Alter Echo

Oh, great, another guy with a sword running attacking things game?but wait, what?s all this other weird Tony Hawk/Dante/Atari 2600 stuff?

If Devil May Cry, Tony Hawk, and the Atari 2600 game Surround are anywhere on your game shelf, try this: Put them in a blender, throw in some alien?s internal organs, and press ?puree.? The result will likely resemble Alter Echo, a curious sci-fi action game that will leave as many players utterly enrapt as it will thoroughly confused.

The game?s premise is built around the Polysuit, a piece of super-garment that lets the main character morph between a sword-slashing human, a gun-toting ?mech,? and a stealthy lizard-dog at will. The coolest moments in the PS2 preview build revolved around building juggle combos into these transmogrifications?smack an enemy upward with a vertical sword slash, then turn into a giant and keep him airborne with your laser rifle?and keep it going ?til you run out of thumb fuel. Equally cool?but far more out-there?were the ?Time Dilation? special attacks, which launched you into a grid-based mini-game in which you had to connect key points and avoid your own trail in order to launch into physics-defying super-combos. Weird, yes?but very novel, too.

Right now, the game?s fixed camera makes it hard to see some enemies, and the animations and textures are a little primitive, but those things could just be growing pains. There are some really neat (and innovative) ideas at work here?hopefully enough to make Alter Echo sustain and reverb.

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