I only jumped into E.Y.E. because a friend of mine had purchased it and I felt compelled to join into the co-op. Once I got into it, however, I found it was amazingly deep and complex, especially for a $15 title.

The most direct comparison would probably be the original Deus Ex. It's an FPS with significant RPS trappings. You gain experience for wasting fools and completing objectives, and you spend the experience on abilities which customize your character along either the "stealth", "fighter", or "hacker" lines. There's an infinite number of ways to spec your character, so it doesn't boil down into "classes" as much as it does personal preference.

The gunplay is solid and intense. It's a real pleasure to shoot the guns in E.Y.E.. I'm somewhat of an intensity whore: I like my guns loud, scary, and intimidating. E.Y.E. does a great job with making each gun feel unique and powerful. I'm not the most sneaky player; most of my missions devolve into brutal gunfights, but I don't mind because they're always intense and entertaining.

Your character has access to several special "psychic" abilities, as well. Examples include mind control, cloaking, and summoning. You can switch between gun play and psychic powers easily. You'd don't HAVE to use these abilities to solve each conflict, but they are a welcome addition which add another layer of depth onto the general game-play.

The graphics and the sound are surprisingly sophisticated for a Source engine game. I didn't expect this level of quality from the same engine that ran Half-life 2 nearly 7 years ago.

I can't speak much to the multiplayer/co-op, since I haven't done any yet. It looks like a lot of fun, though, and I can't wait to give it a shot. It looks like it's very fluid "drop-in-drop-out", which is a always a nice touch. There's a lot of missions which really benefit from a co-op partner, and it will be a lot fun coordinating those missions with a friend.

It's not without some problems. The plot and dialogue make absolutely no sense. It's evident that this was translated from some foreign country and clearly took a few hits along the way. The tutorials are nebulous at best and rarely provide any real insight into how the game functions. However, it's worth suffering through to get the excellent game-play. After the first two hours, you will have developed a game-play style which fits you best, and you will be building your character up around it. It's a rare game nowadays that lets you truly customize your game-play experience, and you'd be remiss to let this one slip by unnoticed. The low price tag, the fun combat, the entertaining multiplayer, and in-depth customization make E.Y.E. worth a look.

It certainly lacks polish and I agree don't bother to comprehend most of the dialogue let alone the plot. If you've ever played Neocron you'll be right at home with the dark cyberpunk look and steep learning curve. I'd comment on the multiplayer but my girl can't even get the game to run on her laptop due to a known bug where it black screens at the beginning.

I'm loving this game so far. It's an impossibly bleak and well-realized setting, and the gunplay feels, like the OP said, solid and brutal (love those Source engine death ragdolls). The translation from French is actually kind of appealing to me, it gives this game a true alternate history feel, with its own dialect.

I'm also impressed how responsive and engaged with the community the developers seem to be, they're taking bug reports on the Steam forums and some other sites, and it looks like a patch will be forthcoming quickly. My biggest complaints are with the frame-rate (on my admittedly older machine) and small and awkward text interface, so I'm hoping those will get some focus.

Since playing Demon's Souls, it's been a pleasure to find other games that don't hold your hand like the usual AAA title.

I'm considering it but I won't lay down my virtual cash until I see some reviews. I also had some inklings that the translation might not be up to snuff from steam trailers alone "The dualist pan-techno knowledge of the Puppet Master."

@Haze said:

I'm considering it but I won't lay down my virtual cash until I see some reviews. I also had some inklings that the translation might not be up to snuff from steam trailers alone "The dualist pan-techno knowledge of the Puppet Master."

I dunno... All I see in that sentence is awesome, lol. It's tough to explain, but it really feels like that kind of dialog is at home in the game's culture: it's exceptionally weird and obviously quite divergent from our own, and the language fits that. It all adds to the atmosphere of it :)

Yeah, the game is a lot of fun. Ignore the story and the writing, enjoy the setting, atmosphere, and solid shooting. When you just 'immerse' yourself into the game's world it's pretty fucking cool, like a mishmash of Blade Runner, William Gibson, and Byzantine-Asiatic religious art to create a bewildering yet oddly familiar setting. SF and FPS-RPG fans should check it out.

Damnit, almost everything I'm reading about this game makes me want it. Price is a little too high for me though. If it comes up as a 33% off deal, though, I'll jump on it, no question.

Watched a video of it on YouTube then purchased it. $18 is an instapurchase, for $50 I would have been a bit more hesitant. It's downloading now, so hopefully it runs on my system :-)

amazingly ambishes game from a studio of 5 people but works pretty well has a ton of bugs but still a bloody good time.

There is something strangely compelling about this game. I find myself constantly going "oh, I wish they'd spent more time fixing this," and yet I keep playing.

Maybe my standards are dropping?

I have to be honest, i was a bit skeptical when i saw it on Steam. I thought: Oh, another DeusEx "clone/wannabe". Going against my judgment and a drunken saturday night, i though: what the hell, just 17€. Best money i've spent on Steam in a while! I agree with everybody else advising to just ignore the story and a few bugs here and there, it's expected when it comes from a small company and such "low" price,  this game is a warm welcome and a bit of "new game nostalgia". Lemme explain: IMO is like i'm playing DeusEx again with updated graphics. Choosing where to spend my stat points, choosing what to research next, even what augmentation would be best for the next mission/ char building. Like in DeusEx, i like to play as a hacker/sniper. Here, this combo also works very nicely. Feels good when i create 5 clones of myself, order them to engage the enemy while i hack some turrets and snipe them from afar. 
 
Bottom line: ~17 bucks is an awesome bang for your buck if you (like me) is worried that Human Revolution won't be as i'm expecting. Don't take me wrong, preordered and eagerly waiting to play :)

Maybe my standards are dropping?

I'd love a QL for this!

And I'd love to be able to play it but it keeps crashing, if it feels like launching in the first place. According to the steam forums there are quite a few people unable to play the game.

The developers are saying that there will most likely be a patch dropping today, to fix crashes and the most egregious of the problems people are having.

I'll let you know. It runs fine on my rig but not on my girl's laptop and we are itching to try out the co-op

Im not big into co-op so im waiting to see more single player impressions.

I meant to pick up the game last week, but wanted to finish off some games in my backlog before picking it up. Now that that's done with, I have to convince my buddy to buy the game, too. :|

Bought it yesturday. Two hours in and I'm loving the crap out of it.

As a person who loved STALKER, I can tolerate a significant amount of jank if a game is trying to do something cool. And if the shooting mechanics are solid, then all the better. I think I'll have to check this out sometime.

Despite being very janky and having a lot of annoying oversights to the design, I managed to pump in 21 hours over the weekend. It’s got soul and ambition, that’s enough for me.

Played about an hour last night. Really liking it so far, no bugs and runs smoothly on my system with all the graphical options maxed out. Feels like Half life rpg to me :D really love the shooting ( gone for high accuracy and hacking).

I can't quite figure out how the hacking works? At the moment I am mashing buttons and hoping for the best.

Also, where is the save system? How often does it save? I can only play in short bursts during the week so mid mission saving might be handy.

well, everything is fine except save system. saving game is sucks hell. when I die, and end the game, and play next time, it is very first part (wake up or something). I hate it. the reason what I uninstalled yesterday.

Pro Tips for hacking

Weaken their Attack First (to zero if possible)

Weaken their Defenses Second (to or near zero if possible)

Then make your attacks

Watch for you defense and attack, if anything needs bolstering use Overflow (attack) or Shield (defense)

Again watch for the enemies attack

Keep attacking till they reach Zero or less HP

Just noticed it on steam & wondering if there's going to be a co-op of it, looks interesting.

It has coop, but if you want to have a fun time you need to find friends to play – 2-4 is the recommended – and set up your own game. Most of the public servers have not set a maximum number of players and the challenge/fun quickly drops when you start getting past 8 players.

So this game wouldn't be recommended to loners like me who like to take their Deus Ex style action alone?

@Haze said:

So this game wouldn't be recommended to loners like me who like to take their Deus Ex style action alone?

I've only played it solo so far, and I'm more than happy with it :) I can see how it has some cool potential for co-op play, but it's by no means mandatory for a good experience.

Did anyone else feel the urge to remap the use/interact button to something other than enter? enter is like the worst button for that, but e is already used to lean so I'm not sure what to bind it too.

@ManiacMaysin said:

Did anyone else feel the urge to remap the use/interact button to something other than enter? enter is like the worst button for that, but e is already used to lean so I'm not sure what to bind it too.

I know... What the fuck were they thinking binding it that far to the right of the keyboard. I rebound it to the mouse wheel (Mouse 3) and it helps a lot.

Yeah, my key bindings are pretty much unrecognizable from the default.

@Jams said:

@ManiacMaysin said:

Did anyone else feel the urge to remap the use/interact button to something other than enter? enter is like the worst button for that, but e is already used to lean so I'm not sure what to bind it too.

I know... What the fuck were they thinking binding it that far to the right of the keyboard. I rebound it to the mouse wheel (Mouse 3) and it helps a lot.

It's in a perfect spot if one were to use arrow keys instead of WASD...

I was just told to destroy 3 turrets. (the place was riddled with them)

Instead, I hacked the entire defense system in one go, which made it a whole lot easier when the base got overrun.

Digging it so far.

@KillyDarko said:

I'd love a QL for this!

They talked about it on the Bombcast, so maybe they'll do one. This definitely seems like something Dave would/should check out.

@SushiNao said:

@Haze said:

So this game wouldn't be recommended to loners like me who like to take their Deus Ex style action alone?

I've only played it solo so far, and I'm more than happy with it :) I can see how it has some cool potential for co-op play, but it's by no means mandatory for a good experience.

The AI isn't really up to par even with the first Deus Ex, so you'll get the most enjoyment out of it with some co-op buddies. Still, I've had a great time playing both offline and online. Was surprised not to encounter a single bug or other problem either, I had heard the game was riddled with them, but other than the non-intuitive UI, bad tutorials, awkward save system and incomprehensible story I haven't had any issues. The shooting feels great, as does the basic RPG mechanics and just how deep they seem to be once you start to understand them. The sheer scope of this game is kind of overwhelming, but also amazing how it could have been done by such a small team.

@KillyDarko said:

I'd love a QL for this!

They talked about it on the Bombcast, so maybe they'll do one. This definitely seems like something Dave would/should check out.

I'm really on the fence about buying this; buy it or wait for Deus Ex?  
 
Here's to hoping there's a Quick Look for it soon. The guys seemed pretty interested in it at the end of this week's Bombcast.

@DougQuaid said:

I'm really on the fence about buying this; buy it or wait for Deus Ex? Here's to hoping there's a Quick Look for it soon. The guys seemed pretty interested in it at the end of this week's Bombcast.

It's so cheap that I say you should buy it and give it a shot.

It really is a steal at the current price.

@ManiacMaysin said:

Did anyone else feel the urge to remap the use/interact button to something other than enter? enter is like the worst button for that, but e is already used to lean so I'm not sure what to bind it too.

Is F taken?

@ajamafalous: It's used to change weapon firing modes.

Does anyone know how to buy abilities? I wanna go stealth and sniper, but I don't know how I even get abilities...

Edit: Never mind, I figured it out. I have to buy it at a merchant in that home base.

Well it is incredibly fun so far, there was some really nice music in a certain section too. I may have made a mistake though, I smacked a turret with a sword at home base  (thinking it was just something put up for show) everyone started attacking me so I had to kill them all. I know I could just restart the level but I went up like 6 levels from just killing everyone :3.

Hmm. I played about 2 hours of it and it may be the fact that it crashes on every second loading screen but I don't really like it. The setting seems to be completely wasted on these bizarre Space Marine rejects, all text is either complete nonsense or just spelled weirdly, hacking is weird and somehow has bigger penalty for failing than death, and just everything feels like a bloated half-life 2 mod. Guns seem alright though even if a bit boring. I'll try to stick with it for a bit. It's not like there is a lot of stuff coming out.
 
Oh and someone mentioned Neocron earlier. The design in this game is so similar to it but I really didn't like it in Neocron and here it looks even worse. I'm a bit lost at what you guys see in this game.

@ManiacMaysin said:

Did anyone else feel the urge to remap the use/interact button to something other than enter? enter is like the worst button for that, but e is already used to lean so I'm not sure what to bind it too.

Is F taken?

It looks like a lot of fun, definitely. But Cybermancy? What a stupid word. It just makes me think 'gay robot'.

@PrivateIronTFU said:

It looks like a lot of fun, definitely. But Cybermancy? What a stupid word. It just makes me think 'gay robot'.

Or a new movie genre blend! Like RomCom but better! Cyber Romance(y).

No you guys are lowering your standards ALOT.  This game isn't "bad" but it isn't really "good" either.  The story is almost non existent.  The dialog is absolutely atrocious.  The gunplay feels like a slightly updated Counter Strike.  You know the game that is 10 years old?  Anyone thinking the combat is fun or balanced also has blatantly not gotten to the end game or had to fight a real opponent.  I loved the part where I stealthed into a room with a boss, backstabbed him with my damocles (which one shot kills normal guys without a backstab), only to have him turn around like it was nothing, spawn 6 clones with mini guns, and kill me in less than 2 seconds.  Coming back into the room didn't help much either what with the straight hallway being the only way in and literally having nothing to use for cover.
 
This is a 15 dollar game.  Think Deus Ex -  minus story + some slighty better gunplay that is no where near modern shooters + okay graphics for a source mod game.  The bugs, short campaign, and overall blandness of the world don't help much either.  I played the game, beat it, etc, but I don't see why you guys are complimenting it so much and I certainly don't see a ton of "scope".  Yes it has alot of options for how to play, but most of them end up useless unless you focused on them.  Nothing beats trying to hack a turret late game only to find it has almost 20 more attack, defense, and life than you plus enters commands faster because you didn't focus on hacking.
 
In all honesty I would rather play Deus Ex 1 again then beat EYE's campaign a second time.