Divine Cybermancy in the Playground

[MachineWraith]

Anyone besides me playing E.Y.E. - Divine Cybermancy? It's a quite enjoyable FPS/RPG on Steam. It's got elements from all the recent shooters - iron sights, scopes, leaning, headshots, all the standard shooter fare. However, it also has a XP and leveling system, with different stats governing various aspects of play.

However, it also has elements similar to Deus Ex, in that your character can have several cybernetic enhancements that can completely change the way you play. You can have cloaking that makes you all but invisible, super jumping, enhanced sprinting, nightvision, the ability to see sound (!), and other fun stuff. In addition, you can upgrade your cybernetic body parts, giving you general bonuses in various areas.

On top of that, there are several psychic powers at your disposal, which can do all sorts of fun things, like exploding an enemy and leaving a demon in his place, or summoning friendly soldiers to help you out in battle. My personal favorite teleports you into your enemy, insta-gibbing him :smallamused: .

To mediate your use of these exceptional abilities, you have an energy bar that is drained by using any of your special abilities, whether psychic or cybernetic in nature. Also, the psychic powers that directly affect an opponent are limited by your Psi Force stat, making it basically a contest of wills.

You can also hack pretty much anything of note in the game, such as turrets, security systems, and the enemies themselves, making whatever it is that you hack basically be on your side.

The game is quite complicated, and it's a bit rough to pick up, but it's great fun! It seems to borrow quite heavily from Warhammer 40k, from what I can see, which is more than alright with me...

[Comet]

I'm running a hacker and it's ridiculous amounts of fun. Every single human opponent runs around with a not-so-well protected cyberbrain and your effective hacking radius is rather extensive, allowing you to make entire roomfulls of soldiers kill each other without any of them knowing you were ever anywhere in the vicinity. The title of Puppet Master has never been so richly deserved in an FPS environment. Clicking 'hack' and hearing distant gunshots is fun enough, but full on cyberpossessing a patrolling soldier and looking through his eyes as you aim his gun towards his comrades and pull his trigger is even more fun, especially since the interface makes it clear that you are forcing commands into his reluctant brain, not just "becoming" the guy like in so many other games with possession of enemies.

Aside from that, the guns are fun and loud, the constant enemy reinforcements makes things nice and hectic and the world is a silly combination of Warhammer 40k and Ghost in the Shell. Fun times, for sure.

[psilontech]

A link to a review for the lazy: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/eye/1185987p1.html


Taking into account the small development group and the price, I'm hard-pressed not to recommend this game as a must-have.

I've found quite a few people complaining about 'game-breaking bugs', so I think I'll hold off on purchasing until these issues have been worked out.


You said you got a bit of a 40k vibe off the game, Comet? Could you elaborate a little? I'm hoping its not trying for some juvenile 'grim-derp' feel.

[Comet]

You said you got a bit of a 40k vibe off the game, Comet? Could you elaborate a little? I'm hoping its not trying for some juvenile 'grim-derp' feel.

It kind of is, though nowhere near to the extent of the source material. Mainly it's about the visuals, since the conspiracy you work for favours huge, gothic architecture, elaborately adourned power armour and such. There's also the whole Metastreumonic Force part of the universe, which is basically the Warp in that it spews out demons and weird psychic phenomena to plague the world, though it's a lot less defined and religious about it all since there are no Chaos gods or such. Haven't gone through the whole game, mind, so there could be more to it.

Outside of those elements, it's all cyberpunk as far as I can see. Pretty grim and dark and not exactly subtle or classy about it either, but I found it all reasonably enjoyable.

The writing for dialogue is not particularly awesome, there are some elements to it that are, indeed, juvenile (too many swearwords for emphasis, "tough guy" attitude on every single person you talk to and so on) but the basic premise of the story seems intriguing enough that I could look past that.

In the end it's definitely more inspired by Ghost in the Shell than Warhammer 40k, at least for the first handful of missions.
You definitely won't be amazed by any finesse in storytelling or world building here, though. There are some nice touches, but ultimately these guys clearly put more work into the gameplay than the fiction.

[MachineWraith]

I've been playing a primarily psychic character so far, with Madness by far my most used power. The 3+ man groups you often run into can be difficult if you're caught without good enough cover, but Madness saves the day. Just tag the rearmost enemy with it and watch him annihilate his group. Then *fwip*, BOSCO silenced rifle in the dome.

I have to say, it's pretty great fun also to play with a few friends as a squad. When everyone uses the power that summons a couple allies, you end up with a small army :smallamused:

[Thanatos 51-50]

Annnd boom. On my STEAM wishlist.

[Draconi Redfir]

tried it, didin't like it. Uninteresting plot with little to no attempt to explain anything, everything is a various shade of brown, and anything beyond point-and-shoot requires a degree of some kind to understand.

[MachineWraith]

tried it, didin't like it. Uninteresting plot with little to no attempt to explain anything, everything is a various shade of brown, and anything beyond point-and-shoot requires a degree of some kind to understand.

I disagree with most of this. I'll agree that more work could have been put into the plot. However, I disagree with the "shades of brown" thing entirely, as the color scheme is completely different depending on which map you're on.

Also, while the game doesn't hold your hand and teach you by the numbers, it only takes maybe 20-30 minutes to get it all figured out. Well, that's about how long it took me, anyway.

[Draconi Redfir]

well that’s kind of the thing, you shouldn't need to try and learn the mechanics of the game, it should be clear and obvious how to do things after only a brief amount of instruction.

Good examples would be the cyber jump and hacking portions of the opening level, it never tells you how to do either of them, doing common things such as double taping the spacebar or pressing the use key over the hackable terminal don't do anything, and you can't pass that area unless you know how to perform those tasks. i actually had to glitch my way up the wall and just mash random keys at the hack-door to get by. First encounters with obstacles are supposed to teach you how to bypass them not throw them at you and say "figure it out yourself but oh there’s only one way to do it so good luck with that."

Really good games would even make the instructions pop up on small non-evasive screens that don't pause the game for those who have already played before and know how to do everything.


But nonetheless this is just me pointing out what i veiw as glareing flaws in the game. if you enjoy it then great for you, but i didin't.

[druid91]

well that’s kind of the thing, you shouldn't need to try and learn the mechanics of the game, it should be clear and obvious how to do things after only a brief amount of instruction.

No not really.

The more I hear this the more I think that this is silly. A game should indeed have several different systems to master. Complex systems.

So no.

[Chen]

No not really.

The more I hear this the more I think that this is silly. A game should indeed have several different systems to master. Complex systems.

So no.

If you continued to read his post the example he gave was how to activate hacking and/or the cyber jump. If I gain a new ability and there's no indication of how to use it, then its not something to master, its a flaw in the game design.

Imagine a game where you can parry an opponent's sword blows. Learning when to time the parry would be mastering the system. Not learning that pressing "Y" then immediately "X" is what activates the parry. That information should be given to you.

[Maxymiuk]

But... the game does teach you all that.

In the first level, whenever you come across an obstacle, you're prompted to press "T" to access the tutorial videos, which show you how to access the skill you need.


My own complaint about the game is that conventional stealth seems more or less impossible. Opponents will instantly spot you from a couple hundred meters away, regardless of cover and ambient lighting, and immediately send a hail of bullets your way. The commotion will draw in other nearby enemies, and from there the mission turns into a running battle, punctuated by brief interludes of trying to locate the sniper who takes turns between taking potshots at you and hiding under his cloaking field.

Though I suppose I don't mind that your enemies at least fight fairly smart.

[Draconi Redfir]

The issue is that pressing the "T" button shows you ALL the tutorial videos, all of them, and not in any kind of specific order either. You would think that if your first tutorial is how to cyberjump, then the first video on the list would be how to cyber jump, but it's not, it's something completely different you will need three levels from now.

Again you shouldn’t need to actively sit down, stop the game and try to learn all this. Packing three hundred tutorial videos isn't great, but if you do need to put them in there, then they should at least be easy to navigate and lead to the relevant one at the time of pushing the button. (I.e. pressing the T button when it tells you to at the cyberjump bit should automatically lead you to the cyberjump tutorial)

[MachineWraith]

So... your complaint is that you had to look at a list of videos, rather than just being skipped straight to the relevant one? I dunno. I don't mind having to put a little effort into learning the game.

[Draconi Redfir]

well idealy the moves in question would have been something simple and guessable used in other games such as press space to doublejump or crouch and then jump to jump higher. but again this is only my opinion.

[Comet]

or crouch and then jump to jump higher.

This is very much the way it works, unless I am mistaken.

Cyber Jump and Cyber Dash (Sprint? Not sure of the terminology) are the only two things I had to look up on the Internet and Cyber Jump does indeed work with jumping from a crouching position, or you can set up the skill on your skill circle and activate it from there.

Sprinting is done by either setting said skill onto your skill circle and activating it from there or, you know, pressing shift while you move. Pretty basic stuff.

There is a learning curve, for sure, but I really don't feel that the game is unfair about it.

[Draconi Redfir]

well if it is how it works then it never worked for me. took me over half an hour to get over that cliff you needed to cyberjump over to continue. in the end i'm pretty sure i just glitched my way up it.

[Starbuck_II]

Yeah, so I've heard it isn't best laid out at instructing you, but what I've seen from let's plays: it is pretty cool.

Some guns seem worthless (of each type). Researching stimpack is a must.

[Folytopo]

The tutorials were all there with the t key. I have trouble understanding why finding out how to do the simple stuff is hard. Stuff like all weapons have different firing modes and how stuff works in close to walls and people, how madness and karma work are not as well explained.

Story was not originally written in English so eh, presentation of it could be better.

There are some pretty neat levels. Also some really meh ones. You need to research med kits first. Also stealth does not really work so just hack or run/gun.