It truly takes a lot to make a modern gamer disregard a price tag when it comes to the quality of a game. With budgets as tight as ever and a hypercritical market, a game needs to be perfect for players to make them want to hit the purchase button (especially if they plan on playing more than 2 hours on Steam, voiding the return policy). So when Echo Point Nova‘s demo reeled me in as hard as it did, I instantly made the leap and bought the full game at its $24.99 price point, breaking my rule of going for anything more than $20 out of fear of buyer’s remorse.

After a mere few minutes in, I didn’t have buyer’s remorse – I was remorseful that I hadn’t bought the game sooner. Echo Point Nova, made by the developers of Severed Steel, just happens to have it all to make it a pitch-perfect FPS. You are rewarded with a new gun or ability after every combat arena, of which there are many, and the multitude of weapons make it so any play style is accommodated. Every gun can be upgraded by racking up kills, adding scopes, suppressors, and more, providing further incentive to keep utilizing them.

What makes Echo Point Nova truly steal the show is its movement. More than just sprinting, you are quickly given a hoverboard that careens you at exorbitant speeds. With this board, you can grind on walls, utilize a grappling hook, and earn several jumps through agility orb collection. It all comes together to make avoiding enemy bullets a cinch to master, giving the player a sense of feeling like an unstoppable trick shooter. Not since the Tribes games have speeds this high been integrated into the FPS genre – it makes the Call of Duty movement look like molasses.

The gargantuan open world in Echo Point Nova consists of several biomes that apply a distinct visual filter once entering; the deserts are orange, the volcano is red, etc. You can see far-off points in the distance, and the ability to fast travel back to previous spots is nigh instantaneous thanks to the excellent texture compression making this game only two gigabytes in size. This is a case where thanks to its reward system, my co-op partner and I went out of our way to complete everything not out of obligation, but out of desire. A feat that open-world games crave their players to think.

It’s been ages since a game has captivated me to seek out 100% completion and enjoy it every step of the way. What Greylock Studio has done in Echo Point Nova is take the simplest, best parts of the genre, and make it the most thrilling, rewarding experience since early Borderlands titles. Echo Point Nova is getting some traction as it sits at “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam at a whopping 99% approval, and it’s well-earned. The studio deserves your $25 for something fresh, something fun, and something that will be worth completing and remembering fondly for years to come.

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Echo Point Nova

24.99

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Breathtaking Movement
• Larger than life Open World
• Edge of your seat Gunplay
• So Much to Unlock

Cons

• Thrives in Coop over Single Player