EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

 Since its release for the Atari ST in 1987, the game DUNGEON MASTER has earned
quite a reputation for itself. Some call it the best dungeon game ever created;
others call it the best computer game ever released, period. Everyone who has
played DUNGEON MASTER raves about the realism of its graphics and the smoothness
of its user interface. DUNGEON MASTER is little more than a legend to IBM users,
however, because the company that made DUNGEON MASTER still has not gotten
around to releasing the game for MS-DOS systems. It doesn't look like IBM users
will be playing DUNGEON MASTER any time soon, but in the meantime, the new
ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, will do nicely. EYE
borrows heavily from DUNGEON MASTER to produce one of the most compelling
dungeon exploration games available. (This review is based on the IBM-PC
version.)

 The story of EYE is simple. Strange things have been happening in the city of
Waterdeep, and the city's rulers suspect that something in the city's sewers is
at the...er, bottom of it. The city hires a party of foolhardy young adventurers
to explore the sewers and find the source of the trouble. In their explorations,
the party finds treasure, solves puzzles, and kills scores of monsters before
confronting the Ultimate Bad Guy at the bottom of the sewers. So far this sounds
like a hundred other fantasy role-playing games. What makes EYE different is its
interface, which more than any other game gives you the feeling that you are
there.

 Much of EYE'S interface is taken directly from DUNGEON MASTER. Key DUNGEON
MASTER concepts have been incorporated into other MS-DOS games recently, such as
DRAKKHEN, ULTIMA VI, and WIZARDRY: BANE OF THE COSMIC FORGE, but EYE is the
first MS-DOS game to incorporate all the features that made DUNGEON MASTER so
successful. Like DUNGEON MASTER, EYE uses a first-person perspective. You see
what your characters see. Earlier AD&D games and the BARD'S TALE series have
used this approach before, but EYE's 256-color VGA graphics are superior to
those found in other first-person perspective games. The dungeon is
appropriately dark and murky; you can practically feel the slime on the walls.
One nice touch is that the dungeon graphics change every few levels. There are
slimy sewer levels, traditional gray stone dungeon levels, levels with strangely
carved walls, and so on. The graphics for the last level are an especially nice
surprise. (Let's just say the Ultimate Bad Guy has a good interior decorator.)

 The animated monster graphics are almost all superb; my personal favorites are
the mantis warriors and the skeletons. There are separate views of each
monster's front, back, and sides. One of the most exciting (and difficult) parts
of EYE is sneaking up behind a monster and ambushing it. There's a wide
selection of monsters in the game, ranging from pesky little kobolds to
poisonous giant spiders to the beholder of the title.

 The most important feature of the EYE interface, though, is the way that
objects are treated. Items in the game work as closely as possible to the way
real objects in the real world act. Thus in EYE you can use a knife as a
hand-held weapon, or you can throw it and watch as it sails down the dungeon
corridor. You can also use a knife to trigger a pressure-sensitive floor plate,
or drop it on the floor to mark your way. In a pinch you can use ordinary items
such as rocks or bottles as missile weapons -- I dealt one monster its death
blow by throwing an extra set of armor at it.

 Of course, there's a lot to do besides ogling the graphics and throwing knives
down hallways. The main activities in EYE are mapping, puzzle solving, and
combat. There's plenty of each. Mapping is a must, as there are 12 levels and
all sorts of spinners, teleports, pit traps, illusionary walls, one-way doors,
and other such obstacles to confuse the explorer. Mapping is made harder by two
features: First, EYE is a real-time game, so while you're busy filling in your
graph paper, a few hellhounds might pop out from around the corner and begin
toasting your party. Second, characters in EYE consume food with time, and when
a character's food runs out, the hit points begin to fall. The food problem
disappears as soon as your cleric learns the Create Food spell, but for the
first few levels, food management is a major challenge. If you loiter around
making maps, you may starve to death.

 In addition to twisty hallways, there are fiendish puzzles. Mostly these
consist of finding ways to open doors. Much time is spent pushing buttons,
pulling levers, picking locks, wandering through teleportals, and searching for
keys while trying to find the stairs to the next level. Some of the puzzles are
quite clever; others are impossible; still others are mere busy work to fill up
the dungeon. Some clues are provided in the form of inscrutable inscriptions on
walls, but the many of the inscriptions are more confusing than the puzzles.
There is usually more than one way past any obstacle, and many of the puzzles
may be skipped entirely. Whether this is a good thing is a matter of individual
taste. I liked the fact that I didn't have to explore all the nooks and crannies
to win, but other players have been disappointed to find out that the effort
they put into solving puzzles was wasted.

 As with any dungeon game, there is also lots of combat. This is EYE's main weak
point. As mentioned earlier, EYE uses a real-time system. There's nothing
inherently wrong with that, but EYE's real-time combat system has some problems.
One is that there is no speed control for combat. Players who are klutzy, or who
just want to take things slow, are out of luck. Worst of all, there is no aiming
in combat. You simply click on the weapon icon, and the computer decides which
monster you hit, if any. Needless to say, this eliminates most of the tactical
decision-making at the heart of other CRPGs ("Should we gang up on the troll, or
take out the orcs first?"). With the exception of the tougher magic-using
monsters, combat in EYE is simply a matter of clicking on the weapons icons
until the monster dies.

 There are also some design flaws in the combat system. You click on the weapon
icon to fight, but the weapon icon is located next to the icon that swaps a
character's party position. In the heat of battle, you're likely to miss the
weapon icon and hit the swap icon, temporarily freezing up that character.
Control of the mouse is also erratic, at least on slower systems. On my 12MHz
machine, the mouse cursor disappears during the animation of magic explosions
(which are very well done). Needless to say, combat is difficult when the cursor
keeps vanishing! On my PS/2, the mouse would lock if you tried to use both the
keyboard and the mouse to enter commands (though no other users have reported
this problem). Lastly, a party can move around the dungeon even though all of
its members are dead, paralyzed, or unconscious!

 EYE is supposedly based on the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS role-playing system.
As you might expect, a real-time game like EYE ends up making major changes in
AD&D's round-based rules: There are no rounds in EYE. Instead, a character is
barred from attacking with a weapon for a period of time after using it. This
delay time is less if the character is more dexterous, has drunk a speed potion,
etc. There are other changes to AD&D rules in EYE, as well. Lightning bolts no
longer reflect off walls, for example. Clerics must hold a holy symbol in their
hands to cast spells. This means they can't wear a shield and use magic at the
same time, which in turn means that at lower levels, clerics are not very
effective offensively. The game does support all the various races and classes,
though. One nice touch is that only certain races can read certain inscriptions.
It even supports all the different alignment, even though a character's
alignment has no apparent effect on game play.

 EYE OF THE BEHOLDER requires either a hard drive or two floppy drives, and 60K
of RAM. It comes on five low-density 5-1/4" diskettes; 3-1/2" diskettes are
available separately. The game supports CGA, EGA, VGA, and Tandy 16-color
graphics modes. The EGA graphics are a bit ugly, but acceptable; CGA graphics
are, as always, terrible. The game supports the AdLib and Soundblaster sound
boards. I don't have either, but other players have told me that the
Soundblaster effects are fabulous. The copy protection in EYE consists of a
simple manual lookup that's required every so often when you descend a
staircase.

 EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is an excellent dungeon-crawl game in the tradition of that
old text classic, ROGUE (EYE even features those ROGUE favorites, rust monsters
and xorns!). But although it has beautiful graphics and a terrific interface,
EYE is just a dungeon crawl. If you want a game with a detailed combat system
(like WIZARDRY: BANE OF THE COSMIC FORGE), or a strong story (like LORD OF THE
RINGS), or a vividly imagined game world (like ULTIMA VI), EYE will seem a bit
thin. EYE captures only that small sliver of the role-playing experience that
deals with exploring dark dungeons. It does that very well, however. If your
heart beats faster at the thought of trying to unlock a door while lost in a
maze with monsters on your trail, then EYE is the game for you.

 EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and distributed
by Electronic Arts.