I played ECHO over the weekend. It has been on my to do list of games to play for quite some time. I bought it during one of many sales, as the gameplay footage and trailer intrigued me. Here’s the rundown of what I’ve experienced thus far:
You (or En as the character is called) wake up inside of a spaceship after a looooong rest; greeted by a soul(?) within a cube that doesn’t particular care much for you. After a walk that feels like an eternity we begin the game!
En lands her ship on a strange palace planet in search of another one of her companion cubes. Armed with only a cybernetic stealth suit, a disabled pistol and an annoyed companion cube attached; En makes her way further into these ruins that seen to go on forever.
Eventually En finds her way inside the palace and discovers there is no electricity. What follows is a lot of wandering around in the dark and random tuning forks she calls “Voices”. Your suit is able to decrypt the message contained within each one you find.
Eventually you are able to get the power to come back online… sort of. The power keeps going out, and your suit freezes every time it happens. Each time the power resets things in the environment change. Flowers are suddenly decorating your surroundings, more elegant furniture appears, and eventually you start to see more and more of these strange melty beings. With each rolling blackout they start to look more and more like you. They first appear to be dead, but then another blackout rolls around and their standing up just to fall down, then another blackout, and eventually they go from staggering around like a bunch of albino drunkards to being quite nimble but afraid of water.
It’s important to stay out of their site when you can. You leave imprints of your movements around the environment that your echoes mimic every time the power resets. In other words if you’re not careful you could be done in by your own past movements. It’s quite a trippy concept. It should also be noted that ECHO runs on Unreal Engine 4, just like Death Stranding! Somehow this looks more promising though… you at least get the walking simulator part out of the way eventually. :trollface:
As of writing this I’ve only put two hours into it. While I think the intro into the game felt longer than it should have been I am really intrigued by the stealth mechanic, and I want to see what more lies to this place, these copies of En, the rolling blackouts, and what lies within this planet sized palace. Sadly this is where my journey ends for now, or until another weekend rolls around.