8 Eye's
Reviewed by Amber
After nuclear apocalypse consumes the world, 8 evil dukes rise
to power, and steal the 8 eyes, magic gems with tremendous
power. It is up to brave falconry Orin and his loyal falcon Cutrus
to penetrate their evil domains and retrieve the 8 eyes, in order
to return them to their rightful place at the altar of peace. Or
so the story goes. It seems to me like this game was supposed
to be set in the 1800s or so, and the post-apocalypse setting
was just dropped in when that sort of thing was popular. I mean,
the best they can do is some guy with a sword and his dumb bird?
Right. In any case, the weird plot isn't really important, because
this game is so terrible you won't be thinking too long about the
plot anyway.
Graphics 2 out of 5
The graphics themselves are pretty well-drawn, but I'd sure
like to get my hands on whatever the Taxan artists were
smoking when they decided on the color schemes. The backgrounds
just jump out at you; no, they leap out of the screen into your face,
and poke you in the eyes with their sheer garishness. A pink Taj
Mahal? With purple striped insides? Never mind the fact that the
Taj Mahal is in India, not Arabia, but that's just being picky. You
might want to turn the contrast on your TV down a bit for this one.
Music and Sound 1 out of 5
The music is as nondescript as the graphics are loud. It's mostly
a series of plinks and plunks over a droning bass, and it easily
disappears as you're wandering the endlessly similar corridors.
It's not what I'd call memorable. The sound effects really aren't
any better. I know that, for the most part, sound effects are
supposed to be in the background, and just melt into the flow of
the game, but it seems like any game worth its salt has at least
one sound effect that stands out due to its sheer uniqueness.
Zelda had its little four-note fanfare when Link picked up an
object, Mario had its distinctive pipe noises, and 8 Eye's has,
well, nothing.
Game Challenge 1 out of 5
If you mean "challenge" as in, "so impossibly hard I want to go
bash my head against the wall a few times before playing this
game again," well, then, I should probably go back and give it a
5. There's a difference between a game that's challenging, and
fun because it's challenging, and one that assaults you with wave
after wave of enemies until you're dead, and then sends a few
more just to spite you. Maybe I'm just no good at video games,
but I found it nearly impossible to get anywhere in this game
without some help from the Game Genie. It's not like where I
ended up after cheating was worth the trouble.
Game Play-Fun 2 out of 5
The novelty of being able to control the falcon Cutrus was what
got this one a 2 instead of a 1. It would've gotten higher for that
novelty, if the bird weren't completely useless, and difficult to
control anyway. Even beyond that, though, 8 Eye's just isn't all
that much fun. It resembles a Castlevania clone, and not a very
good one at that. It lacks the mystery, the general aura of being
ever so slightly spooky, that made Castlevania so much fun. This
is just some guy with a sword running around trying to kill things.
Frustration
Frustration-a-plenty in this game. The first thing anyone who
wants to get anywhere in this game has to figure out is how to
control that dumb bird. It's certainly not easy, and most of the
time you're just going to end up jumping around like an idiot while
enemies hack and slash you to pieces. You'll notice that their
swords all seem to be longer than yours. Once you can control
the bird, it doesn't matter, because you'll just get lost in one of
the series of repeating screens that seems to be someone's idea
of a maze. I've seen that before somewhere, oh, that's right, it
was called the Lost Woods. At least there, there was some sort
of discernable pattern. Once you get through all that, you may get
to the boss only to realize you picked the wrong one. That's right,
it's like Mega Man, where each boss is only vulnerable to certain
weapons. Of course, Mega Man always had the mega buster to
fall back on, not some crappy sword that manages to be
outclassed by the one some skeleton is carrying around.
Replayability 2 out of 5
Replayability? You mean, you want to play this game more than
once? Well, you lucky thing, you get to, no, you have to! That's
right, this is one of those games that, after fighting all the way
through it, decides you must love the game so much you want
nothing more than to go through it again. Oh well, if you're playing
8 Eye's you must have too much time on your hands to begin with.
Game Value 1 out of 5
It depends on what the price is. I found this lovely thing for five
dollars at a Garage sale and feel like I overpaid. Seriously, though,
you can have a lot more fun for $5 at an arcade than you could
with 8 Eye's, and if you're considering paying more for it, don't
even bother.
Sheer Pointlessness of it all 5 out of 5
Well, I felt bad at not being able to give this game anything higher
than a 2, so here's a 5 in a category specially made just for it.
After romping through the nuclear wastelands from the 19th
century armed with only your toy sword and your brain dead bird,
you'll start to question the sanity of it all, too. That's the time
to switch the game off and go play Castlevania.
Overall 1 out of 5
8 Eye's tries to be an action game, and adventure, and a puzzler
all in one. It tries to give you the flexibility and challenge of trying
to figure out the right order to do the levels that Capcom has nailed
down in Mega Man, while giving you a spooky adventure platformer in
the spirit of Castlevania. What you get instead is a game with the
flexibility of Castlevania (think about that one a moment), and the
spookiness of Mega Man.