EYE is and probably always will be one of the best bad games ever made. I always wished the studio would take another crack at it, but maybe its best that it never got watered down or streamlined, and people aren't encouraged to ignore the original in favor of a 'more approachable' but less captivatingly hostile version.
I was thinking the same the whole time I was replaying it. E.Y.E feels positively alien by modern standards of game design, and it's tough to imagine how it could be modernized without sandblasting the charm. Maybe that's for the best. I wouldn't mind seeing a re-release with some bug-fixes and cleaner graphics someday, but I'd be even more excited by a new and original IP that took direct inspiration from it.
Last time I felt a fascination with a review of an apparent bad game was with Deadly Premonition. That game is terrible in so many ways... and I love every single thing about it. I think I should give E.Y.E a try.
Totally! SWERY's games are all steeped in the same sort of relentlessly outlandish creative sensibilities that define E.Y.E, and I bet anyone who can endure Deadly Premonition would find something to love in Streum On's early work.
I think Deadly Premonition was the most I struggled to actually PLAY a game since S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Apparently fan patches have gotten it nearly stable now... might have to go hang out with Zach again soon.
Your description at the end makes me think of Moonstone way back in the day. An incredibly ambitious game for the time with a look, feel and sound design that I suspect would still make it exciting as hell, a sort of golden axe isometric style fighting game but with genuine RPG elements and a flair for killing the player that I haven't seen since. One very few games that have ever genuinely scared me. A game that took hours to get anywhere with but which, insanely, had no save function whatsoever and was extremely buggy to boot. I once made it through about 4-5 hours of play to reach the final boss - the fucking thing froze and crashed. But I'd play a DOSbox reboot with a save function in a heartbeat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R now springs to mind, for which you could copy and paste much of the above but which there's no need to do as I'm absolutely certain you'll have both played and loved it.
You're absolutely correct about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. — janky, dated, and bug-ridden, but those are some of my favorites of all time. SoC in particular is on my shortlist of newsletter topics.
And thanks for telling me about Moonstone! I see that someone made an open-source SDL2 reimplementation, which I'm definitely gonna have to check out now.
Very different sort of game but Moonstone has something about it that's also like Morrowind, the atmosphere is second-to-none. Coming to think of it there's a very common thread here which also links to all sorts of media - I'll forgive a lot of technical issues if the atmosphere is bang on. Mechanics are addictive but atmosphere is immersive, and immersion is what I want from my escapism.
EYE is and probably always will be one of the best bad games ever made. I always wished the studio would take another crack at it, but maybe its best that it never got watered down or streamlined, and people aren't encouraged to ignore the original in favor of a 'more approachable' but less captivatingly hostile version.
I was thinking the same the whole time I was replaying it. E.Y.E feels positively alien by modern standards of game design, and it's tough to imagine how it could be modernized without sandblasting the charm. Maybe that's for the best. I wouldn't mind seeing a re-release with some bug-fixes and cleaner graphics someday, but I'd be even more excited by a new and original IP that took direct inspiration from it.
Last time I felt a fascination with a review of an apparent bad game was with Deadly Premonition. That game is terrible in so many ways... and I love every single thing about it. I think I should give E.Y.E a try.
Totally! SWERY's games are all steeped in the same sort of relentlessly outlandish creative sensibilities that define E.Y.E, and I bet anyone who can endure Deadly Premonition would find something to love in Streum On's early work.
I think Deadly Premonition was the most I struggled to actually PLAY a game since S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Apparently fan patches have gotten it nearly stable now... might have to go hang out with Zach again soon.
Your description at the end makes me think of Moonstone way back in the day. An incredibly ambitious game for the time with a look, feel and sound design that I suspect would still make it exciting as hell, a sort of golden axe isometric style fighting game but with genuine RPG elements and a flair for killing the player that I haven't seen since. One very few games that have ever genuinely scared me. A game that took hours to get anywhere with but which, insanely, had no save function whatsoever and was extremely buggy to boot. I once made it through about 4-5 hours of play to reach the final boss - the fucking thing froze and crashed. But I'd play a DOSbox reboot with a save function in a heartbeat. S.T.A.L.K.E.R now springs to mind, for which you could copy and paste much of the above but which there's no need to do as I'm absolutely certain you'll have both played and loved it.
You're absolutely correct about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. — janky, dated, and bug-ridden, but those are some of my favorites of all time. SoC in particular is on my shortlist of newsletter topics.
And thanks for telling me about Moonstone! I see that someone made an open-source SDL2 reimplementation, which I'm definitely gonna have to check out now.
Just seen it's on GOG as well: https://www.gog.com/en/game/moonstone_a_hard_days_knight
Very different sort of game but Moonstone has something about it that's also like Morrowind, the atmosphere is second-to-none. Coming to think of it there's a very common thread here which also links to all sorts of media - I'll forgive a lot of technical issues if the atmosphere is bang on. Mechanics are addictive but atmosphere is immersive, and immersion is what I want from my escapism.