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Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE Review for PC

Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE Review for PC

Old-School Space Combat Revival

Once upon a time…flying through the galaxy while strapped into the cockpit of a virtual space fighter vessel – armed with the latest futuristic sci-fi gadgetry and munitions, of course – was a thrilling endeavor. It was a time when blowing away alien craft in the midst of dizzying dogfights and rocketing through the cosmos in search of new worlds could easily consume an entire afternoon.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE screenshot

Such pursuits still contain a certain charm, but changing times have ushered in new era of interstellar adventures. As a result, it seems space combat titles on the PC have fallen off publishers’ radars. 3000AD’s new episodic series Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE strives to dust the genre off and bring it back in a big way. While it succeeds on some levels, it also serves as a partial reminder of why so many have abandoned the niche.

To say it’s completely inaccessible would be unfair; the sheer breadth of Echo Squad will be enough to tickle the taste buds of the hardest of hardcore space jockeys out there. The game stays true to the core tenets of classic space combat titles of days past, but simply learning how to play and getting a feel for the title in itself is a convoluted and frustrating process. Once you do finally get the hang of it (assuming your patience holds out), there are other obstacles to long-term enjoyment still yet to be overcome.

The shallow story line loosely ties the action and missions together within a thin wrapper. As the wing commander of Echo Squad, you’ll pilot your own ship directly while giving commands and looking out for your fellow wingmen. Episode One: Rise of the Insurgents takes place as the Terran military force Galactic Command is picking up the pieces after a full-scale war with the Gammulans. Meanwhile, a group of insurgents are capitalizing on GALCOM’s current state of chaos with an offensive assault bent on taking out the alliance. In response, GALCOM launches a new attack carrier prototype to halt the insurgent forces. Your squad is assigned to the GCV-Excalibur on its maiden combat voyage. Missions involve hyper-space jumping to different planetary systems to investigate suspicious activity, taking out squadrons of enemy fighters and larger vessels, running escort detail, and other military tasks. It all means very little when you get down to it; you’ll be flying through space and blowing things up (or getting blown up by things).

Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE screenshot

Simply claiming a game is easy to jump into does not make it so. There’s a cumbersome learning curve that makes getting into the play controls about as fun as a trip to the dentist. The dreary, hour-long tutorial does an adequate job of introducing the different control concepts, but if you happen to get lost and take longer than the allotted time to accomplish your next tutorial objective, you’ll be left out in the cold depths of space. On the up-side, helpful in-game hotkeys for the game manual, a computer key layout, and a print tutorial are easily accessible at any point. Early on, you’ll be pausing the action frequently to reference them. The mouse controls work fine for moving, firing, and selecting the limited interactive HUD displays, but they’re imprecise in a dogfight – a time when tight controls are needed most. Too many hunt-and-peck keyboard commands take a while to master. The navigation systems are also slightly confusing at first. With a few hours of play, most players will be able to eventually overcome most of the control kinks, but for some, a few hours will feel like a few too many.

In Echo Squad, dogfights are more of a nuisance than anything else. This is a major setback, considering much of the action is heavily based on such encounters. Unresponsive mouse controls make it hard to keep up with fast-moving bogies in the midst of a chaotic assault. Even when leading your shots ahead of foes to score hits, it’s often unnecessarily difficult take them out. In the meantime, you’ll find yourself frequently bombarded with incoming missiles that will utterly destroy your vessel with a few direct hits. The whole being destroyed part doesn’t nearly suck quite as much as the incessant beeping and voice-over warnings signifying you’re about to be toasted. The jamming device is great for keeping your exhaust pipe empty of rocket shrapnel, but it also whacks out your own missile lock-on capabilities.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE screenshot

When the going gets rough, players can input commands and engage an auto-pilot mechanism to handle navigation or combat maneuvers. While this is an interesting and occasionally life-saving feature, it’s not much fun sitting around waiting for the on-board A.I. to finish cleaning up whatever mess you got yourself into. Doing the dirty work yourself is not as engrossing as it should be. Unfortunately, teamwork doesn’t pay off much either. Your squad mates are unreliable at best. Usually they’ll follow your commands and provide needed assistance when going toe-to-toe against large numbers of enemy ships, but they have the unfortunate habit of getting themselves killed. Also, the enemy A.I. adapts and responds to your tactics on the battlefield. It’s a nice way of saying it doesn’t take long for them to find quicker ways to kill you.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE screenshot

One of Echo Squad’s strongest points is in the graphical department. 3000AD did a great job of making space combat a colorful affair with a background of brightly hued nebula, gaseous anomalies, and other interesting visual elements scattered throughout the cosmos. After playing in similar regions of the galaxy for a while, it does begin to feel like you’re looking at the same backdrop over and over again with little variety, but it is pretty.

The cockpit HUD is elaborate and colorful. It’s not nearly as interactive as it looks, but it does contain important readouts on navigation, armament, and enemy vessels. Getting down to planetary surface is also quite stunning with beautiful water and cloud effects. In the tutorial, dipping down into a planet’s atmosphere to cruise the surface is pretty cool, and it’s expected to come into play in future episodes, but getting back into space from within the grasp of a planet’s atmosphere is another story completely. If you’ve taken damage at all, you can forget about escape without repairs and refueling at a surface base. Even with a mint-condition ship it’s difficult to breach the atmospheric barrier without a struggle.

Aside from the fact there’s no one playing on the online servers, the multiplayer experience is buggy and unstructured. NPC vessels flit in and out of existence mysteriously, and playing against the computer offers little new from the main campaign. It’s a free for all to be sure; it’s just not an enticing one by any means.

Despite some substantive attempts to make the genre revival easier for new players to pick up, Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE remains a niche title through-and-through. If you hunger for oldschool space combat, then it’s possible to derive a certain level of nostalgic enjoyment from the first installment of Echo Squad. However, the game fails in making the space combat experience more accessible to casual PC players.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.8 Graphics
A slick cockpit HUD and colorful space scenery are nice to look at. 2.4 Control
It takes way to long to get comfortable with the controls, and even then they’re a nuisance. 2.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Voice-overs collide at times and are often drowned out by the engine and other sounds. Constant repetitive messages and irritating beeping from incoming missiles is enough to most players mad. Other sounds effects are so-so. 3.0 Play Value
Nostalgia factor may pull some through the space muck unscathed, but it’s too easy to get bogged down with the repetitive gameplay and initially frustrating controls. 2.8 Overall Rating – Average
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • The first episode contains 16 missions including escort, recon, tactical strikes, dogfights, and more.
  • Advanced mission system with real-time adjusted variables based on A.I., which ensures that the same scenario always plays differently.
  • Advanced A.I. engine with NPC characters (also player’s wingmen) who act intelligently and react to combat conditions around them.
  • Support for USB joysticks as well as native support for most analog game pads.

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