Survival adventure The Eternal Cylinder from ACE Team and Good Shepherd Entertainment is ready to go on PS4. Check our The Eternal Cylinder review!
Survival adventure The Eternal Cylinder from ACE Team and Good Shepherd Entertainment is ready to go on PlayStation 4. You will be taking control of a herd of creatures called Trebhums, and you’ll be exploring a strange alien world packed with exotic lifeforms and surreal environments. You’ll do this while the threat of the Cylinder, a gargantuan rolling structure of ancient origin that crushes everything in its path, looms over you at all times. Your Trebhums are going to start at the bottom of the food chain, but you can work on evolving them as they mutate to gain new physical attributes and abilities after eating the flora and fauna around them.
As expected, all of this eating will lead to you finding dozens of potential mutations as you gain access to new skills that will allow you to reach new areas – flying and swimming will certainly change how you approach your gaming session. Make the most of your creatures’ senses as you try to move up the food chain as you build your own type of herd. Mutations will lead to changes in how the Trebhums look, so you don’t know how your mid-game herd will look like when compared to your starting group.
You will control your herd with the left analog stick as you switch from Trebhum to Trebhum by using the L1 and R1 buttons. The X button will be for jumping, the Square button will be for rolling, and the Triangle button will be for interacting. You can eat with the Circle button, which is also for using any special mutations your current Trebhum might have. You can absorb something with the L2 button and can spit with the R2 button. Use the D-Pad to cycle through items and mutations, and press the Touchpad on the DualShock 4 to access the inventory. If any of this doesn’t click with you, there’s also the option of remapping buttons.
When you press the Touchpad on the DualShock 4, you’ll get to look at the map for the area, review any objectives you’re currently working on, check out the log of what the narrator has said, review your current inventory, check a compendium that will have valuable information for all of the food and creatures you’ve enjoyed, as well as offer a Help section where you can learn important information, such as how the water meter in the bottom part of the screen will display the collective water level of the group, which will deplete over time or if you spit it out. Oh, and the water level also affects your endurance, which is the max level to which your stamina can replenish.
The game offers some accessibility options to make it possible for gamers of different skill levels to take a shot at playing The Eternal Cylinder. You can activate easy survival mechanics, easy creature aggressiveness, easy cylinder aggressiveness, and easy Trebhum herd detection, which will allow you to focus on exploring the four biomes in the game with an overall lower threat. Activate all, and food and water will deplete at half the rate, the distance from which enemies can spot you and how long they’ll chase you will be reduced, the titular cylinder will slow down when it approaches you, giving you a chance to run away, and enemies will only chase and attack the Trebhum leader currently under your control.
There’s also the option of activating subtitles for the narrator, changing the field of view, inverting the Y-axis, and removing motion blur. The one thing that The Eternal Cylinder does not have is a way to increase the size of the text. As is the case for a lot of PC to console ports, the text is very small, so you’ll have to sit closer to your TV if you want to read any of it during gameplay. This would be the one complaint I have about The Eternal Cylinder, but the good news is that the gameplay mechanics and the world itself are great.
Trophy-wise, this is one of those rare PlayStation 4 games released in 2021 without a full trophy list, which means you can’t aim to add a new Platinum trophy to your collection. It’s a short list with 8 Bronze trophies, 3 Silver trophies, and a single Gold trophy. The objectives ask that you scare off an Omnogrom by spraying water into its eye, make an Onkifurt leave its nest by spraying water into its mouth, frighten a Tonglegroplet using the Deimatic Trunk, scare away a Tripobosh or Onogrosh with a smelly surprise, get the trunk mutation from within a Roondaslock, disable 3 Witnesses, process over 100 units of organic ingredients, process over 100 units of mineral ingredients, scan all creatures using the Analytical Eyes, destroy an Exonerator using Mixer Body projectiles, defeat a Liberator using Mixer Body projectiles, and transform to all the mutations that exist in the game.
The Eternal Cylinder is a very different game from what’s out there on PlayStation 4. It’s a survival game in which you’re always in danger between the predators that are bigger and more dangerous than you and the looming doom and gloom that is the Eternal Cylinder rolling towards your group of Trebhums. It’s a bizarre journey in which your group will be evolving as it finds new elements to absorb, adapting to the new threats – such as the poisonous gas that you’ll be able to counter by giving your Trebhums filters on their trunks. The Eternal Cylinder is out on PS4 with a $29.99 price, and it’s a game you have to experience.
Disclaimer
This The Eternal Cylinder review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Good Shepherd Entertainment.
