Ecoo The Dolphin : Defender of the
Future
During the
last few years of the Megadrive's lifespan, a
small european developer released a title on the
system, that re-generated interest in the system.
That game was Ecco, it had fantastic
graphics, a new style of gameplay and fiendishly
difficult puzles that you just couldn't leave
until you had finished them.
After the
original Ecco, the team released a string of
sequels and poor titles including the awful 'Three
Dirty Dwarfs', now they hope to find their
creative genius with the release of Ecco on the
Dreamcast.
I have to say firstly wow, as
soon as you begin to play, this game looks
fantastic, never has a sea looked so beautiful,
apparently months of work was spent on collecting
videos and photographs of the sea-floor from The
National Geographic and it shows, the whole thing
seems so alive, it really is beautiful and a joy
to watch. Thankfully Ecco has the same graphic
realisation, and has some of the best animation I
have ever seen, as he swims, swirls, loops,
everything looks perfect, as do the other
creatures inhabiting the sea, basically this game
looks the business, check out the screens and
imagine it running super smoothly and you're
somewhere close to how good it looks.
At
first I thought a game that looked this good could
not possibly play that good, at first I was right,
as I wrestled with the controls struggling to even
make Ecco swim in a straight direction. After a
few goes the controls sink in and literally become
second nature, you don't even have to think about
them, soon you'll be double looping, back
flipping, the lot, I really have to give credit to
Appolosa here, they've obvioulsy spent a while
perfecting the controls, if they had got them
wrong this game would have sunk without a trace,
thankfully they are perfectly realised, and the
end result is a joy to play.
The puzzles
that made the first game so involving have crossed
over to this version, at times you'll be pulling
your hair out, and then the solution will come to
you, that's the type of game Ecco is,
avoid if you're an action fan, this
definitely requires a certain amount of cerebral
involvement.
By the looks of things the
game is big, huge in fact, when loading your game
you get a chance to scroll through all the levels
that are in the game, obviously you can only
select the levels that you've completed. However I
believe the developers did this to have a bit of a
laugh, as the lists scrolls you realise that
you're going to be playing this game for a long
time if you're going to complete it, each level is
big and beautifully structured. The size of the
game is refreshing old-school compared to how
short games have become recently.
A special
mention has to go to the music, a superb ambient
soundtrack accompanies the action and perfectly
suits the tone of the game, a definite for playing
through your hi-fi. David Brin, an award
winning Sci-Fi author narrates the story, and
sounds brilliant.
This game has it all, the
graphics, the sound, the AI of the other
creatures, the difficulty curve, if there was one
thing that I had to moan about, it would be the
story which involves Humans and Dolphins
travelling outer space in little bubbles, until an
evil alien species invades the earth and it's up
to Ecco to save the day whilst the rest our up in
space... don't ask, just skip the story and
prepare to play one of the best games in recent
years.
Chris
Leyton |
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ecco the dolphin
: defender of the futur
Developer: Appoolosa
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Adventure
System: Dreamcast
Release Date: Summer 2000
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