Review | Game review: Echo pays tribute to Stanley Kubrick in a game where you kill yourself again and again
In this shooter, where Solaris meets Jorge Luis Borges, your character has to find their way out of a maze while fighting enemies that are clones of itself and copy your moves and tactics
Ultra Ultra
4.5/5 stars
Highbrow influences aren’t often seen in video games. More often than not, developers are happy to pander to gamers through Michael Bay-style visuals and dumb fight scenes straight out of ’80s action film. Rare is the developer who takes his inspiration seriously.
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Observer was one of the most fascinating games recently to buck that trend, borrowing liberally from sci-fi classic Blade Runner and Hong Kong’s long-gone Kowloon Walled City. And now here’s Echo (for PlayStation 4 and PC), another pared-down indie release with mixed influences.
It’s a little bit Solaris (both Stanisław Lem’s book and Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film), a little bit magical realism author Jorge Luis Borges, with visuals straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Players take on the role of En, voiced by Games of Thrones’ Rose Leslie, a far-future space traveller on an endless mission to resurrect her lost love. After a century of sleep, she wakes up on a cube-like planet, journeying through a long labyrinth that leads to a room straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Those precious few moments are vital, either to figure out how to manage the endless clones, or find a way out of this Lem-Kubrick-Borgesian maze. Those influences are key, and the references to classic sci-fi films keep the visuals evocative and eerie, while the stealth-heavy gameplay challenges with its excellent artificial intelligence.