Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Echoes takes place on a rogue planet in the Dasha region, Aether, inhabited by a race known as the Luminoth. The Luminoth lived peacefully, protecting the planet's pure natural energy, which they call the "Light of Aether". Five decades before the game's events, a Phazon meteor collides into the planet and leaves a scar causing environmental damage and splitting the planetary energy. The split creates another planet in an alternate dimension, Dark Aether, a mirror version of Aether that is dark, arid, and has a poisonous atmosphere.[8] Dark Aether becomes home to the Ing, cruel shapeshifting creatures who intend to destroy the Luminoth, and are able to possess bodies of the living, the dead, and the artificially intelligent. Eventually, the Ing and the Luminoth engage in a war over the planet's energy—whichever race controls it is capable of destroying the other.[9]

Around this time, Space Pirates set up a base on Aether after detecting the mutagenic substance Phazon on the planet. A Galactic Federation Marine Corps patrol ship encounters one of the Pirates' supply ships leaving the planet and an altercation follows. Both ships suffer heavy damage, and after the Federation loses contact with the Marines, they call the bounty hunter Samus Aran to investigate.[9]

While looking for the Marines near Aether, Samus's ship is damaged by severe lightning storms from the planet. Said storms have caused electromagnetic interference that prevented the Marines from communicating with the Federation. Samus finds the troops dead and surrounded by hive creatures called Splinters. The deceased Marines suddenly rise and attack her, apparently possessed, and she fights them off. Samus then encounters her evil doppelgänger, Dark Samus, for the first time, and after a small skirmish Dark Samus jumps through a portal. Samus decides to follow her through it and ends up on Dark Aether, a vile trans-dimensional duplicate of Aether, where she is attacked by a group of dark creatures called Ing, who capture Samus and after stealing the weapons from her suit throw her back through the portal.[9]

Upon returning to Aether, Samus learns that the Marines were attacked and killed by Ing-possessed Splinters, and decides to enter a nearby alien temple structure to look for clues.[9] When she reaches the structure, she meets U-Mos, the last remaining sentinel of the Luminoth,[10] an alien race that have fought against the Ing for decades. They are now on the verge of defeat.[11] He tells Samus that after a meteor struck Aether, the impact was so devastating, it created "Dark Aether", from which the Ing spawned.[12] He also tells Samus that the Ing have taken virtually all of the 'Light of Aether', the entire collective planetary energy for Aether that keeps the planet stable, and begs her to retrieve it,[13] for if either world gains all this energy, the other will perish.[14]

Samus goes to three regions—the Agon Wastes, a parched, rocky, desert wasteland region; Torvus Bog, a drenched swamp area that houses a partially submerged hydrosubstation; and the Sanctuary Fortress, a highly advanced cliffside fortress built by the Luminoth filled with corrupted robots that serves as the Ing hive in Dark Aether—to retrieve the Light of Aether and return it to the Luminoth temples. Samus fights Space Pirates, Dark Samus, and monstrous Ing guardians on her mission. After Samus retrieves three pieces of the Light of Aether, she enters the Ing's Sky Temple and faces the Emperor Ing, the strongest Ing who guards the remaining Light of Aether. Samus defeats the creature and retrieves the last remaining energy, causing Dark Aether to become critically unstable and collapse; however, her path out of the temple is blocked by a horribly altered and unstable Dark Samus. After defeating her foe, Samus escapes as the dark world disappears around her.[9]

Returning to U-Mos, Samus finds that the Luminoth were in a state of hibernation but have now awakened. After a brief celebration, Samus leaves Aether in her repaired gunship.[9] If the player completes the game with all of the items obtained, Dark Samus is shown reforming herself above Aether.[15]

Nintendo launched several websites to initiate a viral marketing campaign for Echoes,[28] with inspiration drawn from Halo 2's alternate reality game I Love Bees.[29] The websites included Luminoth Temple, an Internet forum; Channel 51, a conspiracy theory website that featured grainy QuickTime videos of Metroid Prime 2 as if it were footage of extraterrestrials;[28] Orbis Labs, which sold a "self-contained armored machine" called "Battle Sphere", similar to the Morph Ball;[28] and Athena Astronautics, which advertised sending women into space, featured a blog,[30] and offered job positions for bounty hunters on Monster.com. Athena Astronautics gave a random selection of 25 people who replied to the offer an "interactive training manual", which was in fact a free copy of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.[29]

A Metroid-related spoof of "I Love Bees" appeared online in October 2004, to which Nintendo reacted by stating that it was not involved with it. The campaign featured similarly named domain names such as ilovebeams.com, which each had an image of Samus with the caption: "All your bees are belong to us. Never send a man to do a woman's job."[30]

Echoes was released in Japan in 2009 for the Wii console, as part of the New Play Control! series. It has revamped controls that use the Wii Remote's pointing functionality, similar to those of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.[31] The credit system from Corruption is also included to unlock the original bonus content, as well as the ability to take snapshots of gameplay.[32] The difficulty of the boss battles in Echoes was also lowered.[33] The Wii version of Echoes was later released in North America on August 24, 2009, as part of Metroid Prime: Trilogy, a single-disc compilation that also includes Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Both Prime and Echoes contain all of the enhancements found in their Japanese New Play Control! counterparts.[34] The compilation was re-released on the Wii U's Nintendo eShop on January 29, 2015.[35][36]

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was critically acclaimed.[37] Comparing it to Metroid Prime, GameSpot's Brad Shoemaker said that Echoes was as good as its predecessor, and delivered everything he expected.[43] IGN's Matt Casamassina called the gameplay "superb" and "nearly flawless",[45] and Vicious Sid of GamePro praised Echoes as "an extraordinary return to form".[42] Echoes was considered one of the best single-player experiences on the GameCube by Kristan Reed of Eurogamer, who also considered the story to be "intricately designed and elaborately constructed into a coherent environment".[40] GameSpot and IGN praised the campaign as a lengthy and rewarding adventure and appreciated the minimum 20 hours required to complete the game.[43][45] The game was considered suitable for players of any age by Computer and Video Games, which called Echoes essential for anyone who owned a GameCube.[47] The theme's dynamics between dark and light was lauded by GamePro, along with the "simple, quirky, and ridiculously addictive" multiplayer mode.[42]

Echoes' graphics and design received significant praise; GameSpot considered it some of the best on the GameCube,[43] and IGN called it "gorgeous" and "one of the prettiest GameCube titles".[45] The Guardian's Nick Gillett found the game entertaining and stated that its maps, terrain, and bestiary made the game an amazing epic space adventure.[48] Bryn Williams from GameSpy complimented the game's controls and level design, commenting that the game was challenging but fair.[44]

A major criticism of Echoes focused on the game's high difficulty, with Game Informer declaring that "not only are the boss fights unforgiving, the environment is sometimes difficult to follow".[41] Some reviewers found it difficult to search for the Sky Temple keys. GameSpot criticized this mechanism and called it "a scavenger hunt much tougher than the rest of the game",[43] and 1UP.com said that the only purpose it served was to artificially extend the game's length.[39] The game's multiplayer mode was also considered by some to be unsatisfying. GameSpy called it a "secondary feature",[44] The Age's Jason Hill called it "bland and dull"[49] and Eurogamer said that the single-player features did not translate well to that mode.[40] Game Informer criticized the multiplayer mode because of its inclusion of the lock-on mechanism, considering it a feature that made multiplayer too simple.[41]

IGN was critical of Echoes' graphics and noted that the textures sometimes blurred when viewed up close, and the frame rate occasionally decreased. Publications including IGN and The Independent considered the gameplay too similar to Metroid Prime,[45][50][51] while GamePro was unhappy that the game did not have a customizable control scheme.[42] Computer and Video Games and The Age were disappointed that Echoes was not as innovative in terms of gameplay as Metroid Prime.[47][49] The Age's review also found the control scheme "unwieldy" and the difficulty "unforgiving".[49] Serge Pennings of The Observer noted there were too few opportunities to save the game while playing,[52] an aspect X-Play also criticized by saying that most of the game's difficulty was "because the save system is poorly implemented and downright cheap".[46]

Echoes won an award in almost every category it was nominated for at the 2004 Nintendo Power Awards,[53] and won awards for Best GameCube Game of 2004 from IGN,[54] Electronic Gaming Monthly,[55] and GameSpy.[56] The game received a runner-up position in GameSpot's 2004 "Best Action Adventure Game" category across all platforms.[57] It was rated the 174th best game made on a Nintendo system in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list,[58] the 74th best game by GameFAQs users,[59] the 15th best GameCube game by IGN,[60] and the 13th best by GameSpy.[61]

Echoes sold 470,000 copies in North America in December 2004.[62] It was the ninth best-selling game in its debut month in Japan with 16,105 copies sold, ranking it behind Yu Yu Hakusho Forever and Hanjuku Hero 4: 7-Jin no Hanjuku Hero.[63] By August 2009, 800,000 copies had sold worldwide.[64]