I’ve been reluctant to try ECHO ever since I’ve heard of it. Since then the game managed to maintain its mixed reception and, unfortunately, even the studio behind the game Ultra Ultra ceased to exist. Now that I’ve finally played it, I can understand why it never became a success. It’s not a game that can be enjoyed by many and I can’t say that the “enjoyment” is what I felt when playing it, especially the latter parts. Yet, it’s also a game experience to remember, something that felt unique and awe inspiring at its best and at least memorable and curious at its worst.
ECHO is a bit hard to describe despite its very simple rules and rather clear genre mechanics. It plays like a third person stealth action title, with light focus on exploration and a story that works better on its visuals and ideas rather than the conventional storytelling level. You explore gigantic (and I do mean gigantic) levels, can crouch, can sense dangerous life forms via energy powered suit that can also dampen the impact from high falls as long as you have power. You have a gun that’s deadly and insanely loud (Blade Runner seems like the best comparison here) that also uses energy. And you have the dangerous life forms, which are the main selling point of the game, – the echoes.
Echoes are, for all intents and purposes, clones of the playable character except without a will of their own. They seem keen on killing the playable character, but despite always possessing the same abilities as her, they don’t know how to utilize them. Except, when you use said abilities and they learn. The place the main portion of the game happens on, a Palace that created these clones, works in cycles. When the lights are on it records the actions that player does – whenever you run, walk, crouch-walk, vault, eat, sprint, shoot, open/close doors, use elevators, cross water and etc. After a set amount of time (or when scripted) the Palace goes into a Blackout when all player actions are not recorded, lights are off, some things don’t work but the echoes are still active. When the power goes back on, all echoes become re-activated (even if you killed them before) and know how to perform the actions you performed before the Blackout (and forget everything you didn’t do, even if they did so a cycle before that). So the more efficiently you play – the more likely the enemies will get you.
The idea is absolutely brilliant in theory. And during the first half of the game it works almost consistently well. You mix your actions, trying to not create problems for your future self, taking longer routes, moving slower than you’d want, not using a gun because that could spell death to you later, as you work your way through majestic but sterile, huge yet somewhat confusing architecture of the levels. There are constant highs and lows as you try to be careful, it fails, you play recklessly, almost get killed, fight off, miraculously escape or fail and restart the room again. And it does feel like some of those moments, some of the problems you’re having are of your own making. And it feels great.
And horrifying. The first 2 hours of the game felt more alien, more oppressive, more horrifying to me than lots of openly horror games I’ve played over the years. The universe of the game, whenever its a far future of deep space exploration or some alternate reality, is feels constantly off, somehow wrong, reminiscent of the best examples of sci-fi where humans push so far with technology and social norm, yet it all remains so suspiciously, so disgustingly familiar in all the wrong unpleasant ways. The Palace itself, this horrible and imposing structure seemingly spread across the entire surface of the planet, so beautiful in its classic architecture, yet so cold, pointless and utterly devoid of life, working on some weird unknowable logic, remains interesting until the end, despite its intentionally copy-paste-like appearance.
But the game falters and fails, quite horribly by the end, and becomes less and less interesting to play as it goes on. It’s not just the fact that it relies almost solely on its core mechanic of using cycles to your advantage. Rather, it’s that it doesn’t know when to stop and change. There’s a magic moment past the midpoint of the game where it could’ve gone different or even ended soon after, where it would’ve been smart. It has gotten annoying by that point, but it was still carrying itself on the promise and the atmosphere. Yet, instead of changing or ending, the game decides to continue using the exact same pattern as before, yet making it “even harder”. Which in this case means going from chaotic and sometimes annoying but often fun to insufferably obnoxious. The whole final chapter of the game is just horrible to go through and it kills all momentum and all promise the game had before. And is the reason why I can’t really recommend the game.
It’s a real shame. ECHO is unique, it’s memorable, its core ideas and mechanics are fun and while not refined enough they do lead to a few good hours in the first half of the game. But in trying to push them further, the whole thing breaks and becomes utterly unenjoyable by the end. I’m glad that I’ve finally given it a go. Glad that it exists. And I hope that other developers can look at the game to get inspired, especially the horror element of it as I’ve not felt as uneasy when just going through rather normal looking places ever since the original Silent Hill so many years ago. But should you play this game yourself? Probably not. If you can get it for cheap and try and just enjoy the opening hours, definitely go for it. When you feel like the game’s getting frustrating, however, just stop, it won’t get better. Quite the opposite.