A tale of two worlds

(Cutting it a bit close here)

Recently I’ve gone back to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and I’m glad I stumbled across it in the first place. Out of the Metroid Prime Trilogy I think Echoes was the one least publised, but that’s just my opinion. Finding it in the pre-owned section, I decided to get it based on my experiences of the first one (I don’t have it I borrowed it). And the game has lived up to expectations so far.

Aside from being a Metroidvania game (an adventure game that lets the player find their own way at the own pace, emphasis on exploring), the main feature is a Light / Dark theme which presents itself in two, linked, forms.

The first is the Dark world, which is like a mirror of the light world, except it isn’t. The layout changes, inaccessible areas are now open and paths that are open in the ‘light’ world are now blocked off. Rooms that contained say a save station, now are ammo depots. Even the atmosphere is trying to kill you. Although this is a neat idea and I like it, you can’t help shake the feeling that you’re retreading previously explored areas as you explore the dark world. The layout hasn’t changed drastically and most ‘rooms’ look similar between both worlds, so it feels like the staff were taking short-cuts when it came to level design.

The other form is the light and dark beam weapons. They act as a sort of reverse polarity weapon, creatures that are weak to light beam are generally resistant to dark, though this isn’t always true. This inverse polarity only really comes into effect in the dark world. Seeing as the light world is supposed to be a normal world, that means that most weapons will work anyway unless the game is being horribly specific. In the Dark world, the light beam is your saviour for the most part as most creatures are weak to "bright light" and it can super charge the safe areas so that they are deadly to most creatures as well as open doors and power system crystals. Dark beam, not so useful.
The light beam fires beams on intense light which burn most enemies when you charge up, dealing more damage. The charge up shot fires a spread shot which can incinerate Ing (main bad things) if you persist.
If the light beam is ‘fire’ then the dark beam is ‘ice’. The charge shot homes in one what you are locked onto and freezes it. While not very useful against Ing, it has the same effect as the ice beam on Metroids.

I could go on but meh, feeling lazy and its hard enough trying to work out what to say next. So I’ll end on the final note: I do not like any aspect of morph ball.