Echo Point Nova Is a Fast Indie FPS to Play Ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Whether you’re tired of Apex Legend’s particular brand of parkour or you’re waiting for the fine-tuned “omni-movement” in the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, there’s a new movement shooter on the block to tide you over before the next big shooter release. And while it might not be as graphically impressive as either of those AAA titles, the cartoonish styling and breakneck gameplay of Echo Point Nova, available now, will certainly win over dedicated first person shooter players.

The development team at Greylock Games Studio already knows a lot about what goes into the making of a movement shooter: their previous endeavor was the cult classic Severed Steel. That game made me feel like some kind of hyper-caffeinated Max Payne, sometimes blindly leaping toward enemies in a wild frenzy to (hopefully) avoid taking damage. I could tell I was supposed to feel like Neo, performing a deadly dance down a corridor of bullets — but I occasionally felt like a bumbling idiot unable to execute the proper steps to win a fight given the game’s limited polish.

That’s not the case with Echo Point Nova. This game trades in the tight, sterile halls of a military megacomplex for a landscape of tiny floating islands, which means tight traversal mechanics are a must. There are more ways to get around and they all feel smooth, responsive and satisfying. A hoverboard and a grappling hook are mainstays from the get-go, but there are other ways to get around: Following in the footsteps of games like Quake and Team Fortress 2, I used my explosives to rocket jump around the map when there was no other way to keep my momentum.

Everything is designed to make you feel like you’re piecing together a frag movie of unbelievable shooter gameplay from the early 2000s. I was too much for zblock as the kids used to say, because Echo Point Nova’s approach to combat made me feel like I was constantly creating clips that could’ve gone into my own personal highlight reel. The game’s a rush, and it keeps you constantly moving at a speed that few others ever do.

An open world that keeps you on your toes

In Echo Point Nova, I found myself playing as an intrepid explorer who crashes onto a mysterious planet dominated by a band of mercenaries using ancient relics to create powerful superweapons. My mission was to cut these villains off wherever I could, collecting the artifacts for myself.

Not that I was playing the game for the story — I’m just here to move and shoot. It goes without saying that there were very few moments when I was sitting still in Echo Point Nova. Maybe it’s worth it to pump the brakes once in a while to take a well-aimed sniper shot or to survey your surroundings. But standing in one place is a good way to catch a bullet or if you’re truly unlucky, get blown up by an airborne enemy vehicle’s missile pods.

The game functions as a sort of FPS bullet hell, since both you and your enemies fire projectiles instead of hitscan weapons. I quickly learned how to manage looping around mountains, buildings and ramps at high speeds on my hoverboard while leading my shots on moving targets. Echo Point Nova is going to train your aim because you need to be a twitch shot to hit enemies riding their own hoverboards or strapped into jetpacks high up in the air.

The very dangerous world also becomes something of a tool that you can utilize during fights, too. You’ve got a pickaxe and environments are fully destructible, so you can claw your way out of a tough fight — or breach a wall to take the first shot.

Most FPS games don’t dabble in vertical design because players won’t often be looking above or below them (and getting shot from an area you don’t notice usually feels really cruddy). Echo Point Nova chucks that principle out the window entirely.

With a hoverboard and a grappling hook, vertical gunplay becomes a viable (if not encouraged) strategy to take down most enemies. I frequently found myself reeling up floating spires of rock to take concealed high ground positions, outmaneuvering the unlucky mercs caught in my sights. On rare occasions, when I took heavy damage and didn’t have a quick way to heal, I’d leap off an island and grapple along the bottom, pulling myself up and over the other side to earn a brief reprieve.

Each handcrafted floating island feels like a distinctive arena with important landmarks players can use to take cover, but the unbridled speed and flexibility of the different movement techs make these experiences flow together into one cogent world which feels incredibly rewarding to navigate.

Perks and powers let you carve out a distinct playstyle

For a single player FPS, Echo Point Nova offers a surprisingly deep amount of customization options that greatly affect how you’ll approach different combat encounters, augmenting your gunplay with different abilities and bonuses.

Over the course of the main questline, the player unlocks different “powers” that double as both movement and combat abilities. My favorite one was the earliest unlock, a throwable whirlwind that adhered to flat surfaces. Placing it at my own feet enabled me to get a massive vertical boost when traversing the world, but tossing it beneath an enemy would send them flying helplessly along a predictable path, making it easy to take them out of the fight.

There were three major powers scattered throughout the game, each one discovered after a pivotal achievement. Lower-scale perks were much more common and were often earned after clearing the enemies off of a smaller island.

Some of these were tiny boosts, like the ability to reload pistols faster or knockback enemies with shotguns, but others substantially reshaped my playstyle. One perk, Feedback, rewards any headshot with an additional round in your magazine: I paired this with the explosive scout rifle I found to great effect, letting me fire in quick succession without having to wait for it to reload.

My favorite perk, Market Gardener, hinged entirely on loadout synergy. If you’re propelled into the air by a whirlwind or an explosive with this perk equipped, you do triple damage on every shot you fire before you hit the ground, which perfectly suits all the deranged Quake and Team Fortress 2 rocket jumpers out there. Whenever I saw an airborne enemy vehicle or a giant mech, I’d drop a whirlwind at my feet and pull out my rocket launcher, saving three or four rockets with my damage bonus.

All of the perks in the game promote player choice. Some perk loadouts reward hoverboard usage, others reward careful aim and some give you more tools to rip apart the environment. It’s an inventive way to keep the gameplay loop of a single player FPS feeling fresh on subsequent playthroughs, where many other games in the genre stick to static, choreographed campaigns.

Climbing the colossus: Echo Point Nova is about spectacle

Echo Point Nova is kind of like an action movie. It’s more focused on flashy setpieces and brutal gunfights than telling a particularly interesting story. I’m not exactly sure why the mercenaries I’m pitted against are evil; perhaps their greed will doom this planet, or maybe my own employer just wants the artifacts for themselves.

But it really doesn’t matter all that much because this loose narrative is just there to keep the experience on rails, pushing the player from one battle to the next as they cut down swaths of bad guys. Echo Point Nova is designed to always prioritize the “rule of cool,” culminating in the game’s boss fights where you’ll take on hulking robotic animals. It’s exactly like Shadow of the Colossus, except instead of a piddly little sword, you have a hoverboard, a grappling hook and a whole lot of guns.

It almost feels like the entire game is built around these fights, as each one is sectioned off to its own massive arena dozens of times bigger than almost every other island you’ll find. Finding a way onto these beasts is just as hard (if not harder) than taking them out, as you need to dodge hundreds of bullets and massive lasers as you struggle to get close enough to grapple on to the alloyed abomination.

The fights themselves can be a little janky: the bullet travel time doesn’t interact too well with the constantly-moving beasts, and it’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly where you have to aim to destroy the turrets and the bosses’ weak spots. When it comes down to it though, burning away the robot giants limb-by-limb as you slide across their metallic carapace is simply incredible.

The only modern FPS bosses I can think of that rival the size of these creatures are Doom Eternal’s Icon of Sin and Destiny 2’s Witness raid boss. Yet these just aren’t comparable experiences, as Echo Point Nova isn’t content with having you sit around shooting a big target: you’ll fling yourself skyward to board a titan, break it down piece by piece and feel proud when you finally turn it to ash.

A rich post-game experience keeps me coming back for more

I beat Echo Point Nova’s final boss right around hour six. By now, I’ve logged 12 hours total and I’ve only finally collected the last of the collectables included within the launch content. If you’re a completionist, you’ll find that this game’s scope is impressive.

To start your collectathon, there are 200 agility orbs that periodically unlock upgrades for your double jump and grappling hook. There are cosmetic odds and ends, too — mastering weapons in the game unlocks different weapon skins a la Call of Duty, with traditional military camouflage along with neon pinks, vaporwave mattes and skull camos if that’s more your speed. There are also dozens of hats you can find and wear that often reference other indie FPS games. Once I found the VAC-BOT from Selaco — a recent sci-fi FPS built to emulate FEAR — I stuck that on my noggin for the rest of my time exploring the map.

This is still a much tighter experience than your standard Ubisoft collectathon, but even when you beat the final boss and roll credits there will be an ample amount of islands you missed on your first go around that are chock full of these goodies, if you’re not ready to part with the game quite yet.

Now that I’ve done everything there is to do, I’m thinking about rolling up another save and starting all over again. Echo Point Nova’s strange version of bullet hell is addicting, and for any movement shooter fan, I imagine you’ll fall in love with this game at your first rocket jump.

Echo Point Nova is out now on PC and available on Steam for $25. A 10% discount is available at launch.

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