EOE: Eve of Extinction

"Completely out of the blue!!!!"

First off I have to say that this is my first review so bear with me if I miss a fact or two.

STORY: 8
The story , which has you fighting against hordes of corporate suited baddies to restore your girlfriend to her physical form after she was turned into a weapon that can changes it's appearance, is for the most part pretty original. While the story is different there are tons of typical action story cliches throughout.
The ''in-game'' and ''end of chapter'' cutscene do a great job of progressing the story and don't go on and on like the scenes in MGS2.

GRAPHICS: 8
I have to say the graphics in this game are pretty d@mn good. They aren't in the same league as MGS2 or FFX but theey are crisp, clear and there is not the slightest sign of slowdown, even when there are over 6 characters on screen fighting, shooting and jumping all over the place.
The game also loads very fast, both during levels and between levels so you never have that long of a break in action.

GAMEPLAY: 8
''Deep'' is definitely the word I would use to describe the gameplay in E.O.E. Of course when you look at it this really is just a fancy beat-em up no different from Final Fight or Double Dragon, but E.O.E. really adds a lot of new ideas to the mix.
First off, by the end of the game you will have acquired several weapons that you will use to beat enemies senseless.
Swords, a bo-staff,axe and many others. The cool thing is that all of these weapons can be powered up to different levels by beating multiple bad-guys with each one.
The more levels that you gain , the more moves and combos you can pull off.
You can also switch weapons on the fly to creat some really cool combos. Besides the combos, each weapon has a sort of elemental ''magic'' that you can execute by tracing out a pattern with the analog sticks. This is pretty easy to do with the first few weapons but by the last one they get kinda tricky.
The game also requires you to play through multiple time to power up your weapons, open extra gameplay modes and acquire data modules which tell you about different characters and places in the game.

SOUND: 7
The sound in E.O.E is a little lacking but that is only because it sneaks up on you. most levels have little to no music until you run into a pack of hooligans to beat-up. Even then the music is this fast pace techno-stuff that I'm not too fond of. It does get the job done though ...I suppose.
Other than that weapon sounds are cool with the requisite ''whooshs'' and ''klangs''. Cam Clarke also provided a voice for the villain AGLA in this game, some may remember him as LIQUID SNAKE from MGS and Father Carius from GRANDIA. The other voices in this game are also very well done and not the whiny stuff we've been subjected to for years.

REPLAYABILITY: 8.5
I was quite suprised when i beat this game the first time to see that I would have to go through it a 2nd and possibly a 3rd time to unlock all the different modes and to power-up all the different weapons. So this game will definitely stay in my PS2 for quite some time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/02, Updated 03/01/02