Review for ECHO. Game for PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 19/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 11/10/2017
I took longer than expected to review ECHO. I did it for two main reasons: first of all because it was a debut, a new beginning for professionals in the videogame sector who gave IO-Interactive they turned into Ultra Ultra. Secondly, I decided to devote more time to the title because it intrigued me deeply. It's one of my favorite genres, to understand.
ECHO is an action with very clear Stealth colors which tells the story of En, a girl who has been fleeing aboard a huge spaceship for centuries. The plot is interesting, so I would like to tell it briefly and without spoilers, just an introductory note, since I understood, perhaps a little late, that ECHO it is first of all its plot and then its gameplay. Our protagonist grew up in a place far from us both spatially and temporally. We are (approximately) far into the future of humanity.
En was born not from parents in flesh and blood but through the experiments of a mythomaniac who built thousands of En. In the early stages of the game we will also see flashbacks that tell how these human beings (probably clones) lived according to the dictates of their creator, who inculcated in their heads a story, a bizarre religion that speaks of a Palace of Wonders which they absolutely must achieve.
But our En was different. She rebelled against her father and her "sisters" and in a disaster, of which we only know what the protagonist herself remembers along with the London on-board computer, she killed her sisters and caused the death of her father. Yet, after a century in cryostasis, En decides to travel to find the elusive Palace of Wonders and to redeem his life.
And the Palace finds it. Oh, if he finds it. From the discovery of a French-style palace, a lot of style Versailles, the actual gameplay of ECHO. As we wander around this fantastic and completely dark place we feel that something is wrong. Nothing is as it should be. There is no current and the place is so large that it occupies the entire surface of a small planet. As soon as En manages to activate the electric current the problems begin and the game actually begins.
The Palace "comes to life" and inside it appear projections of En herself, shapeless clones that can't even move and have liquid bodies. The palace goes in Blackout and restarts several times. With each restart the clones become better, their features more and more perfect and similar to our character. Thus comes the stealth variant of the game. You have to hide behind the columns, sneak out without being seen and use the gun only for isolated enemies that we can't get around to use a melee stun technique. All inserted in a plot that is 10 and praise!
And here it is after just a few hours of play ECHO shows its pivotal point: the clones and the palace learn from our movements, copy our style of play and apply it against us. Going around columns to lurk in blind spots will soon become useless. The gun that we have supplied is able to kill the clones that fall within the trajectory of the bullet even if very far from each other, but as the game learns from us, the clones begin to be careful not to line up in a row. Simply brilliant.
But there is a "but". Unfortunately this aspect becomes slightly cloying because the stealth tactics that we can implement in the palace are not infinite and once our enemies have learned and copied them we can do little to resist them.
ECHO supports 4K, which makes it one unprecedented visual spectacle, a narrative masterpiece, an element of sure entertainment that for the writer was a very pleasant discovery. The problems in the game are all about movement. En is not "articulated" nor does it have particular mimetic abilities. Getting to the bottom of the adventure will be a real challenge on any difficulty level. A note of merit goes to the main menu of the game. I was like a fool for a good five minutes looking at that wonderful closed eye. Then I discovered that clicking it opened and, moving the mouse, the eye followed the cursor highlighting the menu. Superb.
It will certainly not be the best game on the face of the Earth but for a team that has started (almost) from scratch we can say that we are facing an absolute masterpiece in terms of narrative, graphics and longevity. Too bad only for some dynamics of the movements, boring and woody. For the rest: buy it now.
► ECHO is an Adventure-Action-indie game developed and published by Ultra Ultra for PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 19/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 11/10/2017
