You have to applaud Nintendo for milking its mascots for longer than most companies could. Their most popular characters — Mario and Luigi; Link from “The Legend of Zelda;” and Samus Aran in “Metroid” — have been around since the original Nintendo Entertainment System was released nearly 20 years ago.

Still, after the fourth or fifth Mario game on a single system, even the most hardcore Nintendo fan can feel a bit tired with the same characters. “Metroid Prime 2” is only the second outing for Samus on the GameCube, but the game feels repetitive for anyone who played the original “Metroid Prime.”

As the game starts, we see Samus Aran, an intergalactic bounty hunter, get a distress call from the surface of a mysterious planet. Samus answers the call, but finds an entire platoon of space marines wiped out when he arrives.

The original “Metroid Prime” took Samus out of her usual adventures and put her into a bright, beautiful 3-D world. For the first time, gamers take control of Samus with a first-person perspective that helped make it one of the best GameCube games released.

Two years later, Nintendo decided it was time to release another space adventure, but the sequel feels no different from its predecessor.

In many ways, this is good — the controls are still simple and intuitive. Few other games make use of every button on the GameCube controller.

Graphically, the series did not look like it made many improvements in the past two years, but the world and creatures are still amazing to look at.

Once you stop gawking at the world and focus on gameplay, however, you might be in for a disappointment. The game starts slowly, having gamers spend most of their time scanning objects to slowly develop the plot.

Eventually, shooting will take a bigger role and you will have to face huge monsters to pass the later levels. In this aspect, the sequel outdoes “Metroid Prime” in creating a difficulty level that requires patience and skill.

After you finish the single-player game, you can get up to three friends to join you in battle mode. Nintendo games are notorious for fun multiplayer modes, but “Metroid Prime 2” is lacking in this aspect. The levels are designed too simply to create any strategic plans, and lack of online connection forces gamers to share the same screen.

Even though “Metroid Prime 2” often feels repetitive, it follows a winning formula that will engage most gamers who love to blast away at alien creatures.