Echo Night

"I like haunted ships"

After snooping around my local EB store, I came across Echo Night. This game is made by From Software who brought us other title's such as the Kings Field series and the more recent Eternal Ring. This company loves to create first person games and they are pretty good at it to. Although Echo Night is not your typical survival horror it has enough goodness and scares to keep you hooked.

Gameplay

The game play is all done in first person and plays similar to the Resident Evil Survivor game. Just about everything is the same except for the fact that you move a lot slower in Echo Night than in Resident Evil. Just to let you know right of the bat, this is not your typical RE game with blood, guts, and exploding heads. You do not get any guns or weapons so you will be constantly figuring out various puzzles that are required to progress the game. The puzzles aren't very tough for the most part but some toward the end may require a bit of patience and thought. The controls are done in real time and it is a perfect combination with the ships eerie atmosphere in making you feel like you are the one roaming from room to room.

Story

Your name is Richard Osmond and your fathers house was mysteriously set ablaze. The house is burned to rubble and there is no trace of your father. Sometime earlier the same day when you arrived home a package was sent from your father with a key inside, kind of strange since you have not spoken to your father for a long time. You then receive a phone call from the police telling you of the incident and would like you to go there and gather any items from the destroyed house. You head over to the house and then after exploring for a while a whole new world swallows you up.

Audio

For the most part there is barely any music playing and it helps keep the dark atmosphere of the game. When there is music it is very dark and unsettling and gives you a very creeped out feeling like the one you get from playing Silent Hill 2. Most of the sound effects have a realistic feel to them and help make it more of a believable journey through a twisted tale of time. The only gripe I have about the audio is the voice over's. They are horrible and it seems like there was about three people doing voices for the cast of thirteen. Many times I found myself saying that sounds just like the one guy I saw about ten minutes ago. The voices also seem to lack any feeling to them and sound more like it was being read just as it was written in the script, other than that the audio was pretty good.

Video

The location designs are rather nice and interesting with plenty of detail in the surroundings to give a feeling of actually being there. Although there is plenty of detail in the locations you will notice that this game suffers from severe pixelation and graphical breakup. Each location looks good from a distance but when you are up close and personal you will see this big time, but unless you spend all your time running against the wall you'll only notice some breakup and pixelation. The character designs are alright and aren't really something to make your jaw hit the floor but are sufficient enough to get the job done.

Replayability

This game is actually pretty short, somewhere around a couple of hours. The game does have multiple endings but they all can be received if you save your game at a certain point. Other than the endings there really is nothing else, unless of course you get the sudden craving to play this again.

To buy or rent

I really liked this game and consider myself a scaredy cat when it comes to the RE style games but it wasn't to scary and it had enough story to keep me hooked. I strongly recommend you rent it first and see if this is what your looking for but if you can only buy remember that this game is more of a mystery story than a survival horror.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/06/02, Updated 11/06/02