Eternal Darkness a game filled with frights, wicked game play and magick...that’s right, magick
08/04/02 by Trevor Siemens
The Game: Eternal Darkness was in development for almost three years. It was original slated to appear on Nintendo 64 last fall, but Canadian developer Silicon Knights (which is based in Richmond BC aka Vancouver) decided to move the massive project to Nintendo’s next generation console the Gamecube.
Now don’t confuse this game with another resident evil style game because it isn’t. Resident evil was more a shoot 'em splatter fest; Eternal Darkness deals more with the psychological aspect of insanity.
Gameplay: The story is as follows: You start off the game as Alexandra Roivas who gets a weird phone call in the middle of the night, apparently there has been an accident. Alexandra quickly rushes off to grandfathers house, where she meets a cop. The cop called to her to identify the remains of her grand father. The brutal act, which was done unto him left him in quite a mess, all Alex had to go by was a family ring which the bloodied corpse wore.
The cops didn’t do justice for Alex and her dead grandfather so she took matters into her own hands looking for clues around the house that link to the killer, instead she finds pages of a ancient book call the book of eternal darkness, which once reading starts taking her into history threw the lives of other people like her grandfather who protected the book, and helped keep eternal darkness from actually happening.
The game starts off lighthearted and gets very heavy very fast, eating up hours as if seconds. You take control of Alex Roivas, as you search your dead grandfathers mansion for pages of the book of eternal darkness, which once read transcends you into the life of previous guardians of eternal darkness. You get to play such people as Pious Augustus a roman gladiator, and Dr Maximillian Roivas a Rhode Island doctor back in 1760 AD. The mansion level acts as a main level, in which you find the pages to branch off into other levels. Eternal Darkness features, lots of action including killing what seems like an endless, army of undead zombies and creatures. ED also features some very heavy puzzle element that a player must solve to move onto the next area.
Visuals: Eternal Darkness sports some very nice visuals and the textures are smooth. They don’t give the effect of repeating at all which is very important. Everything is fresh and crisp very beautiful. Level design is done very well although confusing at times.
Silicon knights did one excellent job on the lighting effects in this game, every time you summon a spell the color of the spell you call glows, it looks really cool, same with when you carry a torch into darken areas you can watch as the flicker from the flames cause irregularities in the shadow its casting, absolutely gorgeous. The character models are down right excellent rivaling even those in Resident evil not quite as good but damn near close.
Now the coolest part of Eternal Darkness is would be the sanity effects, sometimes they go absolutely nuts. Every time an enemy sees you in the game he takes some of your sanity away which is measured by a meter called the sanity meter “go figure”. Once your sanity goes really low you start hallucinating. Which is really cool but can piss you off pretty fast. You start seeing things that aren’t there one example of this would be while your checking out the mansion you see a empty tub, you examine the empty tub then all of a sudden it flashes and the tub has a dead body in it floating in blood, and you can hear the sound of a woman screaming, then it flashes back to a empty tub right then and there is some scary stuff. Some other effect, include bleeding of walls, yep blood actually drips down off the walls, sometimes you can just be standing in area an you will start to sink through the floor for no reason, you can end up on the roof when you enter rooms or see everything in black and white. Hallucinations isn’t the jest of it, you start hearing stuff like you do when you go mad, you will hear foot steps above, people knocking on doors that aren’t there, and people screaming, but not to worry, its all in your head.
Now if you think that was bad Eternal darkness doesn’t just screw with the metal status of your character but it also screws with you, Once again if your sanity is low, it pretends to turn off the game, for no apparent reason, or bring up a volume bar on your TV and adjust it, it also brings up screens saying that your controller is unplug which is weird because no matter how many times you see that effect, you still end up jumping to make sure your controller is plugged in. Finally my favorite effect, out of the blue you’ll hear music, and a screen will pop up congratulating you on beating the game.
Another cool feature Eternal Darkness has would be the detail in the tomb of Eternal Darkness where you get the book of Eternal Darkness; there is a screaming floor, with faces that scream, as you walk towards the book.
Audio: Very well done from the chilling screams to the excellent dialogue. The music creates a very eerie atmosphere, especially when they toss in some whispering something, which sounds like Lucifer. Overall I was very impressed with this aspect of eternal darkness.
Not just the music was done well so was the actual sfx and audio, every character has his or her own voice actor, and they do an excellent job at that. The sounds of blood splattering on the floor, enemies screeching, were also done very well, which gives allot of atmosphere to eternal darkness.
Control: The control is quite simple and very easy to use, it fells pretty much like any other platform adventure game, which is good.
Replay Value: With multiple ending, and different paths in which to take to achieve the best ending. You must complete all three colors red, blue, and green. Once all these paths are complete then only will you get to see the best ending. Although once you finished that there is nothing really to bring you back to the game.
Overall, Eternal Darkness is one awesome game. I would recommend it to any one, but I warn that the game does screw with you and may cause psychological harm, (haha I am kidding). It scares you in a different way then resident evil does. It's hard to explain, it left me with a 'Silence of the lambs' feeling.
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