評論

• gamedeal user

  Aug 4, 2014

  This is the first time I decide to write a review, and the reason is quite simple: Eidolon is a masterpiece. You will walk in endless landscapes tracking the tales of the ones who once dwelled in this land. The "story-writing" is incredibly compelling, and you'll find yourself totally immersed journeying in this post human and beautifully rendered new world. The survival elements of the game are unobtrusive but deadly ready to punish the inexperienced traveller, you'll have a bow, a fishing rod, binoculars, a compass and no idea of where you are or where to go. You'll be lost, and happy to be lost. Eventually you'll start to find pieces of map, pieces of stories, pieces of humanity... Eidolon is a battue in which you'll hunt down the lives of those who are long forgotten, Eidolon is a struggle to survival, Eidolon is a deep inner journey. May you discover yourself, at the end of this path.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 5, 2014

  Given merely a notebook, some form of tablet and little to no guidance or information, Eidolon truly hands you freedom of choice right from the start. The stunning visuals, ethereal music and immersive sound effects piqued my curiosity right away, and I felt the need to explore this mystical land. I was completely immersed within the first 5 minutes, and after an hour I was hard pushed to stop playing. Eidolon is probably the best game I have played so far this year. If you enjoy exploring vast landscapes and slowly piecing together the story of the world around you, a la "Dear Esther" or "Gone Home", then I would highly recommend this game to you. Also, this game has immersed me to the point of having an in game diary. I don't even keep a diary in real life. Eidolon, what have you done to me?
• gamedeal user

  Aug 6, 2014

  Quiet, lonely and hauntingly beautiful.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 11, 2014

  How did I end up spending more than twenty hours in a walking simulator? I guess a large part of it can be attributed to the mystery. Eidolon is a game that doesn't spoon-feed you anything at all. You're dropped into the massive forests modeled after Western Washington, USA, with no equipment or directions of any kind. Soon enough you'll find some rudimentary survival gear and some documents left behind by people that came before. These documents, which range from personal letters to posters and diaries, detail the happenings of the area spanning an era of hundreds of years. And that's basically Eidolon - One document leads to another, that one to yet another, or maybe to a completely different story strand. There are about twenty different stories containing well more than a hundred pages total to find, all adding their distinctive perspective to the overall picture. How much of it will be uncovered is left to the player - as far as I can gather, Eidolon doesn't really reach any kind of a conclusion, even though all of the individual stories eventually will. Without revealing too much, Eidolon deals with subjects like posthumanism, transhumanism, mortality and what it means to be a human in the first place. The stories are well written and quite thought-provoking, as they should be, since they're the sole force propelling the player forwards through the vast stretches of wilderness. Eidolon requires a rare kind of patience. "Vast" only begins to describe the distances required to be crossed in search for the next scrap of history. It isn't just that the play area is absolutely huge, it's the lack of reliable maps and the presence of large, uncrossable bodies of water that will frequently require you to take the long way around and sometimes even backtrack several hours worth of wandering. Whether it's all worth it depends on the player. There's really not much actual gameplay in Eidolon - you need to occasionally forage, fish & hunt to keep yourself nourished, but the game isn't actively out to get you unless you get foolhardy. I found myself doing a lot of thinking and soul-searching while trekking, pondering about more than just the lives of the people on the paper. Eidolon evokes a profound sense of isolation, loneliness and melancholy that lingers. The game's atmosphere is further cemented by the excellent post-rock/ambient soundtrack that I count among the very best in gaming. Graphics are extremely simplified and minimalist yet frequently beautiful, unless you look at things up close. Technically the game does have some problems, ranging from flickering polygons and hitches while loading terrain to more serious issues like getting stuck and falling through the world geometry. Despite these issues, I found the narrative strong enough to keep on exploring. It's clear that Eidolon is a product of a singular vision with no input from focus groups or marketing forces. It demands a lot of your time - maybe too much for most - but for people like me with too much time on their hands anyway and a penchant for self-reflection, Eidolon can prove to be a very fulfilling experience. One of my favorite games of 2014.
• m3roadworx

  Nov 19, 2022

  I will be harsh and give it the thumbs down because it does not support 4K resolution. The graphics are very primitive as well. To be fair, I suppose this is the sort of thing you should expect from a game released in 2014.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2014

  “It’s a great, well written survival game”, I was told by someone trying to get attention towards the title. This isn’t a survival game. It has survival elements, but the general mood of the game isn’t survival. What Eidolon is though, is a walking simulator pushed to the extremes. You begin in the woods with nothing, and you just start… Walking. And walking. And walking. Until you see a cube, it’ll either be green or white. If it’s white, you get a tool to aid your survival. If it’s green, you will get a page or two to various stories that are scattered across the vast landscape. The tools add up, but you’re not spending most of your time working to survive, or even thinking about it. Food is plenty and it takes a rather long fall to injure yourself, and if you do, you’ll still heal over time. Animals are scared of you and I’m never witnessed an attack on my 4 hour playthrough. What you will be doing, is walking. And walking. And walking. And hopefully you’ll come across another cube. Now, the green cubes seem to be the purpose of the game. The stories they hold are really well written, some are captivating while others depressing and melancholic. From brain damaged cultists to people just trying to survive whatever happened, the stories draw you in and makes you want to read more. Now, you can find tags under said bits of stories to generate a green spectre that will point you to the next part of the story, but that’s about it in what the game tells the player to do. And even though it will point you in the right direction, they never indicate how long the trek is, and they can be long. Super long. It’s vastness may be the biggest thing I have against it. Now the idea of exploring a vast landscape is a great one, I grew up on a farm that owned 100 acres of forest, most of my childhood was spent exploring these woods, discovering things that resided in it. But Ice Water games have stretched themselves a bit thing to make this landscape so vast. I can dig a simple art style, but it’s concern about the big things result in a lack of detail in the little things. Flat surfaces and large, tall trees make up so much of the land and it’s lack of threat results in being unable to “believe” these woods. Although everything is not all like that. Once you find the desolate highway and blown out buildings, the game picks up a bit. The density of story cubes increases and the landscape gets interesting as you traverse through these ruins of modern civilization. I also should mention the music, the music is great. It sets the tone better than the artwork, from rustic acoustic guitars to roaring electronics, they tremendously help add the mood to your journey and the stories you find within. So overall, it can be a interesting experience. But it can also be a monotonous one. Don’t get into the story expecting the game to immediately point you to what you need to do. The stories you’ll read are great, and some will even motivate you to trek miles for the next piece. But the game could have really benefited from being less vast and instead try to be a little more dense. 6/10
• gamedeal user

  Jan 5, 2015

  Awesome game if you're into slow-paced, open-ended exploration of a huge world with some very basic, relatively low-pressure survival mechanics. Everything about that is right up my alley, so this is probably the best game purchase I've made in the past year. I can understand how the gameplay style might bore or frustrate some players; and while the survival aspect is less than frantic, if you make a wrong move or two, it can also be brutally unforgiving. Eidolon is a relaxed game and has been described pretty aptly as a "walking simulator." You simply roam the vast landscape (really vast) seeking to piece together the story of what happened to the people who once lived in the area in an apocalyptic scenario and its aftermath. You can follow specific story lines from one clue to the next as you discover them, or you can just explore freestyle. The graphics are minimalist, but in my opinion they are gorgeous and beautifully successful at evoking the character of the Pacific Northwest. I rarely find myself being critical of the graphics. This is good for people playing on less-than-beefy computers, as the game isn't terribly taxing on resources. Staying alive in Eidolon is just a matter of eating enough and avoiding sickness or injury. There is really no crafting to speak of, and no building. Mushrooms, berries, and fish (after you cook it) are your staples; it's also possible to hunt for meat if you find a bow and arrow, but this is really difficult and I've only had one successful kill after a lot of trying. You can collect tinder to build campfires. Wounds from fall damage and aggressive animals (wolves, bears) are the main sources of injury, and eating spoiled food or freezing are the main ways in which you can be injuried, as well as from wounds which fester. You *don't* want to get sick from a wound -- the situation can get really dire quite fast. I've only found one bizarre bug in several hours of gameplay, and that was a deer that got stuck in the side of a hill at the very beginning of my game and couldn't seem to get out. The animal AI behavior is a little "blocky" and unnatural, but I didn't find this to be a serious problem since interaction with animals is pretty rare on the whole. Things I love about Eidolon: - Sparse graphic style and massive open world work well together in this particular context - The documents and maps that you find are beautifully designed and rendered - The writing with respect to the characters and their stories is excellent, some of the best I've seen in a game - Soundtrack and audio are atmospheric and appropriate to the game - The survival mechanics are not unnecessarily cerebral and convoluted just for the sake of being fancy, and are fairly realistic, e.g., it's a low-key piece of cake until something awful happens and then you're f****d. Improvements I would suggest: - A slightly (not greatly) more involved system for hunting and fishing. As-is, it's so basic and easy as to be unrewarding, particularly the fishing. - The graphics for manmade structures are not up to par with the graphics for natural flora and fauna; the discrepancy is pretty damn glaring at times. - A more nuanced system for moving from one story clue to the next. The clairvoyant "Now that I've seen this, I magically know to go *this* way" thing is a cop-out; a little more intensive writing and design centered around the maps and documents themselves would be more realistic and engaging. This was the only aspect of the game that broke my sense of immersion. - Some reviewers have suggested that the game needs more density of interactivity overall; while I agree that this wouldn't hurt, the sparseness and slow pace are part of the game's basic aesthetic and I wouldn't want to see that sacrificed for the sake of giving bored people "more to do." So maybe a few more interaction possibilities, but just a few. - I also think this game could benefit from a slightly more involved cooking system, such as the ability to make a few different basic campfire recipes with different special properties or bonuses for the player (cold resistance, movement speed bonus, healing bonus, that sort of thing). In short: one of the best games of its kind, and an awesome experience if you're into the genre and don't require a constant life-and-death struggle or lots of shiny, flashy things to keep you involved in a game. Kudos to the producers of Eidolon!
• gamedeal user

  Feb 20, 2015

  This game is unique, to put it mildly. I can understand how some people got bored with it, but, for the right people this game will grab ahold of you and not let go. At times, there is a zen-like, meditative calm in which you float thru this homely yet alien world, untouched by the ruination. At times there is the feeling of utter desolation and fear, even anger at the long dead people who have left you so alone, One night I huddled against the overhang of a ruin, hiding behind the firelight. The next day, I climbed a mountain and stood alone, open to the world watching the sun rise and set and the rain, fog and clouds swirled around me. With no clue as to who or what I am, I vacillate between a noble phantom and low, mean, wild beast. *ahem* Not many games make you wax poetic like this. Not many games achieve beauty with minimalistic graphics. And once you get past all that, there are the stories....the eidolons (that word means spirit, soul, phantom). You can follow one at a time or wander freely. I've by no means found them all. I believe that will take a very long time. Yet, the glimpses you catch of lives long vanished are so engaging and enigmatic that you are driven to find more. There must be an explanation among these far-flung eidolons. As for the practicalities, you can negotiate with compass and map, or let the terrain and foraging guide you. Both are rewarding enough. The basic survival tools are easy enough to acquire in the first few minutes if you keep your eyes open. There is no combat, unless you count shooting a deer or running from predators. The survival part of the game is basic common sense. Stay warm, dry, fed and rested. Armed with a fishing pole and a brain, this should prove quite easy. TLDR: Just buy it if you've ever enjoyed a poem and don't expect FPS killkillkill constant stimulation.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 2, 2015

  I've played this game for months now, on and off, and still don't really feel like I've scratched the surface of the story. It's beautiful, it's relaxing, it's funny intentionally and unintentionally (I mistook a bear for an oil drum!), and the interactive nature of the journal is so good. I haven't found anyone who's interested in hearing about my explorations in real life, but to me it feels like I really am exploring this moody, misty land. I'm still in mysterious suspense and think this game is truly beautiful.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 8, 2015

  the landscape is completely beautiful. nice music. only died once. overall very nice and relaxing. love how open it is. lots of rain though. but hey, it's Washington. so far I've only managed to find a lots of mountains, a bear that I avoided by swimming across a giant lake, various bodies of water, and a big field of blackberry bushes and got like 400 of them. no buildings yet. also can't figure out how to use the fishing pole, I don't have any mouse buttons on my Mac. if you like calming landscapes, exploring, the outdoors, and being alone, you'd like this.