Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Hands On) (GameCube) Preview

The single-player demo we were privileged enough to play starts off in very sinister and interesting fashion. A small piece of text gives you details of Samus' current situation, a distress call has been received from a distant planet, Samus is sent to investigate. On entering the strange planet her ship is seriously damaged by a huge electric-pulse. The ship crashes down and the game begins...

The environment we played in was stunning. The levels of detail and intricate textures were utterly stunning! Not wanting to spend too much time admiring the scenery (which is quite hard to do) we moved on. Soon we were confronted by a rather mean group of Space Pirates. Compared to the previous GameCube game the Pirates seem to have got quite a bit faster, and they certainly seem to have quite a bit more intelligent!

There are some awesome new weapons to deal with any foe you come up against! Along with the normal Metroid inventory, there are now new 'light and 'dark' beams, its all very mysterious and shrouded in mystery, and seems to relate to a massive part of the Echoes plot, sadly Nintendo didn't want to tell us anymore!

After a little time on the E3 Demo things start to get really interesting! Dark Samus (shown at the end of Metroid Prime) puts in a disturbing experience, and you have to make chase. Sadly your progress is blocked and you simply have to give up.

Showing clearly the contrast between 'light and 'dark', you now have to enter the dark side of the planet Aether in order to continue. This is where the game gets insanely good, and we got a bit too excited. You are informed that the dark world is so dangerous, and so volatile that even walking in it will cause you to lose health at an alarming rate...not good then.

So how do you survive in the dark world? By shining our light beam at certain objects we were able to make an area safe for us to walk about in without dying, which is handy. There are some very sinister and dangerous enemies in this new world. The Ing is a hugely ugly looking insect, that can cause some major problems if you don't get rid of it quite sharply. It took us some serious pummelling, but after spurting out some foul language we managed to overcome the bugger ands we moved on. Our 'reward' for such a wonderful achievement was a return ticked to the light world; now when we say reward...

Who do we find back in the light world? It's the lovely (and deadly) Dark Samus. A little movie plays to build up the tension and then the Darker version of Samus runs at the lighter version...we panicked, a lot.