As Far As The Eye PlayStation 4 Review

As Far As The Eye is a simulation survival game developed by Unexpected, while this console version is published by Klabater. A great flood is approaching, and only the Eye at the center of the world is safe enough to weather the storm. Players take control of roving tribes aiming to make it to the eye where they begin the journey; their numbers and supplies all shift with each scenario or custom setup.

 

A match of As Far As The Eye begins with a group of Pupils hailing from a different direction of the world. The West Tribe is a medium size group blessed with lots of food rations. The South Tribe has a greater number of Pupils, but all of them have some penalties. The East Tribe has very few members but begins with extra supplies. And finally, the North Tribe has gifted members but must travel the furthest to the Eye.

As a form of a tutorial, players can first go through the campaign mode broken into five chapters. Here, one will take control of a premade Tribe and have a smaller amount of tasks. Each level takes place in biomes broken up into hexagons. Most of the time, one begins riding a Rhinoffalos, a large pack animal that can move up to two spaces a day. Once parked, it serves as the home base where supplies must be gathered. The biomes have a fog of war, and the first order is to send at least one Pupil to explore the map.

Moving between biomes requires a set amount of supplies, but one can also stockpile extras before moving on. However, each level has only a set amount of moves before the flood catches up and causes a game over. Therefore it becomes crucial to assign the correct Pupils to tasks and make every day efficient.

Every Pupil can attempt a job, be it a gatherer, herbalist, cook, farmer, fisher, or more. However, without proper training, they may take extra time or not yield enough goods. Most Pupils have at least one specialization already, which might improve their speed, gathering amount, or other special abilities. Pupils that survive can even gather experience towards other professions or expand into even higher-end jobs. Some of those second-tier jobs may be able to make manufactured resources.

Most biome titles will have some kind of resource yield. It might include fish in lakes, a forest that can be chopped for trees, or hills filled with ore. Empty plains can be used to construct buildings. Some include automatic harvesting, trade with far-off tribes, or food stalls. Only some of these can be deconstructed for a refund of materials, making it necessary to weigh in if making them is that important.

The number of resources can, at times, be a bit overwhelming. Initially, it starts with simple raw goods like wood and stone. But soon, it balloons to accommodate various types of cooking. Players will need to find different quality meat, produce, and spices to make new meals. This food prevents the Pupils from sustaining daily damage or, in some cases, possible buffs. But it becomes questionable why there are so many different pies, stews, and entrees when they serve mostly the same function.

One of the biggest occurrences is Vagaries - sudden events that will change the layout or possibilities of the map. This can include sudden illness of workers, buildings breaking, wildfires, and storms that can hinder movement. Typically there is some warning that a Vagary is coming, but it means totally shifting focus to not quickly be wiped out.

After clearing the initial tutorials - around one or two hours - what is left is to play through random matches. Players will have the choice of their starting Pupils, journey length, and various supplies to start with. One can even input a map seed if they have a favorite layout or input one given by friends. Due to the menu’s layout, this seeding prompt will always pop up as one move their cursor to start a match. 

Some world maps wind up being very puzzle-like - portions of the biome may lack resources to even make it to the Eye, requiring careful planning to have either a surplus or have bothered to explore alternate routes. While this does raise the stakes, it can also make things unpredictably frustrating. One could arrive at a biome only to quickly realize they are in a no-win situation and must restart the whole adventure.

The aesthetic of As Far AS The Eye is meant to be casual and pleasant but often comes off as unremarkable. The Pupils themselves are boarding on racist native stereotypes, though this may be purely accidental. All of the visuals and music are a bit too relaxing, easily lulling players into a tired state rather than being energetic to survive in a harsh environment. The overall sound mixing is also rather low, making it easy to miss prompts or other important effects in the environment.

As Far As The Eye is instantly recognizable as being a PC’s first game. The menus and interface and clearly intended for instant clicking with a mouse or touchpad. What results is an absolutely awful PlayStation 4 controller layout and response time. In many cases, no button is displayed on the screen, requiring players to fumble around until they find the correct input. 

In many cases, X and O flip which is for confirm and the other for cancel. There is arbitrary switching between the use of the analog sticks and directional pad depending on each menu. Finally, the most often button pressed will be Options, which is the only means of progressing to the next action. Much of this could have been alleviated by having an in-game mouse cursor.

Related to the made-for-PC factor, many menus overlay each other making it incredibly hard to read basic interface elements when an event occurs. It is possible the original intent was to exit out of these pop-up windows, but there is no means of doing so on PlayStation 4. Even stranger, when these giant prompts come up, it does not prevent other game inputs - so one might find themselves taking unintended actions in an effort to close a tutorial.

The PlayStation 4 version of As Far As The Eye is very buggy. This includes stuttering, freezing, and some outright crashing. At other points, the load times can be painfully long. One might think the game has completely stalled, but after five or so minutes will suddenly start working again.

Interestingly, many of these bugs and errors plagued the Nintendo Switch version of the game released earlier in April 2022. It seems that Unexpected did not learn their lesson with that version of As Far As The Eye. Or they are simply rushing it to PlayStation Network without even working on the previously mentioned issues and oversights.

This port of As Far As The Eye does very little to make use of the PlayStation 4. The game itself has some fun ideas, and those that enjoy exploration and gathering aspects of simulation games like Civilization or Starcraft will find some enjoyment. Still, if possible, one should go for the Steam or Epic Store PC release if they have that option.
 

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
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