Hyper Echelon Reviews

I think this is a good Indie game and worth the $8 I paid for it while it was on sale. Pros: + 2 player local co-op. + Beautiful retro art style + Fun intro scene in the same retro art style + Lots of other cutscenes in the game (did I mention yet that it has a beautiful retro art style?) + Simple, uncomplicated gameplay (shoot 'em up space game obviously) + Relaxing music + No consequences to dying (again, relaxing, you can just do silly things). + The environmental hazards were a fun variation to the gameplay. + Decent boss designs with destructible parts. + Rather child-friendly, appropriate for most age levels in my opinion. + You can fly as a dragon. The kids loved this. + One of your allies sounds like Batman. The kids loved this too. Cons: - A little bit grindy, as some other players mentioned in their reviews. To clarify, you have to level up your ship to be able to accomplish the objectives on the levels. If you beat the level and defeat the boss, you still can't progress to the next level until you've destroyed 100% of the enemies or collected 100% of the plasma on enough of the previous levels. So the game kind of forces multiple playthroughs of each level. When you playthrough a level again, the enemies are faster, do more damage, and have more health, but the level seems to be the same other than that. It felt a bit repetitive. The kids didn't mind this though, so it's a good option for playing with them. - There are only 10 levels (with 4 difficulties per level, but same enemies, terrain, and boss). There are some difficult / amusing achievements for some of the levels, at least. But more content would have been nice. - The dialogue between characters is cheesy and annoying. It's slow to skip through. Either the dialogue should be better written or left off entirely. Even the kids found the one-liners to be uninteresting. They did like all of Shadow's dialogue though. - Later in the game you can be invincible for what felt like 30 seconds, and the bosses aren't a challenge anymore even on the highest difficulty. On the plus side, if you're having trouble beating the game, keep playing and eventually it won't be as challenging. A better balancing of the difficulty with special abilities would have been nice. - When playing singleplayer, your wingmate stays right next to you and doesn't dodge. This doubles the size of your combined hit box and keeping them alive can be hard. Playing local co-op alleviates this problem. - The invulnerable enemies that fly around the screen are annoying. They're briefly explained, but they didn't seem to fit into the story and nothing was ever mentioned about them again later. Overall, not bad for an indie game. I / we've played 13 hours and aren't tired of it yet, so it was worth it for us. I think it would be a good fit for a casual gamer with a wingmate that wants to play a simpler game.