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An average shooter that doesn't really add much to its prequel, despite having plenty of vehicular variety.

On entering new places, do you occasionally get that feeling you've been there before? Just a small niggling element of familiarity that haunts you, hinting at memories past. I got that feeling upon playing Echelon. It is most likely rather similar to some flying game I have already played, maybe too similar.

The premise is a setting in the future simulating a war between government troops of the Galactic Federation and an invasion force from a lost colony. Without hope of detente, you are slipped into the leather jacket of Jason "Wolf" Scott to help win the war for the government.

All action takes place on the future version of earth, which turns out to be a sparse and bleak wasteland, slightly redolent of the Mad-Max style panoramas. Over these environments you get pilot your own metal bird of the skies while extirpating various enemy craft with the arsenal of weapons you have at your disposal.

The crafts you fly are not exactly visions of celerity, and are more cumbersome to haul around than a Doberman on a bad day. The turning circle on most models is woefully large, so dogfighting usually ends up as a matter of who gets the other in their sights first. It is still enjoyable to fly these airborne beasts, but could do with a page out of the books of similar flying titles.

To add replay value, you get offered various optional missions that you can choose instead of the standard ones fighting the main war. These flesh out the action a little, and offer the player a different experience, although the entire story is a little parochial, and you never get to do anything too exuberantly extravagant.

Your individual efforts, no matter how adroit or crass your flying, will never affect the outcome of the overall war, which gives an overwhelming feeling of remaining just a pawn in a much larger war in lieu of becoming the solitary hero. This is aided by the way that you have to work co-operatively with your flying companions in order to succeed.

One particular caveat is the vagueness of mission objectives. You will be told the basic outline, and then get to fly with little more than a hazy notion of what to do next. Particularly galling is the fact that your teammates always seem to be fully briefed on every manoeuvre, despite your typically sketchy briefings.

You will be given in-flight instruction via the home base, and always by an annoyingly throaty and butch sounding bloke. He will speak with irritating officiousness, which more often than not will delve into depraved and caustic obloquy given half a chance.

Game environs span for a long, long way in every direction, making for a fairly gargantuan playing field to plan your strategies on. There are also more than 250 types of vehicles and buildings to occupy that space.

Ignore the boxes' claim of photo-realistic landscapes, because that assertion must have been based on some particularly grimy pecimens. Graphics are never bad, but are just too sparse and bare to be particularly wonderful. Forests mix with deserts and huge areas of nothingness, and with precisely zero natural fauna.

It's when you combine all these elements you'll realise Echelon is not much more than a mediocre flying game. That feeling of familiarity will recur, simply because you have seen all these things many times before in other games, there is virtually nothing innovative to boot.

An enjoyable experience for flying aficionados, but things will likely pall for anybody else.


Review by Adam Shirley.