The All-Seeing Eye

Pros

• Search engine for online game servers
• Powerful GUI
• Updates automatically

Cons

• Limited usefulness for modern games

The All-Seeing Eye is a search engine and browser for online game servers.

Many video games that feature a multiplayer component require players to connect in peer-to-peer fashion or to connect to game servers that are hosted privately rather than by the developer or publisher. If a game requires this but doesn’t feature an in-game server browser, discovery can be difficult. The All-Seeing Eye, often called ASE among gamers, is a program that seeks to overcome this problem by helping people register and discover game servers for online play.

The All-Seeing Eye features a powerful, feature-rich and highly customizable user interface that you can use to browse and search servers. The GUI aesthetic and organization is outdated and not necessarily user-friendly, but once you learn it, it is quite powerful. Finding a server for a particular game that resides in a region that usually gives you a low ping is a fast and simple process.

The All-Seeing Eye is also very hands-off once you’ve dialed it in to your preferences. When it loads, it automatically checks for updates and configures itself as necessary. Your settings also persist from one session to the next. That way, if you’ve set up ASE for Counter Strike, for instance, it will load with a browser of Counter Strike servers according to your preferences each time it starts.

Gamers need a tool like the All-Seeing Eye less and less because of clients like Steam, Origin and Uplay and because games often integrate such features now. If you’re unsure whether you need a tool like ASE, then you probably don’t. However, if you still play Half-Life, Unreal, Age of Empires II and other classic video games online, then ASE is still a powerful solution that’s worth your time.

Pros

• Search engine for online game servers
• Powerful GUI
• Updates automatically

Cons

• Limited usefulness for modern games