Alter Echo

THQ's shape-shifter has great ideas and a lot of quirkiness to sift through.

By Aaron Boulding

Updated: Dec 13, 2018 5:43am UTC

It's getting tougher for videogame companies to try new ideas that aren't guaranteed to sell kajillions of copies right off the bat. So with THQ's Alter Echo , developer's Outrage have put together a weird looking game with some subtle and clever gameplay elements that probably isn't a revolution in gaming, but might still be worth a look if you're hankering for something different. There's been no lack of effort with all of the concepts and gameplay systems jammed together in Alter Echo, but as a whole the game has several holes that can't be overlooked, no matter how many good ideas have been thrown in there.GameplayIn the future "plast," a type of malleable, almost living all-purpose plastic, is the most powerful substance in the universe. Your character, Nevin, is a Shaper, one of the gifted people who can easily mold and shape plast for a variety of purposes. Of course somebody gets the brilliant idea to use their powerful Shaper abilities for their own ends and next thing you know, you're on a planet made entirely of plast that's being controlled by one of the most powerful --and therefore evil-- Shapers around. At your disposal is a powered battle suit that can morph between a human-looking Sword form, a hulking Gun form and a cat-like Stealth form.The game revolves around the unique abilities of each form and your skill in choosing and using the right one in the right situation. You can purchase upgrades for your overall character --like extra health-- and specific upgrades for each of your forms --like a giant head slap attack for the Stealth form. There are third person games that have gotten away with a lot less innovation than this, but games that ask you to quickly switch characters/abilities in the heat of combat will always have some built-in appeal.

One of the best parts about Alter Echo is that, as you progress; you're adding moves and abilities to each form so that late in the game you've got quite an arsenal of special attacks and combo moves including some that work during your transformations from one form to another. In a game like this where your character becomes exponentially more powerful, you've got to have AI that presents a constant challenge. There are different enemy types like ranged, melee and grenade attackers to deal with but it doesn't seem like there are different difficulty levels among each of the types. The CPU throws increasingly difficult combinations of enemies at you, but it still feels like you're fighting the same old bad guys. This makes the basic combat good, but a little too repetitive as you progress through the game.With all of the powers you'll have at your fingertips, you'll still find the AI getting in cheap shots against you despite your best efforts, yet Alter Echo still holds your hand in many places encouraging you to morph and use special abilities in specific places. Mastery over all of your abilities seems to be entirely optional since you can eventually power through the most difficult areas no matter what.Once you get past the early tutorial type of levels, most sequences will have you fighting a handful of enemies who like to use energy shields to block your most obvious attacks and outflank you to keep the pressure on. This is why picking up and using upgrades at right time becomes crucial. The Gun form has the most firepower but is painfully slow so the conventional wisdom is to use this form to take out groups of enemies before they swarm you. When they do swarm you, switching to one of the other forms needs to be instinctive so you can unleash the Sword form's devastating combo move or one of the Stealth form's specialty attacks.
The stealth form allows you to pounce on top of enemies where you can attack with that forms "paws" or use a morph throw where you transform into either Gun or Sword form and in the process unleash an instant attack on that enemy you're sitting on. These moves along with Stealth's big headslap are among the most satisfying attacks in the entire game and that's saying some thing with the couple dozen or so combo moves available. But it's the inclusion of the Time Dilation system that's supposed to set Alter Echo apart from other games in the genre.Time Dilation is Nevin's ability to slip into a parallel dimension while time is stopped in this one and unleash a vicious series of attacks on frozen enemies. It's also the game mechanic that will trip up most people because, while the interface is familiar, we've never seen it applied in this manner. TD energy is built up by collecting orange TD globes from fallen enemies and filling the meter. Each use of Time dilation uses up half of a full energy bar (at least initially) so you'll only be able to launch two TD attacks in a row. When launched Time Dilation freezes the game screen and transitions into a game board that looks like a fancy version of the mobile phone classic Snake, except this time you're snaking with a purpose. You still can't touch any walls or double the snake back onto itself, but on the TD game board there are icons representing each enemy in your immediate vicinity. Your job is to guide your *ahem* snake head around and hit each of those enemy icons.The catch is, your directional button pushes on the D-pad, or on the face buttons if you prefer, have to be done in time to a specific rhythm that gets faster the longer you're doing it. So the longer your Snake mini-game goes, the quicker you're going to have to input those directional commands, but the benefit is you're also going to be unleashing more powerful attacks and, we assume, taking out more enemies. If you mess up the rhythm or run the head into an obstacle, your Time Dilation sequence is over and you go back to the regular gameplay screen.However, your TD energy is only drained if you actually hit an enemy icon with the snake head because this means you've successfully attacked an enemy even if you only got one out of the three or four that were available to be attacked. When this happens that TD game board goes away and you're treated to a mini-cut scene where Nevin unleashes a combination that's as powerful and effective as the mini-game you just played and that's specific to whichever form you happened to be in when you started Time Dilation. The game does a clever job teaching Time Dilation mini-game mechanics by forcing you to unlock certain doors using the exact same interface and with no penalties if you mess up. The smart AE player will string together extra long Snake mini-games and hit every enemy icon so that it becomes a reliable weapon when you're swarmed by a ton of extra powerful bad guys. It's as effective as a good old "Smart Bomb" but forcing players to use skill to determine the effectiveness of that smart bomb is a nice layer of strategy that should make its way into more games.With all of its new-fangled ideas Alter Echo does suffer from two very old-school problems: cameras and save points. The camera system is auto controlled, but you can override and manipulate it yourself on the right analog stick at any time. You'll often have to do just that, because the cam is often trying to betray you for all sorts of strange reasons. It tries to swing around and center on you and whatever enemies you happen to be engaged with but obstacles and your quick reflexes as you try to defend yourself on two fronts can cause all sorts of problems. With the save points it's the same old problem of too few and far between. The game asks you when you want to save, but the autosave points that you'll hop back to when you suddenly meet a gruesome death can be a good 10 minutes --and dozens of enemies-- behind where you left off. This gets old and frustrating very quickly.GraphicsIt's really going to come down to a matter of taste when discussing Alter Echo's visual style. There's not denying that the developers at Outrage have given us one of the most unique looking titles to hit current generation systems. The "living" planet concept means the environments, walls and structures are pulsing with energy and all the rounded edges give the game a nice organic feel. This fits in very well with the game's concept; it just looks weird because we're not getting the detailed texture work that's common in most third person action games these days. It's clear that the beauty of the environment is not what drives Alter Echo, and the result is a minimalist approach that makes the game look slightly behind the times. All of the attention is on the action involving the main character.The characters in AE look a little strange because of the skintight stylized body suits that seem to match the environments (there's good reason for that though) and the fact that the faces stick out awkwardly on top of their neck stems. At a glance they look like bad Photoshop jobs with human looking faces sitting on top of bright colored bodies that look like they might've come from a Japanese animated feature. It's certainly a unique look, but in the end it just doesn't synch up as something new and cool that surprises you with its innovation. The mech-like Gun form and puma-like Stealth forms you can use are both appealing but there's no doubt there's a focus on the Sword form that you have at the very beginning of the game.
The animation ends up being one of the saving graces. Morphing from one form to another and quickly executing moves unique to that form ends up being a thrill once you get the hang of things. The Time Dilation action sequences (where you actually see the attacks) were once set in the regular game world and you'd see Nevin zipping around killing enemies.In the final version of the game, Outrage wanted to convey this sense that TD was a parallel universe that you slip in and out of and so the attack sequences are in a shapeless, structure-less, multi-colored netherworld where only Nevin and the enemies have shape. His big dramatic slashing moves when using sword form in Time Dilation will also remind many of Japanese animated flicks where there's a pause for dramatic effect when you run a sword through a goon. The regular combat animation in all of the forms is very well done and satisfying. The spider/panther moves of the Stealth form look especially cool when you're using all of its special abilities.SoundThe music and sound effects of Alter Echo fit well in this unorthodox game. The electro-vibe sound effect that comes with each sword slash and the rapid fire bullet sounds you hear while in Gun form head the list of satisfying sound effects. However, like many other elements of the game, all of the attention is on the main character's sound effects and the enemies don't get to use too many ferocious sounding weapons are attacks against you.The techno-flavored music sounds very futuristic and ends up offering a nice balance to the soft-organic look of the game's living planet. It's not quite interactive so that it changes depending on what you're doing, but when the music stands out, it's usually because you're in a fast paced hectic situation.The voice-acting is well done in Alter Echo, but ends up drawing your attention to how bizarre the main characters look during cut scenes. Nevin's smart ass sense of humor is well presented and there are some genuinely funny moments when he interacts with the Echo, the living substance. Supporting characters like Arana and Strome end up feeling a bit more cliché as the cute-but-tough girl and no-nonsense battle-hardened ass kicker off the group, respectively.

Verdict

Alter Echo is not a bad change of pace game for somebody who plays almost everything out there and needs a little something different. The handful of gimmicks and hooks are nice and innovative but may not be enough to sustain the interests of hardcore gamers who can't get their heads around what the game looks like and the basic control elements may be a bit too overwhelming for casual gamers.

The integration of all the gameplay systems is very well done and the amount of combos and moves and abilities you'll have at your disposal are all very appealing. I just wish the game stood up and presented more of an open-ended challenge and demanded that I master all of them instead of having me slog through enemies in such a linear fashion --both conceptually and in the game world. It's definitely something different and new so if you don't mind taking a chance, Alter Echo might be worth a look.

Alter Echo

6.8

Review scoring

okay

Aaron Boulding Avatar Avatar

Aaron Boulding

Official IGN Review

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Alter Echo

THQ's shape-shifter has great ideas and a lot of quirkiness to sift through.

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Alter Echo