8 Eyes

The Good

The Bad

The Bottom Line
You play as Orin, who with his pet Cutrus is out to collect 8 jewels to prevent the destruction of the world. These are scattered across as many different stages, seven of which you may pick the order. You receive a new weapon upon the completion of each stage.

On paper, 8 Eye's [sic] is a superb game. It's pretty much Castlevania, but with the fun falcon pet. It's an innovative and very fun concept. If you've played Borderlands, think "Bloodwing". Only here, it's on a 2D plane and you have more use of your pet. When I first started the game up, I was pretty impressed by it, and it seemed like quite a bit of fun. Alas, I think I had the most fun controlling this pet, and it's not the biggest aspect of the game. The poor hit-detection and the outrageous difficulty level makes what could be so great and so much fun so, so poor. The game is a lot more pain than it's worth. The frustration it can produce is off-the-charts.

The game also features a co-op mode. A second player may control Cutrus, but I found this actually made the game a lot less fun, and contrary to what I've heard, harder as opposed to easier. No matter which you play as; playing as Orin makes it feel like just a poor Castlevania rip-off. Playing as Cutrus just isn't particularly fun. There's just something about merely commanding that pet that increased the fun factor a lot. Commanding it to save you, commanding it to open a door or so. Only being in direct control, or not controlling it at all, basically makes the game pointless to me. Ergo, single-player was where it's at. Or not.

I would recommend that you at least give the game a shot, but don't expect much. Bad design choices and awful coding makes it hard to enjoy. The controls are good, but that's about it. I am sure that if Capcom or Konami attempted to make pretty much the same game, it would have been an absolute classic that would belong in my top 20. Can't have everything, I guess.

The Good
8 Eyes has a unique concept with Orin the falconer and his faithful falcon friend Cutrus. A single player can command the falcon to fly out and attack enemies at a range and also hit switches to open doors. The game also did a good job illustrating different the mansions in different parts of the world.

The Bad
The play control in 8 Eyes reminds me of Simon Belmont from Konami's original Castlevania game on the NES. Orin is very slow to move and can not attack very quickly. This makes it more tempting to send the falcon for confrontations in the hope that your character does not sustain as much damage. However, controlling the falcon in the single-player mode is more limiting than in the 2-player mode. In the latter mode, the second player can control the falcon's vertical movement. In the single-player mode, the falcon flies on the same plane where Orin released him.

Certain boss battles were almost impossible. Eventually, I figured out a pattern where I would use the falcon to hit the boss once every 2 minutes or so. Perhaps there was a better way, but I remember that I needed about an hour to defeat one of the bosses.

Another minor point-- when you eventually collect all 8 Eyes, you had better hope that you have a good color television so you can differentiate between the jewels.

The Bottom Line
Think of the original Castlevania with a falcon power-up.