and its movements are more agile and accurate. Save Stations are comparatively rare, this forces the player to play the game for as long as necessary until one is found; this becomes a severe problem in later levels, most notably when the player is looking for bosses like Alpha Blogg and Spider Guardian and if one of these defeat Samus, she will restart from a very far point of the game, forcing her to redo many things that couldn't be recorded prior to the boss battle. Another source of challenge comes from the backtracking, which plays a major role in this game and occasionally forces the player (after collecting a new item) to completely exit from the area he or she is on so that a new part of a previous zone can be explored, another new item collected and normal progress resumed. Finally, fulfilling the requirements to enter the final area of the game requires a much more extensive research and exploration than to enter the final area of the first Metroid Prime.

While most fans have enjoyed this new challenge (which becomes even higher on Hard difficulty), they also agreed that it becomes occasionally abusive, particularly when time comes to find the Sky Temple Keys. Because of this and the aforementioned facts, Retro Studios concluded that the game was too difficult for casual players and therefore decided to moderate this aspect for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, by adding a difficulty setting since beginning (Normal and Veteran are available at first, Hypermode is unlocked by accomplishing certain conditions).

"Revolution" Demo
When Nintendo first demoed the tentatively named "Revolution" (later named "Wii") remote at the Tokyo Game Show on September 15, 2005 and in America at a New York hotel on December 8, they allowed select press to try eight tech-demos, in private. Most demonstrated simple concepts to introduce the capabilities of the new device. In order of showing, the demos were: a block shooting-range, the fishing game that ended up in Wii Play, an electric maze with a baton, air hockey, shooting baskets, a game where a Pokémon had to be found hidden among others, and flying a paper plane in Super Mario Sunshine's Delfino Island. 

The most final and most advanced was a version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes that had been retooled by Retro Studios for a few weeks to incorporate pointer controls. This demo was the only one to use (thus introducing) the Nunchuk. The buttons were mapped to: A:Jump, B:Fire, Z1:Switch Visors, Z2:Lock-on/Scan, and Select:Morph Ball. The last three buttons were eventually renamed "C", "Z", and "-", respectively.

When imagining how various genres would work with this control systems, IGN stated:

"Using Nintendo's controller to navigate first-person shooters is going to be an amazingly empowering, freeing experience. We know this because Nintendo demoed a modified version of Metroid Prime 2 Echoes using the new peripheral, and the potential is undeniably jaw-dropping. In the demo, players could move Samus through the environments with the attached analog trigger. The need to lock-on to enemies, however, was been eliminated, thanks to a new level of precision aiming made possible with the pointer. In a level of accuracy rivaled only by a PC mouse configuration, gamers could simply use the device to point and shoot."

New Play Control
New Play Control! Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was revealed at Nintendo's Fall Press Conference in Japan, along with a similar remake of  Metroid Prime, as part of the New Play Control! series. The games have new motion based controls and slightly improved graphics, and is set for a 2009 release in Japan.

Metroid Prime Trilogy
Metroid Prime Trilogy was announced on May 22, 2009 for release in North America on August 24 of the same year for $49.99. The disc includes Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption with Wii controls, as well as new content, menus, and unlockable media.

Trivia

 * Echoes is the first game in the series to have a multiplayer mode (though Metroid claimed to on its box art) and to have ammunition for its new Beam weaponry.
 * Although Echoes is the sequel to Metroid Prime, chronologically, it occurs after Metroid Prime Hunters.
 * The multiplayer track titled "Hunters" is a remix of Super Metroid's Green Brinstar music. The flooded part of the Torvus Bog temple plays a remix of Super Metroid's "Red Brinstar" theme. Also, Metroid Prime 2's escape theme is a remix of the original Metroid's escape theme.
 * There is a minigame based on it in WarioWare: Smooth Moves.