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Alter Echo follows a rich lineage of games that bring us a warped vision of the future. Here it's a distant time dominated by a miraculous substance called Plast. This wonder material can be mentally moulded into just about anything, just as long as you're a Shaper, making it a futuristic Lego, only not as blocky, and without a theme park near Windsor.

Lucki Alter Echo you are one such Shaper. Nevin is your name, and you've crash-landed on a planet inhabited by an uber-Shaper sent mad by his advanced powers of Plast manipulation. The planet is in effect one big lump of Plast, so large and complex that it can talk and think. And it wants you to help destroy its malevolent master, Paavo.

To help you do this, it's created a natty suit fashioned out of Plast. This is no ordinary whistle and flute, because it can morph into three different forms, offering up a myriad of different customisable abilities and combo-fuelled attacks. It can also freeze time, so you can enter a parallel world to manipulate your surroundings and attack frozen enemies using a timing-based setup that's one part Snake and one part Dance Dance Revolution, and equal parts weird and frustrating.

The first suit form you get to play with is a tad under-whelming, because it's just you in bright yellow spandex with a bloody great sword. But before long you gain a suit that turns you into a cat-like stealth assassin and a suit that's basically a big-ass gun on legs. There are a pleasing amount of moves to use, and chaining together 20-hit combos is easy and supremely gratifying to watch.

It's the differing dynamics of the suits that elevates Alter Echo above any number of futuristic third-person adventures as seeing off Paavo's foot soldiers requires tactical nouse and quick reflexes. It works a little something like this: you enter a large, curvaceous cavern crawling with spindly armed goons. First you morph into sword mode and cut a combo-laden swathe through the nearby enemies before turning into a gun to knock out the cowards skulking in the distance. But wait! The enemies are re-spawning all around you, so it's time for the cat to pounce on their heads and tear off their scalps. Job done. Repeat as necessary.

It's a neat little trick that injects excitement into a situation that's very pedestrian. Without the instantaneous morphing, this would be little more than an interesting-looking alien world that disappointingly boils down to a series of rooms filled with mildly intelligent enemies and gentle door-opening puzzles, fed to you in a linear manner. But like all neat little tricks it's not really enough to see you through an entire game, even one as short as this. And when you add a troublesome camera and infrequent save points you're looking at another also-ran full of bright ideas but fun-sapping faults.

1. Changing between suits adds variety
2. Story is told with style and humour

1. Camera often lags behind the action
2. Too few save points
3. Samey battles

Power
Levels are a fair size and there are no framerate issues, but the level of detail isn't anything special.

Style
Original-looking game with some style. The soundtrack, effects and script add to the atmosphere.

Immersion
Repetitive gameplay and straight-forward puzzles make this more of a Pot Noodle than a feast.

Lifespan
You'll breeze through this in less than ten hours, after which it's nothing more than a bookend.

Summary
Starts off promisingly but quickly runs out of steam and settles for repetitive gameplay above real originality.