I tried reviewing this game a while back. I failed. EYE: Divine Cybermancy is a dementedly over-ambitous FPS/RPG hybrid with a setting and story that reads like a hybrid of Warhammer 40k and Shadowrun, if they’d been written by David Lynch and drunkenly translated into French and only halfway back again. It’s a game where – while playing as a bizarrely incoherent and profane cyber-ninja-monk-mage – you can have your brain hacked into by a surly ATM, or violently explode your foes with just the power of your mind. And for the next 24 hours, you can get it for half price on Steam. Hit the jump for a trailer, and more on why this game was so impossible to review.

Despite sinking a good 15+ hours into E.Y.E, I find it hard to openly recommend it. For every one amazing moment, like leaping off a rooftop, smashing through a car and unloading on a dozen soldiers with a minigun, I found a counterpoint; a glitch, an incoherent piece of seemingly vital plot text or a seemingly random death. I played this game from beginning to end, often whooping in joy at the demented, fractured design, but just as often grumbling at the bizarre choices the developers made. I occasionally sat in awe of the gloriously mega-scale architecture in places, and then complained as I had to walk through a network of nearly identical paths that were ten times longer than they needed to be.

EYE is a hard game to recommend, but with a discount this steep, I can’t help but offer a guarded recommendation. It’s probably one of the most ambitious and creative games ever made on Valve’s sturdy old Source engine, and has remarkably solid gunplay and some remarkably fun co-op online fun to be had. It’s also an experience quite unlike any other, bombarding you with a baffling array of menus, choices and awkwardly paced tutorial videos to explain it as you stumble through the first map. You can read some extended and clever thoughts by indie dev Rob Fearon (creator of Squid Yes, Not So Octopus) here – perhaps he can explain the game where I failed.

As hesitant as I may sound, I suggest that you take your fate into your own hands, my warning to heart, and try this game. It’s quite unlike anything else I’ve played.

[EYE on Steam]