Even in such a fantastic setting, the plausibility of our hero (who ostensibly works for money as a bounty hunter) silently taking orders from this alien stranger is a hard sell. Samus is content to take his requests and fulfill them with no argument at all. The friendly sentinel talks at Samus, not with her, and his pleas for help hardly generate emotional involvement by the player. The actual implementation of the Luminoth encounters is hardly dramatic, though. There are more and better cinema scenes and, for the first time in any Metroid game, direct interaction with another living, sentient being. On its surface, Echoes seems to bear a heavy new emphasis on story. In terms of raw quality, disregarding legacy and innovation, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is easily one of the best titles on GameCube and of this entire generation. At the same time, the sequel easily lives up to its predecessor’s outstanding degree of polish, while subtly enhancing some elements of story and mood. In one sense, Echoes is a disappointment in that it fixes none of the original game’s flaws and does little to advance the franchise beyond the dozens of innovations introduced in Metroid Prime. It’s more stunningly organic environments, more smooth but restrictive lock-on controls, more spatial puzzles, more cool weapons and upgrades, more regenerating stealth enemies, more exploration, more classic Metroid backtracking, more fluid jumping, more searching for keys to the last area. The sequel to Metroid Prime is largely more of the same.
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