HomeFeaturesEcho Point Nova
Titanfall and Tribes fans, don’t miss skyfaring shooter Echo Point NovaLead in the clouds
Lead in the clouds
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Greylock Studio
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Greylock Studio
Not technically anIndiescovery-type deal, this, as Edwin already called attention to breathless FPSEcho Point Novaback when the demo came out. The full game has just released, though, and as someone with such chronicTitanfallwithdrawal that I’ll ingest anything with a decent wallrun, I’ve bought it, played it, and am here to tell you why it rocks.
Echo Point Nova, which is set atop a vast, freely roamable patch of floating islands, does as good a job as any game of recreating the feel of TF’s nimble-yet-intuitive parkour. The wallrunning, double jumping, and grapple hooking are basically 1:1 matches. But it goes much further on speed and scale, happy to let you hurl yourself across great chasms of shattered stone and ping around arenas far faster than enemies could hope to track you.
(The more fantastical setting and capacity for chained-together, frictionless bumslides also calls to mindTribes, that other Movement Shooter Series James Likes But Is Essentially Dead. No,you’recrying.)
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Greylock Studio
Obviously there’s no shortage of speedy shooters, and since we’re already on a roll of comparisons, there are touches of modernDoomandUltrakillin how slaying foes drops the health and ammo you need to keep the carnage going. Even so, the sheer size and pace of Echo Point Nova’s aerial gunfights helps it feel distinct, as does its sprawling open-world structure. If there’s any gating or railroading up here, I haven’t seen it, so once the tutorial has finished kitting you out there’s nothing to stop you zooming off to explore at 200kph.
This is also a pleasure in itself, guns or no guns. You’re just heavy enough to feel like a real object, but light and nimble enough to easily keep up momentum through chains of jumps, dashes, and grapples. Cleanly launching from platform to platform is thus a tactile joy. I’ve sometimes found myself surfing around just to cool off after a tough battle, though from what I’ve played so far, even the “Challenging”-rated combat bursts don’t get excessively sweaty.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Greylock Studio
I’m less enthusiastic about the cellophane-thin story and occasional glitch – more than once my perspective has randomly rotated 90 degrees, which isn’t the kind of wacky movement I had in mind. But generally, Echo Point Nova is proving to be a zoomy good time. It’sout now on Steam, with a 10% launch discount.
