Skip to main content

Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder
 
Here’s the thing about bad games, they aren’t all necessarily bad.
 
Wait, what?  Did I just type that?  It may sound like it doesn’t make sense, but its true.  A lot of different things can make a game good or bad and not everyone agrees on what is most important.  Sometimes games are bad overall, other times they have one glaring flaw.  Add in the fact that rating games is as subjective as it is objective and you can see what I mean.
 
Image result for eye of the beholder snes

Eye of the Beholder should be a good game.  It has good graphics, solid sound and an interesting premise.  You build out a team of four characters to take on a sewer full of baddies on a mission to destroy the city. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons game, so it follows the rules of that universe.  I have never been a huge D&D fan, but it’s still nice to see. 
 
It’s a unique game unlike anything else on the SNES.  It’s difficult to describe, but anyone who has played the Might and Magic games on the PC will find the gameplay instantly familiar.  In fact, this is the port of a DOS game from 1991 (the SNES version came out in 1994).  
 
And therein lies the problem.  This thing is NOT built for an SNES controller.  It just isn’t.  For all of the functionality it has, it can’t compare to a keyboard and mouse.  This probably wasn’t the best game to review, because its really, really difficult to explain.  Long story short, just about every action, from using items to equipping weapons to attacking requires multiple button presses.  Because there are so few buttons on the controller, everything requires those buttons to be pressed in the correct order.  It gets old fast.   
 
Moving around the sewer is fine, but combat is damn near impossible. You will find yourself fumbling with the controller, accidentally bringing up your inventory or turning around while low level goblins whittle away your health.  Of all the games I have played through since I started this project, this is the first one I didn’t finish.
 
And its a shame because there is a lot going for it.  I have always love the D & D character customization system.  The graphics are good for their time and at the time, it was rare to see a first person RPG on consoles (hard to believe, isn’t it).  This isn’t bad like Days of Thunder, which is a lazy, POS cash grab.  That said, the controls made it essentially unplayable.  Maybe this would have been acceptable on the SNES early in its life cycle, but by 1994 there were already tons of console RPGs that were better.   If you are a hardcore D&D fan or you really love games like this, stick to the DOS version.  I might actually try and dig it up some day.  But on SNES, avoid, avoid, avoid.
 
2/10
 
Play this if:
You can actually figure out the controls
You are that hardcore of a D&D fan.  
You absolutely want to give it a try and can’t find it on PC
 
Avoid if:
You have access to a better version of the game
You prefer control schemes that aren’t rocket surgery
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ranking the Final Fantasy Commanders - Magic: The Gathering Set Preview Part 1

 Now here's something I never thought would ever happen.  I have been a fan of Magic: The Gathering for a long time. I've been a fan of Final Fantasy for just as long. Yet I never thought I would ever see a full-on MTG set based on Final Fantasy. When it was first announced, I thought this set was a joke. Honestly, it sounded like something I dreamed up when I was a kid, not an actual product that Wizards of the Coast was actually going to release. But here we are, two weeks away from the release of MTG - Final Fantasy. So now, it's time to rank some of the cards. I've talked a little bit about MTG before, but I think now is as good a time to talk about it again. Hey, I did a ranking for the Street Fighter cards, why not Final Fantasy? Well, I am going to do the same exercise once again. I am going to keep it to my most played format, commander/EDH, and rank all the new legendary creatures/potential commanders. The difference is this time, instead of eight new commander...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

I've been skirting around it for a few years now, but its finally time to add yet another console to the list. A few years ago, I reviewed Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, a Genesis platformer that I didn't really enjoy all that much. I talked a little bit about how Alex Kidd was Sega's mascot before Sonic became a thing and how hyped up I was to give AKITEC a try, having heard so much about the series. That was part of the reason the game fell flat for me, though poor level design and awful boss fights were more than likely the bigger culprits. What I didn't realize at the time was that much of the positive sentiment I had heard about the series had nothing to do with its lone Genesis entry. Instead, much of the positivity was focused on the various entries on Sega's third generation console, a machine that I have been looking for an excuse to play for a long time. For most North American gamers, the Genesis was the first time we interacted with Sega. Many peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jumping Flash!

Video games have been around for a relatively short time when you consider the grand scheme of things. They are certainly one of the newer media formats and their time as a respected medium has been incredibly short. However, they have also made major strides in their 50–60-year lifespan. There have been a lot of revolutionary titles that have pushed the limits of what games can achieve. Typically, those games receive the recognition they deserve as landmarks in the industry's growth. Sometimes though, even games that made huge technological strides can slip through the cracks. Just because a game is technologically impressive for its time doesn't make it good, and sometimes these revolutionary titles are forgotten because they are simply not fun to play. However, that wasn't the case for our subject this week. I will never forget the first time I experienced Jumping Flash!, one of the playable demos on the notable PlayStation Picks CD. I've talked a little bit about th...
Post a Comment
Read more