Echelon

Discount Price: $45.25

Accessories:

PC Gamer (1-year)

Customer Reviews:

Great graphics, challenging gameplay [Posted on 2001-07-09]
I have been playing this game all weekend, Echelon very addictive and I am having a lot of fun playing it. It's not perfect and gamers should make sure that they have updated their video card drivers before playing this game; you will encounter serious clipping problems if you don't do this.

Controlling your fighter is very challenging, you have to keep one eye on your target and another on your HUD (Heads Up Display). Ships don't handle like X-Wings, which I liked; you have to give them time to respond to joystick commands. This time factor varies depending on the type of plane you are flying. Fighters handle differently from Interceptors. My main beef with the game is that it does'nt let you pick your fighter for every mission. There were a few missions where I was forced into an Interceptor (good speed but useless overall) when a simple fighter would have been a better choice.

Weapons are pretty standard with few exceptions. I liked them but I was surprised that ships were not equipped with some missile counter-measure. Well, at least the damage and blast effects are pretty awesome.

Hope you have piloting experience [Posted on 2001-07-23]
The controls take forever to learn there are like 100 of them, basically every key on your keyboard, and then they treat it like WW2 dogfighting but with spaceships and the voice overs are really ...

Echelon, could be better. [Posted on 2001-08-22]
This game could be great if they had spent as much time on the gameplay graphics as the cut scene graphics.

Controls were mushy in all settings, graphics were choppy with a 64mb video card and a 1ghz pentium 4.

Great Sci-Fi Shooter [Posted on 2001-08-22]
Speaking as a die-hard flight sim junkie, this is a great game despite some annoying flaws. Besides the enemy's startling ability to fly through solid matter -- hint: watch out when you're close on their tail -- and the target lead indicator telling you it's ok to shoot when the target's on the other side of a mountain, the most aggravating thing I've encountered so far is the less-than-user-friendly menu system: Considering how often you fly into the ground or get shot down while learning the game, it really would have been helpful to have a replay or restart game option instead of making you back up several levels to start over. The graphics are indeed what makes this game. Night vision mode is unbelievably cool, and the explosion effects nicely varied: Sometimes you shoot off the enemy's wing and watch him spiral out of control into the canyons. Other times, your opponent goes up in a blinding flash of light. There are some very Star-Wars-like touches: If you use energy weapons (my favorite: the Medium Particle Cannon) they recharge faster the slower you go. Overall, though, weapons-selection and handling are fairly simple. Each of the ships has different flight characteristics and customizable loadouts. Although you can configure them with an impressive array of weaponry, the most difficult part about using the assault ships is that they don't pull out of even a shallow dive very quickly. Until you get the hang of it, then, going after ground targets can leave you smeared all over the landscape.

Somewhere between Falcon 4 and WC: Privateer [Posted on 2002-07-28]
First of all, forget everything you've learned about how a fighter plane responds. This is closer to flying a helicopter. You thrust forward and are kept in the air by a seperate hover mechanism. It will take the ship some time to stop moving in one direction and start moving in another.

Enemy AI is basic: try to get far enough away from you to turn around and take a good firing run. Some will fire missiles as soon as they can. A hard turn to one side will fool some missiles, but a more foolproof way is to put a hill between you and the missile.

I only have the demo, so I can't speak for the single-player missions, but the Instant Action is entertaining by itself. It's definitely worth a look, and as old as the game is, it's usually worth shelling out the bux for.

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