The Most Interesting Game I Bought In The Steam Sale

It's official - there's no justice in the world! E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy by Streum On Studio is one of the wackiest, most flatout insane and creative games I've ever played, but almost no one has heard of it. First of all, it was supposedly developed by just ten people. Ten. That's like a tenth of your average development team, yet the game looks and plays great with nice graphics. Speaking of the graphics, they're quite inventive and special, with some bizarre art thrown in for good measure to dress up the Valve Source engine-based outing.

Then, as you can tell by the name, this game has somewhat of a hybrid nature, as it combines technology and magic, in a manner not unlike Deus Ex, only far more left-field. Just take a look at the plot: you play as a knight who works for an organization called the Secreta Sectorum, and you're fighting against another faction, known as the "metastreunomic Force". What?! Somewhere in between, there's yet another faction, referred to as the Federation, who after playing a few missions I gather are sort of like the government of the world, but I could be wrong. Actually, thanks to the deliciously convoluted but beautiful writing this game uses, it's easy to get most of the story wrong, but that's part of the charm.

Mechanically, E.Y.E (I have no idea what this stands for) is a first person shooter and RPG. Your character uses both guns and magic to proceed through missions, and all are handled marvelously. The shooting is tight, and the character progression quite gratifying as you learn new abilities and skills, from cyber-augmentations to arcane spells. Missions involve a lot of shooting, and in the middle there are all sorts of surreal sequences as you venture into this strange dream world once in a while. Plus, interludes also have you visiting your faction's HQ, where you can talk to people, take on side missions, upgrade weapons, and get scolded by your mentor (who you're never really introduced to) for no apparent reason (I mean this guy will always berate you for failing missions even if you obviously made it back successfully).

E.Y.E is basically everything good about gaming rolled into one. It's creative, it's artsy, it's fun, it has depth, potential...and frustrations. I hear tales of broken missions (haven't encountered any as of this writing), and many people have lamented the AI, but it doesn't seem much dumber than your average FPS opposing force. Of course, if you like to actually understand what's going on in your games, you may want to look elsewhere.

The Steam holiday sale may be over by the time you read this, but seriously, get E.Y.E. It should be on discount anyway because it didn't exactly set the world on fire sales-wise, and is definitely a prime candidate for my GOTY award, as it did come out only a few months ago. I will withhold judgement for now...

Don't miss it!