Eye of the Beholder - SSI/US Gold RRP œ29.99
       (RPG on PC and Amiga (reviewed) - 1 meg only)

                  Reviewed by Roy Sims

This  is the game that the glossy mags have been heralding  as  a 
Dungeon Master beater.  The plot isn't much to write home  about. 
It  involves the suspicion of a conspiracy of evil hiding in  the 
underground  sewers  of  Waterdeep  (from  the  Forgotten  Realms 
novels).

To describe the game as being influenced by Dungeon Master  would 
be  understating things somewhat.  The game loads up with a  nice 
graphic intro which has become the standard on games these  days. 
It sets the scene quite nicely.  Once the game itself has  loaded 
up,  you are asked to select a sex, race, portrait and statistics 
for  your  four  party  members.   You  can  manually  amend  the 
statistics or you can select a ready made party that is  provided 
as default. Once you have a quartet of heroes ready, it's time to 
select 'Play' and enter the sewers...

Once into the actual game itself,  Dungeon Master fans will  feel 
immediately at home.  The system isn't exactly the same but  it's 
very very close.  I personally don't think that the graphics  are 
quite up to the quality found in DM or Chaos, but they do enhance 
the atmosphere.

There  are plenty of monsters to be found in the  sewers.  As  in 
Dungeon  Master,  they patrol distinct areas and will not go  any 
further.  In  the initial levels,  I always seemed  to  meet  the 
monsters on the very border of their 'patrol' areas.  This  meant 
that  stepping  back one step from a new monster  would  put  the 
party  into  a safe area.  This made things a bit  easy,  as  the 
'shock'  factor  of having a monster run after you when  you  are 
unprepared  isn't  pleasant. With a  bit more planning as to when
the monsters are triggered it  could have been a  bit  more  of a 
traumatic first level.

Having reached the third level,  (it should be noted that you  do 
get  vague 'out of date' copies of maps for levels 1 to 3 in  the 
packaging)  I've so far concluded that whilst the game  is  quite 
good,  it  is not a Dungeon Master beater because it fails to  go 
beyond  what Dungeon Master offered three and a half  years  ago. 
There really isn't much advancement on anything that DM  had.  It 
is really a 'homage' to DM without advancing the system.

To conclude, it is a nicely packaged and presented adventure game 
which  is much better than many of the DM clones that  have  been 
released recently.  However,  I still prefer Dungeon Master and I 
suspect that most DM fans will too.  Well worth a purchase though 
if you want to play another 3D game.