User Reviews (1 - 9 of 9)

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Great graphics, challenging gameplay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Great Sci-Fi Shooter

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Beautiful game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is really hard to learn to control, and you need a joystick. It is so easy to get shot down or to collide with the ground, but the graphics are AMAZING!! This game is so worth getting just to show off the capabilities of the PC. Whenever there is a break in fighting I switch to one of the external cameras, sit back and take in the scenery (and I only have a Pentium II 400 MHz). The explosions are great with burning debris from destroyed craft falling to the ground. Water effects are amazing, and so are the dust, clouds, and fog. As your craft flys low it leves a trail of dust on the ground, and similar with water. Sound effects are quite good, except for the communications between craft -- too much static and too hard to understand what is being said -- so you have to keep reading the log all the time. There is a variety of 14 craft you can fly, with each feeling quite different, plus over 30 missions -- though all quite similar. The options menu is quite good and you can customize the game and eye candy quite well, even incuding unlimited ammo and invincibility -- so no need to "cheat".

Somewhere between Falcon 4 and WC: Privateer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Only 4 due to physics need tweaking

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I noticed quite a few physics bugs but other than that, it's an awesome game. The things I found were very...aggrivating ones... Beyond the physics, the AI of the enemy is that of a kamikazi. The AI of your wingmen is like someone with tunnel vision with no regard for human life. Your wingmen will continue to fire even if you cross the line of fire. Also, if you're flying where they want to fly, they will run into you and kill you both. The enemy flies straight at you and doesn't even blink. Sure, it gives you a great chance to blow them in half, but only if you can pop off enough rounds before they get to you. Also, the enemy and your wingmen can do some maneuvers that just aren't fair. If you hit the ground, you die. If you run into your base or ship, you blow up too... But them...they can fly into your base or your ships and fly straight through them! If they hit the ground, their ship just rubs across the ground until they start to face a direction not towards the ground they're up against. It's just simply not fair in a dog fight that you have to be so careful, and they don't. The assault ships fly like bricks, btw. I would say that if you can get past all that...then this is a great game for you. If not, -2 stars.

Most fun in awhile

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: May 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Every person that has playd Those mec games should give this one a try I never playd those games cause I cant deicded They are all the same But When i saw this game I knew it was differnt and had relly good grafixs i decided why not try it So I got the demo and was kind of frusterated at it Loseing control crashing to the moutains brakeing wings off exploding And the other pilot would have to destory the object and i just sit there and wach him untill he stops It was kind of boreing and lame But then i slowley got control of them and used to the controls But still crashing a lot This game is to senstive if you ask me Sudden turn of the mouse or joystick *wich i hate* ur in a spin and headingg towards a huge cliff *good idea to say a prayer now* As grafixs go i relly onley buy a game for that And this is something unlike i ever seen And i enjoy it Even though 89% of the time im rolling down a moutain side struggling to keep control

steer ,if you can, clear

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: June 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

like the title says" steer clear"....that's the whole problem with this one. the idea of gaming is to have fun and not to spend all of your time trying to figure out how to maintain control especially with controls as twithchy as these seem to be. the guys behind this one need to go back to the board and do some real heavy fine tuning. though the graphics are good this turned out to be a real waste of money.

Echelon, could be better.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: August 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Hope you have piloting experience

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: July 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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 ...

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