However, that didn't happen often, and that's actually a bit concerning. As much as I enjoyed it, there were times when I'd get frustrated with a puzzle and put the game down for awhile. ![]() If that doesn't sound interesting to you, the game won't be your cup of tea. The different modes add some color, but you're basically always moving this little hat through these levels. ![]() Basically, although fun, Echoes never really wowed me I'm not sure if it speaks to anyone in particular. Outside of that, the gameplay's super-simple and kind of one dimensional. The art style is a water-colored kind of simple and I really dig it, but there's this weird slowdown at times when you get the "Game Over" screen. All that said, Echoes isn't without a couple of hitches. It challenges you to think through how you're getting where. I'm sure it sounds simple, but when you have more than a dozen echoes spread across a winding, twisting maze, keeping the game going comes down to deliberate, calculated moves. To get them to move, you use the shoulder buttons to advance and rewind time. Here, you pick up crystals, but the echoes created just sit there and don't move. The key to this mode is chaining the pulses together – set it off and watch it burn from one echo to any echo that is close by. Survival starts you with 10 seconds on the clock, and you need to set off pulses – crystals that eliminate echoes – to grab more seconds and keep the game going for as long as you can. If you hit an echo, the multiplier resets. The more crystals you grab without hitting an echo, the more each crystal is worth. Jackpot gives you a little more than a minute to rush around the map of your choice grabbing crystals and dodging echoes. Echoes also packs Jackpot, Survival and Clockwork modes. Now, all of that's just the game's Arcade mode - a sampling of 22 maps that range from ampersands to blocks of cheese with individual, offline leaderboards. ![]() However, grabbing the blade crystal and getting to rip through an area packed with echoes you've been dodging for awhile is fun no matter what. Most of the arcade levels can just be run through without much thinking, and that's not as much fun. Hugging walls and creeping toward crystals just so you can have an idea of where and how fast your echo is going to be is an interesting and entertaining gameplay mechanic, but it's not used all that much. I was actually caught off guard a bit by how much I liked the title, although my enthusiasm did level out a bit. There are special crystals that freeze time and more, in-game trophies as well as different modes, but that's the gist of Echoes. You need to dodge these ghosts and keep picking up crystals and in the end, your score is posted to the in-game leaderboard and you see how you're doing. When you grab a crystal your echo - a ghostly shadow making all the same moves you just did - pops up and begins floating around the level. The concept behind this top-down title is easy to wrap your head around: you're a girl in a big sunhat who is collecting crystals while running around mazes and clearings.
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