It's been a hot minute since we last gathered round the RPS Time Capsule vault (thanks, Gamescom), but at long last we have returned with another cracking year of PC games to preserve: 2011. In hindsight, it's a bit of an interesting year for Time Capsuling purposes, as we're now getting to the point where games from this era are getting their own remakes and remasters, or fancier, super duper director's cut special editions. We've included the original 2011 release of one of these games in this month's Time Capsule, but there's another notable exception we've decided to save for further down the line. I mean, seriously, would you really recommend vanilla Skyrim from 2011 over 2016's Special Edition?
]]>As the video games industry continues trying to cram itself into as few companies as possible, French publisher Focus Home Interactive have announced they've bought a majority stake in Streum On Studio. They're the French studio behind the delightfully ambitious E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy as well as two Warhammer 40K shooters published by Focus Home, Space Hulk: Deathwing and the upcoming Necromunda: Hired Gun. Honestly, they seem a fair fit. And hey, they've made a new Necromunda trailer too.
]]>E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy is a name so crap I can't even be bothered to mock it. And yet unlike 95% of crap names, I never forget it.
EYE is one of my favourite games. It's a mess. There's so much wrong with it that I could probably slag it off for two full reviews, but I still like it too much.
]]>Space Hulk: Deathwing must have been a dream project for little French indie studio Streum On, creators of the endearingly janky E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. As a team they'd started their careers with making Warhammer 40,000-themed mods, so having the official key to the kingdom must have felt like a miracle, but with a famous license and a higher budget comes higher expectations.
While undoubtedly more polished than E.Y.E, Deathwing still felt like a low-budget game with a high-budget facade. After an additional year and a half of development and launching alongside the PS4 version of the game, an Enhanced Edition rolled out today, addressing many of the flaws of the original launch and for those with the original version, it's a free upgrade.
]]>Eschewing the often broken International Laws of Highlander and Vampire Slayers, there is another Space Hulk game in development. A surprisingly swift announcement after the miasma of sadness generated by the recently released strategy game, Space Hulk: Deathwing transposes the corridor-set alien masher into a more appropriate format. It's a first-person shooter by Streum Studios, the makers of the interesting and flawed E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. A tiny, mouse-sized teaser trailer is squeaking in the undergrowth. Let's all disturb it, shall we?
]]>In a lot of ways, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy strikes me as the old-school conception of PC gaming in its purest, roughest form. No, it may not be particularly great in the traditional sense of the word, but it aims right past the stars and clear into the infinite beyond. The end result? A sprawling, hyper-complex co-op RPG/FPS hybrid with a crazy neon aesthetic, tomes of lore, and broken bits galore. Fortunately, while it launched some time ago, the ambitious (and paradoxically itsy bitsy) squad over at Streum are still patching, soldering, and electrostitching away, and the genetically engineered fruits of their labor are entirely free. So, in addition to, er, stability, you've now got two modes in which to shoot, slice, and viking leap to victory. Trailer and details on the pleasantly titled Blood Games expansion after the break.
]]>Bizarre and bafflingly-named stealth-shooter E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy finally has a demo out on Steam. I'm glad it has a demo, because while I can't exactly recommend buying the game, I would recommend those of you with a taste for leftfield stuff take a look. Not in a "hey, this is good" way, but more of a "hey, look at this thing" way. It's quite strange indeed - somewhere between a futuristic multiplayer Source mod, and an ode to the likes of Deus Ex (whilst not actually being anything like the Ion Storm games), plus some quite esoteric twitches of its own. Oh, and a sort of Bladerunner-meets-Jon Blanche sort of aesthetic. It's interesting, brave, clumsy, and a bit broken. I've posted one of the gameplay videos below for illustrative purposes.
]]>UPDATE: The game is now out on Steam.
Over the past couple of days I've been playing indie cyberpunk RPG/FPS hybrid E.Y.E, whose team we interviewed yesterday. It's an unusual thing, to say the least. Streum are a team of just ten but have set out with the ambition to make something enormously complex, with a story, a level and stats structure, multiplayer, huge levels, multifarious gunplay, insanity, stealth, and melee combat. I feel like I'm just grazing the surface so far, and these are just initial impressions. I suspect we'll get around to something more in-depth in the coming weeks.
]]>The release of sinister Source-powered FPS/RPG hybrid E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy is apparently "imminent" and so we spoke to StremOnStudio's Christophe Longuepee about his small team and enormous ambition for the game. Ten developers and a cyberpunk assassination game with ambitions in the region of Deus Ex with ninja-physics? Tell us more...
]]>You might recollect a previous trailer for StreumOnStudio's Source-powered shooter, E.Y.E. You'll probably remember it because the name is so bad, but you might also remember the pacey movement and fairly hardcore approach the team are taking: RPG elements, hacking, lots of interesting-looking menus... Anyway, two new trailers have surfaced, one showing off the moody cyberpunky environments throughout the game, followed by some gun-action, and the other showing the POV of a robot trundling about aimlessly in a boring cave. One of the videos makes the game look impressive, and the other does not.
StreunOnStudio got in touch to say they'll be letting me get my hands on the game soon.
]]>So it seems that relatively unknown open-ended Source-engined FPS E.Y.E. has a new trailer out. Which is convenient, because it reminds me that I am supposed to be interviewing the developers. I'd better get on with that. In the meantime, go and watch the high-speed sci-fi death-dispensing that this trailer of "Divine Cybermancy" depicts. That sure is some cybernetic superduding, apparently with Dante's Inferno references. Intriguing.
]]>I think I mocked this Source-engined oddity when it was announced, because it had a silly name. It still has a silly name: E.Y.E. but it now also has some fairly interesting game footage. Christophe from Streum On Studio got in touch to say that: "Our game takes place in a dark and futuristic universe and the video shows several ways to solve a situation." That situation, given that this is an FPS with RPG elements, is killing several men, but you see that done with guns, hacked turrets, conjured soldiers, little hoverbots, and some - er - menus. Surprising, promising. There's some more info on the main site, and some terrible screenshots. Oh dear.
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