E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy Impressions

 

 

Greetings minions. Aren’t you proud of me? I finished the impressions on E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy! So, what do I think?

Well the story from what I can tell (an encouraging start) is that you are part of a cult called Secreta and are currently in conflict with another cult called the Jians although both these cults are part of a collective called E.Y.E. who’s global goal is to overthrow the government called the Federation.  Sounds okay when put down on paper. Except the story is so limp I could hardly tell it was there.

Who did I just kill? Why? What the fuck is going on now? These questions seemed to go through my mind a little too many times. This could be partly due to the lack of immersion when quest givers would only give you screens of text, and this text was often slightly mistranslated from French.

The graphics on the other hand use the Source engine. Which if you have played Half-Life 2 or any other number of source games will know that the graphics have withstood age very well. E.Y.E has an eerie dread about it. The cyberpunk world is on an absolutely massive scale and can be really impressive but unfortunately some of the environments lose detail and seem to feel empty and soulless. The art style of the  characters and their armour is definitely a massive plus, they have their own unique cyberpunk look that fits in well with the rest of the style of the game perfectly. Oh and as I am sure you can tell from the screenshots, it’s too bloody dark.

So E.Y.E. is an FPS/RPG. Well what is RPG about it you ask. I don’t know. There is no loot system other than ammo and random “research”. You do level up and choose stats and this can be interesting as you can specialise in different styles of play, for example stealthy, a hacker or just a bruiser with a massive machine gun. There is also the option to upgrade yourself with cybernetic augmentations.

The hacking is a large part of the game and involves a real time minigame where your objective is to reduce the targets Cyberhp before it reduces yours. If it beats you to it, then there is the chance you can get hacked yourself. You can break in to other enemy soldiers, bank machines and turrets to make them do your bidding or just to destroy them. It works well and definitely adds to the game.

Combat. First person butt-kicking combat, it’s why your all here right? Let me describe to you my first experience of this game. I perch on the end of a massive network of pipes staring down into a canyon filled with swarms of federation police. I pull out my sniper and slowly work my way through them, headshot after headshot. I leave one alive. Speeding down the edge of a pipe using my cybernetic enhancement to increase speed I pull out my duel swords and charge the final police officer. He plunges 2 shotgun shells into my body armour before I slice him down. I walk 10 meters past the dead police fall down a cliff and die. Shit. So I respawn back up the cliff. This time i whip out my duel wield pistols and run and gun through them all. The combat is solid. As it is with any source game the guns have a nice weight behind them and always give a satisfying feeling whether mowing down tons of police or one massive creature. The reason to play this game is for the fun of the combat, that is what it boils down to.

I wish I had more of a chance to play the multiplayer as I feel playing through the campaign with a friend or 3 would have been a big improvement and gave the game more life. I tried joining a game to find 32 players clambering between 3 bad guys – not my idea of fun.

I don’t want to commit to calling this a review since I feel I have barely scraped the surface of the game. I think it has potential to be great, there are just a few elements holding it down. If you love FPS/RPGs and like the idea of this game I have no doubt you will love it but if you are not a big fan I wouldn’t say it improves the genre.