Echoes: Operation Stranglehold is a side-scrolling action-strategy Web Game created by We Create Stuff. The player takes the role of Dem, a cyborg with amnesia leading a rebellion against an alien invasion called the Hybrid Pantheon (who are also responsible for Dem being a cyborg with amnesia).
Echoes was intended to be a trilogy of which Operation Stranglehold was Act 1, but a sequel never materialized and there's been no news about the game's development since 2011.
It can be played here
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This game provides examples of:
- Alien Abduction: The Hybrid take this up to eleven, as they've managed to abduct almost all of the human race.
- All There in the Manual: A good portion of the game's backstory, like the fate of the original UEN and what Strickman was up to before the Hybrid Invasion, can only be found on the game's website.
- Amnesiac Hero: Dem has no recollection of his past life to speak of.
- An Arm and a Leg: Synderion is missing both of his legs, courtesy of Chekhov and an anti-matter gun.
- Cigar Chomper: Captain Miller is never seen without his cigar.
- Fictional United Nations: The United Earth Nations, or UEN, which was formed in 2233 after the second American Civil War, collapsed a few years before the appearance of the Hybrid Pantheon, and was then reformed after Dem successfully led a revolt in Synderion's Temple-Ship.
- Flunky Boss: Diabolus will summon thralls to fight alongside him during his boss fight.
- Gas Mask Mooks: The formerly human Hybrid thralls definitely have this aesthetic going for them.
- A God Am I: The Hybrid Pantheon consider themselves to be gods, and want to share that gift with humanity, whether or not they want it.
- Great Offscreen War: The second American Civil War occurred decades before the events of the game.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Everyone from Synderion to the Red Shirts tell the player what keys do what during tutorial sequences.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Dem and Colonel Strickman avert this, while Captain Miller and Lieutenants Chekhov and Parker play is straight.
- Killed Offscreen:
- The ultimate fate of Captain Nils and his team.
- The destruction of the Glimpse of Hope occurred above a whole other continent.
- La Résistance: Colonel Strickman's forces in Iceland are one of the biggest of 121 guerrilla cells fighting against the Hybrid.
- Old Soldier: Colonel Strickman is 65 and no less capable of kicking ass for it.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Dem goes on one against Lord Diabolus after he reveals his slaughter of Nils' team and then orders the destruction of the Glimpse of Hope.
- Sharpened to a Single Atom: The Nanotech Blade is only a few atoms thick at its edge, and is capable of cutting through just about anything, including Hybrid tank armor.
- Suicide Attack: This is the bomb fly's modus operandi.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Commander Nakamura and Synderion are both this to Dem, and Synderion also seems to be able to pull this on the entirety of the Mother Earth.
