Echo Point Nova PC review — Reaching new heights

Since Severed Steel is one of my favourite games in existence, it’s no surprise I’d been keeping a close eye on Echo Point Nova‘s development. I’ve considered the former game to be the gold standard of what movement in a first-person shooter should be and this new title has handily claimed that for itself. With this game, Greylock Studio has strongly demonstrated that its previous release’s greatness was no mere fluke, as this is easily one of my favourite games of the year. Between the incredibly fast, responsive movement and the excellent game design, the title truly shows just how far creativity and talent can go.

Echo Point Nova is an open-world game that manages to feel notably different from pretty much any other. You’re dropped into a large map that consists of a series of islands sprawling as far as the eye can see. Within minutes you’ll have a double jump, a hoverboard, and a grappling hook. The game gives you objectives that typically boil down to reaching a marker or grabbing an item before giving you another marker. But the main quest only serves to give a backbone to the game’s main focus – exploring the islands. While following the quest will lead to new powers, you’re typically free to go where you want.

While exploring, you’ll find one of a handful of things. Green agility orbs will give you another jump or additional grapple uses after finding enough, hats and artefacts give you additional perk points, new guns make their way into your arsenal, and perks change your capabilities or add new functions. The story itself has you taking down giant structures with weak points to get new abilities. Early on, you can just throw a grenade, but taking down the aforementioned structures will let you throw down a jump pad, make surfaces icy for additional momentum or walking and grappling on burning hot ground, and destroying swaths of geometry and propelling yourself forward.

There are a number of Scans located on Echo Point Nova‘s islands that simply require you to take out a set number of summoned enemies. Doing so will reward you with perk points and weapons. Other chests require that you kill every enemy in the area for it to give you a new hat. Characters can be customised and you can choose between a body suit colour, different heads, colours for your grapple, and a large number of hats.

Perks all take up a certain amount of perk slots, but you can have a huge amount equipped at once. Some of these perks notably change up the way the game plays. This leads to the experience evolving throughout the entire runtime.

There are several categories of weapons to find – pistols, SMGs, shotguns, assault rifles, snipers, and explosive weapons all show up. Each of these has more than one to pick from with various strengths and weaknesses. In a great move, you receive two additional upgrades for each weapon simply by using it, while the third upgrade lets you change its skin. The guns feel great and the combat here is faster and more exhilarating than I’ve seen in any other FPS. This is not hyperbole. You have to keep moving to stay alive during firefights and the hoverboard is so incredibly fast that the action is mindblowing.

Using your hoverboard charges an ability that allows you to slow down time for a few seconds, but there’s an option in the menu to give you unlimited slowmo, making things feel even more like Severed Steel. The hoverboard not only lets you wallride, but you can use it to ride up walls. Considering how incredibly tall some of the islands are, this is especially astounding while in use. You can grapple onto the base of an island that’s hundreds of feet tall and then just hoverboard up it. The grappling and jumping additionally feel great to use. The movement here is really second-to-none and can not be overstated.

Most enemies are humans of various types, but you’ll also see mechs (including giant mechs) and huge gunships (that unfortunately have a tendency to tank the game’s framerate.) The islands that function as combat arenas have a ton of variety and work wonderfully here. Zooming around on the hoverboard while avoiding gunfire and blasting all of your foes is phenomenal. Few, if any, games do it better. While Severed Steel could be completed in about three hours, Echo Point Nova is considerably longer, taking about eight to thoroughly explore and then hit the credits. But then each and every scan terminal in the game gets a second challenge once you reach the credits.

Each of these challenges gives you another perk and many of the challenges themselves are difficult in a way that most of the others weren’t. They have surprising new permutations, including having more enemies at once, far tougher foes, as well as returning modifiers from Severed Steel, including the ground becoming lava or enemies only being beatable with headshots. It’s all terrific and taking care of all of these will easily make the game longer than 10 hours. If its predecessor is anything to go by, we can also expect a significant amount of content to be added, including workshop support, as the game only currently offers a level editor.

Echo Point Nova is a marvellous achievement. Greylock Studio has proven that it can make first-person shooters that handily outclass AAA games in a big way. Between the pitch-perfect action and the incredible fun of moving between the islands, there are few games this year that deserve more praise or demand more attention. I’m eagerly looking forward to future updates, as I’m sure to be putting tens of hours into this game when all is said and done. Plus, it’s liberating to just hurl yourself at an island while grappling off of clouds.

Check out our previous review:

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