Matthew Byers | Staff Writer
Games such as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and Killzone ShadowFall are focusing more and more on adding robotic and cyber-based enhancements to differentiate gameplay. E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy has a key focus on mixing a run-down cyber-world with mysterious “magic” powers.
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy was developed by Streum on Studio, a French company that based the game on a board game they themselves made in 1998. Released on Steam in 2011, the game is relatively unheard of, but offers some interesting game play mechanics. The first being cyber/magic powers. Every character can choose their own abilities, from invisibility to summoning a trio of clones with similar weapons that you have. The second, and a bit confusing at first, is hacking. Players can hack any electronic, and because enemies have similar cybernetic powers you do, you can hack them giving you the ability to distort their vision, stun them, and even turn them into your ally; beware, the same hacking can happen to you.
Graphics of the game are rather bland; in fact the game looks like it could almost be a custom mod for Valve’s Half-Life which was released in the nineties. There is also a fog that can block out view from a relatively short distance even in city streets. Despite the dated look, the game does its best to have players believe they are in a run-down environment that is home only to corrupt soldiers, and looters. The music of the game can be best described as eerie. You are in an entirely different world, but it is civilized. The art style perfectly blends with the music to give players a sense of alienation that encourages them to explore and figure out what exactly is happening.
Despite the uniqueness of the game, it certainly has its faults. The biggest would be the lack of direction. There is a massive tutorial that gives explanations of how to access your inventory, or upgrade your cybernetic enhancements, but there is no real explanation why you are doing things, and in some instances you can be stuck wandering levels for a good chunk of time because quests don’t give markers. While exploring the game is fun, there are numerous secret and hidden areas that may just have the item you explicitly need, and you would never find it without a lucky guess. A second big flaw is the inability to increase your inventory. Characters can hold about a max of four weapons, and that is if a player equips mainly pistols or small sub-machine guns. The game offers a variety of weapons, from double barrel shotguns to mini-guns, but choosing any large weapon cuts down on any ammo and supplies you could take with you. This forces the player into choosing wisely when going on missions, which in honesty a great mechanic, but should have options to increase inventory size even by a bit.
Leveling in the game is also fairly unintuitive. You are given three points, but skill points don’t give large boosts to any particular skill. Instead players need to cash-grind, which is lucky as every time an enemy is killed you earn money, to upgrade cyber-implants and perform research on random objects dropped by enemies. However everything is incredibly expensive outside a few items “suggested” to be bough early in game. You have to research a medical kit to be able to heal yourself in battle, but it is almost entirely ignored in the early part of the game despite its necessity.
The game is hard, often pushing you in all directions like a drunken compass, but it is fun none-the-less. The most rage inducing is trying to hack when you suddenly come under attack and have to make the choice of continuing the hack or risk dying. Luckily, the game has the saving grace of multiplayer with anyone being able to make their own servers. Just be careful as all because there are other cybermancers doesn’t mean that they are your friend.
