EOE: Eve of Extinction

"A promising brawler ruined by flaws"

The question is ''Who plays a brawler for the story?'' Eve of Extinction's base premise is about Josh Calloway, a former employee of the genetics corporation Wisdom. When he discovers Wisdom's evil intentions, he and his girlfriend, Eliel, try to escape but are captured. Her soul is merged with a Legacy weapon known as the E.O.E. Josh escapes, taking the Legacy weapon with him in hopes of finding a way to get her returned to normal. From there, the story is thin, but serves the purpose of moving the game from one location to the next.

Initially, Eve of Extinction seems to lack a lot of variety. There are only a handful of enemy types and two different weapons (the rod and sword). Thankfully, though, the further into the game you go the deeper combat becomes. After defeating the occasional boss, you gain new weapons, like the crossbow and snake sword. Also, the more you use the weapons, the more levels they gain, allowing for longer hit chains. With a normal and strong attack, the player can vary their attacks, along with a specific move for each weapon (backflip, using the pole to vault jump, etc.). The further along in the game, the more enemy types turn up, and the newer ones are often more dangerous and prove to be strong versus certain weapons in your repertoire. Also, they tend to attack in groups, forcing you to fight your way through.

One of the nicer aspects of the game is that it doesn't totally focus on fighting. There are a number of times where the player needs to search an area for energy fountains which contain a Ley Seed - an item that powers up the Legacy weapon and makes special attacks possible (executed by use of the right analog stick). This involves climbing and jumping from ledges and rooftops. While this is a nice break in the action, it sometimes can be frustrating due to the inconsistent nature of the jump animation. Often, it seems that the ability to jump any kind of distance is dependent on where you hit the jump button. Miss-time it and you hop to an untimely fall, which will either kill or injure you.

One of the biggest failings of the game is the very poor implementation of the game's camera. Instead of intuitively following the action from a good vantage point, it often stays locked in the same position, no matter what the action is. There will be a number of times where the player will be forced to hit the R2 button to move the camera behind Josh, only to have to it again ten seconds later when he's moved into a different position. Running down a hallway is even a chore because of the faulty camera and god forbid if it moves in front of you as you enter a room and get ambushed by a group of thugs. While the game has a first person look mode, it only can be used in open areas or on top of rooftops.

The environments are often huge and nicely detailed, even though they seem to lack a little life. Except for the occasional thug, you won't find much on the empty streets or in the buildings. Also, there seems to be the occasional collision detection problem when moving through certain areas. When fighting near walls, don't be surprised if you parts of your foe passes through the wall. While neither issue crop up too often, they do happen to show some aspects that needed to be refined.

EOE is a good action-based game that suffers from a number of faults and flaws. A better camera and even a lock-on feature for combat would have helped this game nicely. In fact, a lot of the faster enemies will have your number because of the camera and an inherent inability to gain your bearings fast enough. I would suggest renting this game unless you are hard up for a new brawler.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/02, Updated 03/03/02