Echo Night

by Agetec

Product Details

• ASIN: B00002STP9
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,359 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

What would you do if you learned that your father was not just an average Joe, but instead he was a relentless sleuth hot on the trail of a demonic murderer? That's the premise of Echo Night, a first-person puzzle-solving adventure that puts you into the middle of a time-traveling quest to find out what has happened to your father.

Your life is turned upside down with the delivery of the mail. You receive a letter from your missing dad that contains a key to unlock a time-traveling adventure. With the aid of time-warping books and paintings, you learn that your father is chasing a sadistic murderer possessed by a demonic red knife. Your task is to aid your pop's quest while releasing the trapped souls of people murdered by the evil man's evil knife. To do this, you'll hop about to various locations at different points in time, all intertwined with your father's manhunt. You'll solve puzzles and appease souls with items you picked up along the way. Once you've completed the game, the nonlinear storyline will make sense, and you'll able to reconstruct the proper plot from the shuffled scenes you've seen.

The main evil character in the game is extremely creepy looking - unfortunately, so is everybody else. All the characters you encounter suffer from a polygon deficiency - they all have pointy chins or blocky faces. What's even worse is that most of the characters also suffer from a lack of textures. Conveniently, most of the game's NPCs are spirits, which appear in the form of wireframes with light gray textures. This makes almost every ghost uninteresting and doesn't help motivate you to free the spirit. The backgrounds all retain the proper style for the time period you happen to be in and are delightfully mediocre. Not much can be said about the sound except that there's very little of it. You spend most of the game in musical silence until something disturbing happens. The sound effects are all very drab and unappealing.

Still, the most frustrating aspect of this game is the game engine. Even with the speed turned up all the way your movements still seem too sluggish, and waiting for the cutscenes attached to every warping sequence becomes irritating rather quickly. Almost as annoying is the maddening use of time warping - it would appear that cabinets, paintings, dolls, and clocks are all capable of transporting you to different time periods. Although this is mainly a puzzle-solving mystery, your character can still take damage. It's not uncommon to run into a few different evil spirits. Unfortunately, there are no cool weapons for you to use; instead, you'll dispose of evil spirits with a light switch. Flipping on the lights isn't what I'd consider an adventure.

At Echo Night's heart there are some great puzzles. Unfortunately, they're few and far between, and most of the game revolves around sticking the object you had found two rooms earlier into something in the room you're currently in. The plot becomes too muddled, and it's easy to mistake one bland spirit for another. The game is also extremely short - about six to eight hours for the average player, and the offer of multiple endings isn't really compelling enough for you to want to put up with the game's flaws all over again. The only thing this game does exceedingly well is give you an excellent example of how not to do a first-person puzzle-solving game. --Ben Stahl
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Product Description

This is the game Echo Night for the Playstation 1. This game may not come with the original case and instructions. We stand by our products and offer a 60 day guarantee. If a game does not work within 60 days from the time you receive it we will gladly exchange it for you.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Puzzle-Game, August 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Echo Night (Video Game)

First of all, let me say right off the bat that I'm a girl and I love Playstation. Most of the reviews I read seem to come from guys who only love games in which you attack and kill things and that's the main attraction of the whole game. Well, if you're looking for that type of killing action, go play one of the infinitely many other games that will probably satisfy you better than this one (Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, etc.) Echo Night is not about the weapons and the magic spells you have to kill other creatures (those types of games never really interested me, I found them repetitive, tedious, and the newer the game, the more graphic, gory and realistic the violence, the better reviews it gets it seems, despite the fact that it's the same basis as every othe game of its type) Echo Night is about solving puzzles. You have to figure out how to get yourself from one place to another; you have to figure out how to save the souls of the ghosts you encounter; you have to figure out how to use the items you've acquired and what their purposes are and that's how you win the game. It's not all that easy though, some of the puzzles can be frustrating at times and there are a few evil spirits trying to possess you, although they're typically not that difficult to get around. On the downside you need 2 memory cards to save the game, otherwise it's gonna take you a lot longer than 6 to 8 hours to finish if you have to keep starting over. All in all if I had to sum up this game in comparison with another, I'd say it's like Myst in it's puzzle solving, only 10 times easier with a few dangers added in. It's a good game that's much more focused on puzzle-solving that on fighting evil characters.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Truly a Dark game, July 30, 2000

By 

Erik James (Orono, Me USA) - See all my reviews

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Echo Night (Video Game)

The game itself was not very difficult, and some times seemed to be a little to simple. But beyond that i was very impressed and scared. The story follows a son who's father has just been found to be missing. The confused son is brought to the fathers house by police to look around, while in the house he comes accross a strange painting of a ship, suddenly he sees himself looking over the side into the ocean. You play as a young man searching for answers about his fathers strange and sudden absence, and on the way encounter a multiple number of freaky, spirits who want nothing but your help. The game was good, but the music, the sounds, and the ghosts, made it hard to play with the lights off.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best RPG's for the Playstation, April 17, 2001

By 

Andy Radke (Guelph, Ontario CANADA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Echo Night (Video Game)

I love this game! What can I say? On many levels, the game is fairly simplified but believe me, there are puzzles which make you think.

When playing this, I felt like I was in the story. It was somewhat eerie when you play first-person confronting spirits who ask for your help, etc. The part where you have to learn morse code was cool, as well as finding one guy's locker combination. It's indeed an excellent game and I highly suggest to anyone who loves a great storyline, as well as a great RPG to try this one out.