![]() Even the wailing little girl who tirelessly seeks her mother and causes Richard's heart to race until it stops is no more frightening than a slow moving smear of color and shade that waves its hands in the air very slowly. Most of the ghosts in the game serve either as obstructions that necessitate the completion of puzzles or dialogue mannequins to further along the story. This expected payoff to all the moody buildup, unfortunately, never happens. When stomping about and slowly navigating turn after turn and tightly organized room after room there's a real sense that at any moment Dick's head could swing back and there could stand something truly horrifying. The aesthetic candy won't surpass DOOM or even Ghosthunter, which both feature nifty torchlights of their own, but it does foster some suspension of disbelief. This is because the engine behind Echo Night is gussied up with a variety of blurred and rigid depth of field effects, smoky swirls, lingering fog, glistening walls, darkened halls, glowing panels, and moving shadows. While billed as a horror title, we found exploring to be scarier than any preplanned fright in the game. Unfortunately, it's one of the few things that works exceedingly well. The feeling of uncertainty as his boots thud and clang heavily on the ground while his breath races is really something that works exceedingly well for Echo Night: Beyond. The unforgiving viewpoint from behind the eyes of Rich who is himself behind the protective shield of a giant spacesuit's helmet, lends a certain appreciable degree of atmosphere and claustrophobia to the title. For the most part, the game does remain cohesive, front to back. However you opt to control it, this first-person experience is intermittently broken up by a variety of non-interactive cutscenes. The second works similarly, but the third (the one to use) provides analog freelook and movement. The first, a traditionally Japanese approach to the genre, binds looking and strafing to the shoulder buttons. Considerately, three control configurations are provided. Richard Osmond's wife-quest is played from the first-person. ![]() There's also a bit to learn about bizarre structures and some excavated red rock, but the fog is of paramount importance, for it is what causes nearby ghouls to go scientifically "all crazy 'n shizz." This supernatural gray stuff that clings to the floors of spooky halls and haunted vegetable gardens forces Richard to haphazardly stumble about solving puzzles and ventilating rooms so that he can circumvent angry ghosts instead of just busting through every door shouting, "Claudia, there is no escape! Till death do us part!" The fog he'll be trudging through in search of his wife-to-be plays a key role in the decline of this once fine lunar establishment. "Ghosts or not, I already booked the photographer and the florist and everything!" "She's not getting out of this deal that easy," he thinks. Determined and conscious, he sets off, tromping through a fog-ridden, haunted moon base to rescue his true love. The only thing Dick knows is that he's alone, in a spacesuit, and needs to find his honey. ![]()
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