Gamertell Review: Echochrome for PS3

Title: Echochrome (aka echochrome)
Price: $9.99 (download only)
System(s): PS3 (PSP)
Release Date: May 1, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (Studio Japan)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone”
Pros: An innovative use of relatively intuitive controls, cohesive artsy atmosphere and wonderfully challenging platform puzzles. Surprisingly addictive.
Cons: Might make you a bit dizzy and large levels make the avatar too small to easily see.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up; 90/100; A-; * * * * out of 5.

Echochrome is a rather odd yet innovative game that perfectly exemplifies the ideals of Escher’s iconic art. To play, you twist the perspective of wireframe, Escher-esque platforms to allow a generic humanoid avatar (aka mannequin) to reach ghostly humanoid goals (aka echoes). The result is a perplexing puzzle platformer that is simultaneously easy and dizzyingly difficult.

Using either the thumbsticks or the motion-sensitive controls, you twist, turn and otherwise alter the angles of the entire floating platform to create usable paths. It sounds simple, but consider that all the platforms are all created in the perceptually sneaky style of Escher, who liked to paint a person simultaneously walking up and down a set of stairs.

The game follows five “Perspective Laws,” which increasingly intertwine as the levels become larger and more difficult (descriptions from Sony):

• Perspective traveling - By manipulating the viewpoint, the player can connect two pathways that are apart and the character will travel across as if the routes are connected.
• Perspective landing – The character will fall down a hole and land on whatever appears beneath it.
• Perspective jump – The character will jump when if it walks over a jumping platform. One it begins its descent, it will land on whatever appears underneath it.
• Perspective absence - By hiding jumping platforms or holes, they cease to exist.
• Perspective existence – If a gap in a pathway is blocked, the character will walk over it as if the pathway is connected.

The goals for each level is a humanoid ghost which you must reach multiple times (new ghosts reappear after each is reached) before the timer runs out.

While most games have issues with the camera controls and camera angles, Echochrome embraces the camera and makes it the main control. Other then manipulating the game’s visual angle, you can only pause the humanoid from walking or make him/her run, which provides time to rearrange the view to block gaps, and angle platforms above jump points or below black holes.

And it all works so surprisingly well. The intentionally confusing art makes this puzzle platformer even more of a brain twister, yet the controls are so simple that pretty much anyone can play after watching the tutorial.

There are also multiple paths to each ghost (aka echo), so getting the best time means you can replay levels and test different approaches.

The only real issue is when the area of platforms is so huge that your avatar becomes a minuscule dot, and the lack of a zoom feature makes it even less playable. But that is really an issue on a level with the Freeform mode where I presume the platforms are semi-randomly placed.

The game also includes with a level editor, which is its own exercise in visual perception. By placing 3D cubes in an ungridded 3D space, you can spend hours trying to figure out where the heck you are and whether or not you made a level that is actually playable.

To complete the game’s artsy feel, it has pseudo-pretentious classical music background with a whipsery female introducing the game and guiding you through the tutorials. So nice, so pleasant and oh so strangely fun.

This is one of those crazily strange yet fun games that will suck you into its alternate reality, twisting your perception of time as much as it asks you to twist visual angles. You’ll surely rack up more game time playing Echochrome than you ever expected.

Sony did such a nice job with the art style and atmosphere of this game that any passing family member will instantly want to grab the controller and give it a try. And for those of you in school, you can always argue that you’re gaining a new appreciation for art and 3D perspectives through hands-on experience.

Site Read [Ehochrome Blog]