E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on August 5th, 2011

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Dylan Burns: The game surpasses its parts, in my opinion. Familiar Source engine sounds and visuals are the clay from which the game is molded. I love the vast spaces you inhabit; they invoke the epic universe that shines through, even if it is sparsely detailed. Similarly, the weighted thump and cloud of dust as you land from a fall, combined with an eerie sanity system that throws auditory and visual hallucinations at you if you suffer too much mental trauma, creates a sense of embodiment that even high-budget titles often fall short of. The single-player campaign is incredibly atmospheric, but how fares the co-op?

Bennett Ring: The thing about co-op is that it can turn an otherwise-mediocre game into something worth playing. With E.Y.E. it turns a good game into something truly great: The moment we logged in to jointly explore one of the game's large open levels (each containing multiple pathways to our objectives) was the moment E.Y.E. grabbed me by the short-and-curlies and wouldn't let go. Combine these large levels with enemies that randomly spawn from all directions, along with the ability to specialize in different abilities, and the result is a game that transcends its rough edges to become one of this year's best PC co-op experiences. Yeah, big call -- but considering the attractive price tag, I have to recommend E.Y.E. to any PC gamer without hesitation. Just make sure you play it with a friend guarding your back, and crank up that difficulty slider.

Combat in the game is frantic with enemies coming from all sides, hidden on ledges with lasers and sniper rifles and suddenly appearing from above. Your arsenal contains the usual variety of weapons to aid you in your quests, some available at the beginning of the game others unlockable with a mixture of Brouzoufs, statistics and research requirements.

You also have a selection of psychic powers which you can use, as well as robotic aid in the form of sentries and free roaming droids. If you need an army you can psychically create several copies of yourself, drop a sentry or droid or two and then direct them to do your bidding whilst you hack that pesky terminal.

Hacking is well developed in the game with other entities having virtual defences, stats and hit points and fighting back quite adequately. When hacking something you can in turn be hacked, the end result of which is a smiley face appearing across your screen until you use the relevant medical ability to remove it. You can hack almost anything in the game, from bank machines through to other players and the AI will hack your droids, sentries and your own cyberbrain as it seeks to destroy you.

Divine Cybermancy is not a perfect game, but it's price point well acknowledges this fact. Twenty bucks nabbed me about 9 hours of playtime (I expected it to be longer, because the Steam Cloud service was offline for a bit), and I've only gotten to level 26 of the hacker class which I expect to have a total of 75 levels, maybe more. There's a lot of content to fulfill in this game, and with summer vacation in full heat, I'll have myself all the time in the world to hack cyberspace and kill demons.

We realise that this barrage of pluses and minuses isn't at all consistent, by the way - the combat is good, but the weapons are bad, but the powers are good and so on. Unfortunately, that's a realistic representation of what Divine Cybermancy feels like. There are some truly fantastic ideas, but they're all jumbled up and beyond the point of recognition; as Boiling Point is to Far Cry, EYE is to Deus Ex.

Doubtless, there will be a hardcore cadre of players who will spend the next three years fixing and fawning over Divine Cybermancy - and good on them, because we really want to like Divine Cybermancy. It's full of so many options and ideas and artistic potential. Unfortunately, though, none of these factors are well enough implemented to make Divine Cybermancy a game we can really recommend or personally tolerate.

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