Sound

Oooh nasty

One would think that if a developer spends time and money getting a game to look great, that at least part of the effort would translate into a superior or at least above-average soundtrack and special effects score. Unfortunately, with Echelon, we are deprived of a soundtrack to accompany the game, and the sound effects themselves are nothing to write home about. The only music present in the game happens in the front-end interface, with only a single track to boot. The music, what little of it there is, is fairly average for a song but does go along with the somber mood of the game, giving it a few points here and there.

The ships reflect off the water

The situation is about to get ugly

Given that we and more than a few gamers out there do turn off the music, or at least turn it down, in many games to better hear audio cues, it's not a major gripe. After all, we'd rather have no in-game music than mediocre stuff. However, we would not exactly be complaining if we were allowed to insert a music CD after the initial CD-check, or play MP3s to accompany the game. For the record, on my system at least, Winamp did not get along with Echelon very well (I suspect the menu music), and alt-tabbing out of the game did not work either.

Your trainer watches you like a hawk

Off into the moonset

Unfortunately, the buck does not stop there

If that's all we had to complain about, Echelon might have gotten away with nothing but a slap on the wrist. Sadly, if the music was simply not there, we wish that much effort would have been put to the speech. It's awful. The speech tries to simulate combat chatter, with orders, acknowledgements and requests being sent out by the AI. It is all scripted and interactive with each other (ie, if a pilot from Alpha squadron wants to land, he will signal the base and the base will acknowledge), but the quality of the sound is atrocious. We're all for realism, as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. The static and crackle that overlays the monotonous, mechanical voices in the game is too much to live with for long. It serves its primary purpose of keeping the player informed, but fails at drawing him into a more immersive experience. If anything, after playing the game for an hour or two, the speech starts to hurt the feeling that you're there, in the game.

Prepare for landing

I told you the writing was witty

The special effects such as gun blasts, explosions and missile launches are par for the course. They do their job of giving the graphics some oomph, and manage not to get annoying, which we're more than happy with. For the past year or two, "par for the course" usually means quite good when it comes to sound effects, as little improvement has been made in that time. There are clearly some exceptional games that make excellent and innovative use of sound, but the sounds themselves don't vary in quality too greatly.