Ecco Dolphin the defender of the futerue!

Playing Ecco for the first time can seem quite alien. You're presented with an unfamiliar environment and a control system devoid of jump, shoot and run buttons. Life as a young dolphin would be unbearable if it wasn't for the dolphin elders on hand throughout the first few levels to give assistance. In addition to helping you master the ingenious control method they'll teach you how to communicate with other dolphins via the miracle of sonar - a single button press aimed roughly in their direction is usually enough to attract their attention. This is about as close as you'll get to a fire button in Defender of the Future.

Once you've swum around the first level for a while, discovering for yourself that you're able to make Ecco do absolutely anything that a real dolphin can do (including tail-walking on the surface) you'll probably start to wonder why it is that you're there. It's not that the aimless swimming and trick performing isn't satisfying, it really is, but the fact that this is a game suggests there might be more to it. As you explore every beautifully realised nook and cranny of the ocean floor you'll realise that the sea is well and truly alive - everything from plankton and jellyfish through to sharks, turtles and whales can be observed going about their daily routines and encountering their own problems. Perhaps you can help?

You first mission, if you exclude races with other dolphins, is to locate and rescue a baby whale that has become trapped after an underwater avalanche. This is a good chance to try out what is perhaps Ecco's coolest feature - radar. Holding down the sonar button for a few seconds superimposes an overhead map of your surrounding area on the screen, complete with the locations of your friends and enemies, the latter coming mostly in the form of sharks.


As you complete missions and tasks set by other distinguished members of the aquatic food chain, you are often rewarded with information or new abilities, the most common of which are dolphin songs. Different songs - all activated using the same simple sonar button - enable you to befriend and influence different creatures. The turtle song, for example, allows you to ask turtles to follow you while the shark song is used to disorientate predators. Shoals of fish can also be convinced to form an orderly queue behind you and once you've learned that each different type of fish has its own unique talent it's actually possible to solve puzzles using them. A shoal of poisonous fish, for example, will ward off would-be predators while another species might have the ability to glow in the dark and light up dark tunnels for you.

The gameplay is a mixture of action and puzzle solving and you'll need to be a bit handy at both if you're to succeed. My only real criticism of Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future is that it gets tricky quite quickly - if I hadn't been enjoying the scenery and the aimless swimming so much I think I might have given up after only a few hours' play. The hints and tips given to you by other creatures are often too cryptic to make sense of, and more frustrating still is the fact that you occasionally won't realise there's a puzzle to solve until it's too late. You're either running out of oxygen or getting eaten alive by a shoal of something nasty without any warning that danger was imminent. Effectively, you have to die to realise what needs to be done for next time - sure, you've got infinite continues, but returning to the continue screen ruins the harmony of what is generally a deeply engrossing game.

Later levels become less natural and organic looking and often focus more on your ability to control Ecco with precision than your puzzle solving skills. By this time the novelty of just swimming around exploring will have pretty much worn off but every single level is breathtaking in its own way - a feeling I've not experienced since playing Tomb Raider for the first time on PlayStation. The whole Ecco experience becomes less tranquil and relaxing as you progress, and more like a traditional videogame as power-ups play an increasingly big role. I personally found the existence within the game of power-ups such as the stealth mode (which makes Ecco invisible) a bit of a turn-off as I thought they made the game less believable. Given that the plot of the game involves you doing your bit to see off an alien threat to Earth, however, I guess I had no right to expect anything different.

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future is a gorgeous, very playable title which occasionally suffers from a lack of direction but that shows off the power of the Dreamcast as well as any game I've seen. The lack of guns, explosions and cars might be an instant turn-off for some of you but I'd urge anyone who's even the slightest bit bored of all those driving, shooting and fighting games to give Ecco a try. The PlayStation has Crash Bandicoot, Nintendo has Mario... and now that the Dreamcast has Ecco, forget Sonic!