There are a few choices in the gaming world for games with open-ended choices and Rockstar Games seems to dominate that territory with an iron fist. Streum On Studio has fused a unique blend of medieval warfare, ballistics, and cyberpunk into a unique experience they call E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (EYE for short) to see if they can show you what they can craft. You are in control of your character’s development from stats, gear, philosophical choices, as well as how you get your objectives done. Let’s take a look on how well Streum On Studio has given us a story with open possibilities.
The plot starts off with your character waking from a hazy dream like state wondering where you are and a dead body by a portal. When you pass through, you find out that your unit was annihilated and you were incapacitated for awhile with your commander asking you to return to base. Through this introduction, you are given a few tutorial videos that get you oriented with EYE. I personally felt a guided tutorial would have been a much better choice than video tutorials due to the quality of the videos being a little basic.
On arriving back at the base of your faction (the Secreta Secretorium), you encounter your mentor and your commander with both figures having their own ideologies. Their ideologies are what EYE will base the flow of the game down the line and the perception of NPC’s will change according to which faction you ultimately side with. In addition to moral choices, the player is given the ability to completely customize themselves from weapons to stats.
Let’s quickly touch on weapons and gear first. The player is able to customize their loadouts according to their play style at any of the mobile armories. The first point of gear customization are the armor levels which are light, medium, and heavy armor. For the person who values mobility and being able to outrun their enemy, they will probably choose light armor knowing that they may not be able to soak up fatal wounds too well. On the other side of the spectrum, the player who wants to tell the world “Come at me, bro!” while holding a big gun and slaying every enemy will want some heavy armor to minimize combat damage but suffering movement penalties.
After the armor has been selected, the player is able to take a gander at the weapons and gear they have access to. Equipment that is crossed out must be purchased from allied merchants before the player is able to utilize them. On using the armory, you are shown an equipment grid which is the available space usable for everything you can carry as well as any weight penalties the player may incur from chosen gear. Everything from gun, magazines, grenades, sentries, etc do count to the penalties and will slow you accordingly. The general rule of advice here is to play with what works with your style and go with it while trying not to go overboard.
After customizing your gear and earning your first level up and a big cash reward, the game will briefly touch over the significance of stats and point allocations in the Cyber Screen. On leveling up, the player will be given stat point allocations to put towards different stats that enhance certain traits of your character. The stats are pretty self explanatory; stats such as accuracy boost the chances of critical gun shots and ad infinum. The additional part of customizations is purchasing augmentations that are body upgrades from the central menu or from characters in the Infirmary.
The difference between these categories of purchases is that parts from the infirmary grant special abilities and the upgrades in the system menu are progressive in stages.As your character dedicates a certain amount of points into particular stats, the game will designate titles according to your character sheet. I personally like the level of detail involved in character customization, as it lets the player do whatever they wish as far as making a character completely their own.
During combat, players may run into situations where they may sustain injuries which can severely impact certain stats. However, the player can perform repairs and maintenance of their cybernetic body. The caveat with this is that during repairs, the player is vulnerable to being killed by enemies while repairs are happening and the repair command cannot be canceled.
The missions are pretty open ended as far as levels go. Typically during deployment, you are given a base objective, but there may be a question(s) or alternate objectives that may affect your karma levels which will in turn also alter your perception with the factions. With each objective the player is not restricted to how to get the job done which is a good deal of fun.
Example being an assassination mission; the player can go in guns ablazing, a stealth kill, or even hacking a thug to control them and then have them perform the assassination for you while you’re in hiding. The possibility of a myriad of ways to get the job done is what makes EYE fun and reminds me of the amusement I got from games like the first Deus Ex. The feeling of freedom in knowing your choices do have impact is great, but as expected, EYE has its limits on the illusion as well as some flaws.
The one thing that does break the flow is being able to teleport back to the Secreta Secretorium at any time, but the penalty for that is restarting completely from the beginning. I feel that it is a fair decision, but at the same time, it can be a little advantageous. I say this with respect to the fact that a player could lucratively farm certain zones, warp back to the Secretorium, restart the mission, and repeat. The fairness is that if a player is stuck because they are ill fitted for the job, they do have a chance to return to the Secretorium and buy needed upgrades to hopefully complete the mission.
Also, the sight of enemy units in the beginning is overwhelming. Once you are spotted there’s nothing but a flood of enemies that will swarm you. Once you get swarmed and killed you will become acquainted with the Resurrector System which is a system of lives. The Resurrectors provide players a extra chances to try to complete a mission by reviving you at the exact place you died. It’s a great concept, however, it can be disadvantageous if your are caught in a crossfire since the moment you revive you are typically shot up immediately. Also, on burning through all of your Resurrectors, the player receives a stat penalty and the mission must be restarted. Also with each death, there are typically severe damages that must be addressed or the injuries will penalize your stats.
EYE also provides multiplayer options, but getting a multiplayer game set-up can almost be like pulling teeth from a child. The options in multiplayer can help someone with their progression of the game (by picking someone to be the master of fate, the base save file), or to play a random objective based missions. The issue is that it isn’t easy to set-up multiplayer games for the casual gamer who may not be intimately familiar with their router. I know personally it was troublesome for me as I am familiar with my home router and hosting servers for games; yet I was never able to host a game of EYE on my computer.
Through playing with various players online, it’s been a hit or miss experience over who can make their games publicly available or not. While EYE was fun to play when I hopped online to a friend’s server, it has been nothing been mental frustration for me. It was even more frustrating knowing I was using the recommending settings for my router and not being able to have friends play a game with me. I do hope that the folks at Streum On Studio can implement a solution that makes an online game hosting solution that is much easier to set-up for casual and hardcore gamers alike.
Streum On Studio has crafted a wonderful universe with a great story, complete with the privilege to finish objectives in any creative manner the player chooses. To appreciate EYE, the player will have to have a big heart to forgive some of the flaws that it has. The game hit the web with a little bit of a rough start, but I think that as long as there can be some aggressive progress, EYE can become a much more solid experience. The lack of ease for setting up multiplayer games online makes me hesitant to recommend it to casual gamers. However, for a deep experience, I can recommend EYE in good faith for that reason. Check out our gallery below for more screenshots of EYE. EYE is available now on Steam for $19.99 as a digital download.
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