Despite the depth and breadth of the game, E.Y.E. falls short at times in the technical department. Aside from the lack of instruction and guidance I’ve already harped upon (it took me two days to figure out that I could cure my paranoia/insanity instead of just waiting for it to go away!), the game has some other very frustrating flaws. For one, the keybindings for weapons are broken. Instead of being able to press a number key to pull out a particular weapon, you have to cycle through everything with your mouse wheel. Now, I’m the type of person who often likes using the mouse wheel to cycle between weapons, and this is frustrating even to me. If I need that medkit NOW, I’d really like to press 6, or whatever, to get to it instead of having to cycle through 8 or so weapons/items. Too late, I’m dead. Another complaint I had was that many areas were just too damnably dark. I’m a fan of immersion, but in some areas even with my brightness cranked up and my flashlight turned on, I still couldn’t find that demon dog as it was shredding me to pieces. Very frustrating.
This is the kind of absolute darkness I'm talking about. I'm holding two pistols if you can tell.
My last major technical issue with that game is that I found enemy AI and collision to often be problematic. I abandoned my aspirations to be a futuristic swordsman after all the enemies on the map would begin shooting me before I could even see them. It didn’t matter if I was creeping around, the mobs apparently have freakishly good vision. After sprinting half a minute to get to them, using right-click to block a lot of their bullets, often one of two issues would occur: a) I would find my melee attack bugged so I couldn’t attack unless I switched to another weapon (via the mouse wheel!) and back again, letting them riddle me with bullets for a couple seconds or b) my melee swing would hit them awkwardly, kind of shoving them and not doing any perceptible damage. As soon as I switched to an overpowered sniper rifle that could one or two shot most of them across half the map, all of these issues were easily resolved, which was kind of disappointing in a way. I’m not sure why anyone would NOT take the sniper rifle unless they were just hellbent on a particular aesthetic.
All in all, E.Y.E. is an ambitious game despite its notable flaws. Some patches could likely clear up a lot of the technical issues, but I’m doubtful that much will be done to address the lack of guidance given to players. Some will likely find this lack of explanation to be exciting and a return to a more “hardcore” time in PC gaming. Others will probably become too frustrated with it to play beyond the first several minutes. If you think you fall in the former group, E.Y.E. may have a whole lot to offer you if you can overlook some of the hiccups.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Play throught he campaign with up to four players.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.