Echelon

The BFF1-112 Tempest fighter turns with all the urgency of a tortoise who thinks it just saw a hare flash past. In other words, very, very slooooowwly. Sure it can turn within the radius of a dime, but it goes from 450 kilometers per hour to almost nothing, and then re-accelerates so slowly that ground forces have ample time to target you.

And suppression fields truly create havoc with your Heads-UP Display (HUD). Not only is your targeting hampered, but also you lose vital readouts, such as damage.

Echelon is a PC flight combat simulator from Bethesda Softworks and Buka Entertainment. It features some of the best graphical elements seen in recent flight sims, but there are some flaws that may hamper the experience.

While the plot isn’t the most original, it bears mentioning. It is the future, after 2300, and after centuries of unrest and civil war, the Federation is back on track to colonization. A new race is found, the Velians, distant ancestors of earlier colonization, but they are not quite what they used to be. The initial peace overtures are merely a ruse for the attacks which are to follow. Once again, war raises its ugly head.

You are a hotshot young fighter pilot, given only a cursory introduction before being sent out to the lines. Your first mission was supposed to be a shuttle job, flying the Tempest from one base to another. But no one told the enemy that. Before you know it, you are in combat with interceptors. That is followed by attacking not only flying enemies, but ground forces as well.

The most stunning elements of this game are the graphics. The futuristic fighters are incredibly well rendered, the environmental elements are stunning, and the lighting effects will dazzle players. This is the best-looking combat flight sim to launch. In short, this game dramatically elevates the graphical quality of the genre.

There are a few clipping errors, such as flying through a telephone pole (if this is the future, why are there telephone poles on alien planets?) without damage, but for the most part, that is negligible, when compared to the stunning renditions of the game

That’s the good news. Let’s counter it with some not-so-good news. The audio for this game is bad. Perhaps the developers were trying to get that radio chatter effect. What they managed was garbled dialogue that is tough to discern. And you can’t rely on the text support. That flashes by so fast, that by the time you figure out where the part is that pertains to you, the dialogue box leaves the screen.

Once you get into a mission, you must complete it in its entirety before you can save or advance. If your plane gets blown out of the sky in the last phase of the mission, you have to start all over. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing, if there were variations encountered in each restarted mission. There isn’t. The enemy is going to appear at the same spot, as the same time, and engage in the same way. If you do have to redo a mission, several times, boredom starts to creep in because of the lack of variation.

The AI (artificial intelligence) of the game seems a little suspect at times. In one action, a wingman flew into a canyon wall without any detectable reason. Base was keeping support forces at bay, while encouraging Alpha squadron to hold its ground. What ground? This is air warfare, and there are more of them than there are of us. And we are beat up. What are the other forces waiting for? As soon as you and what remains of the squadron eliminate all the bad guys, the mission ends.

The missions are varied, though, and the program – if you can get past long segments of travel that take you, uneventfully, in the teeth of the dragon – is action packed. You always seem to be outnumbered, and that suppression field can quickly take away any feeling you have of which way is up. That boiling cloud above has a tendency to look like the ground below, especially if you are tracking an enemy fighter and are concentrating on keeping it in your sights rather that paying attention to little things, like the ground rushing up to snag you.

The game does feature multiplayer action, pitting players in deathmatches in the fighters. However, this doesn’t seem to have Internet support, and you have to hook up through IP addresses.

However, if graphical elements are what really stir your imagination, then you will love this program. Sun flare that blinds, moonscapes that delight and night vision that paints the world in iridescent green all give depth and realism to this game. Whether trying to negotiate a canyon under fire at a high speed in a tutorial, or trying to target without flying in a straight line for too long least you get blown from the sky, Echelon is simply superb graphically.

This program is rated for Everyone.

Install: Medium.
The program doesn’t eat a lot of hard drive space – 640 megabytes for a medium install and 740 for the full install – but it doesn’t zip onto a hard drive.

Gameplay: 7.
This is a mixed bag. While in a mission, the game moves wonderfully, but if you have to repeat the mission, nothing changes. The lack of variety can lead to frustration and a little bit of boredom, especially when you know what is going to happen at any given moment within the mission.

Graphics: 9.5.
There are some similarities in the camera angles. The wrap-around view of the person seated behind you reveals a polygonal character that is not that well rendered. Everything else about this game, from flaming debris of a splattered fighter, to dust shadows on the terrain and the amazing atmospheric conditions mark this as top-drawer visually.

Sound: 5.
The radio chatter is muddled and does not add to the game with a sense of realism, it actually detracts from the game’s feel.

Difficulty: 8.
There is a bit of a learning curve in this game, and you have to have your in-flight time and successful missions before you can graduate to better flying machines. Counter that with know exactly what is going to happen if you repeat a mission, and you have a game that lacks variation, but still is a challenge. Hey, if you didn’t have to repeat a mission, you won’t have that worry about lack of variety.

Concept: 7.
The storyline is not original, nor is the mission against overwhelming odds, which seems to permeate this game in places. However, allow points for graphical vision.

Multiplayer: 6.5.
Getting into a multiplayer game is very tough. It would be much easier to have a group of friends buy the game and play against each other.

Overall: 7.5.
This program has some failing points, there is little doubt about that. But gaming is about what your senses tell you. And if the visual elements are so strong as to draw you back again and again, in spite of the shortcomings, then this must be a decent program.