Echo

Oh how I love the feeling I get when the blog reaches another letter.  Oddly enough, getting to "E" isn't the only milestone in my little project this time around.  Echo is the first FPS game on my list.  Make no mistake, though, Echo is not a typical FPS game.  No, typically, FPS games are fun...

Ok, so there are a few things that I like about Echo.  If you press "esc" it takes you to a kind of interactive options menu where you interact with nodes by shooting them.  I wish more games would implement that.  There's not even any deep reasoning for it.  I just think it's cool.

Also, I like the way everything is conveyed.  You experience things by doing them and it's not confusing.  The game never feels the need to say "hey, listen.  Jump on that plant."  It trusts that the player will look at the plant opening with the little circley thingies coming out of it and infer that he or she is supposed to jump on it.

Too bad that's pretty much the extent of the stuff I liked about Echo.  The rest of it annoyed me.

First off, I'd like to speak directly to all who hope to go into a career in sound mixing.  Please don't make the sound effects so obnoxiously loud.  They should be about as loud as the music.  When you kill things in this game, they release a hissing sound that hurts my ears.

Also, the sight of shooting projectiles is so jumpy that it hurts my eyes.  This isn't helped by the neon visual style.  So far, my only senses left unscathed are touch, taste and smell.  At least the control setup is comfortable (and I would find it very impressive for the game to harm my senses of smell or taste).

I also hate how the game wrestles control from you every 2 seconds.  Again, I think it's good that the game trusts me to make inferences, but come on.  Yanking the camera from me to show me some unexplained phenomenon that makes no sense to me and that I end up skipping anyway is just not polite, and this game does it every thirty seconds!

Ehh, I'm getting tired.  One more rage point before I sign out for the day:  I have no idea what I need to do to beat this game.  As far as I can tell, the enemies spawn infinitely and there are no targets other than the enemies.   It seems like the only ending to this game is a big fat "Lose" screen.  That's not a bad thing, and in fact that kind of structure has vastly improved games like Missile Command (I learned that from watching Extra Credits.  Have I mentioned I like those guys?).  Thing is, Missile Command scores you.  It gives you some kind of sense of accomplishment.  Echo does not, and honestly, the rest of the game is way too vague for it to fall back on the "artistic statement" argument.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay bright.

Links
pew pew screeeeaaaaaaiiiiiieeeeieieeieiiiieeeeegh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18585
a much more entertaining thing that I alluded to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU