The Darkness Comes...
07/25/02 by Dan Chubaty
The Game: Eternal Darkness was first developed as an N64 game, but was later switched to the GameCube in order for the game to be the best it could be. The development cycle has been huge. Does it pay off?
Gameplay: Eternal Darkness has you playing as up to 12 characters, each in a different time period or era. All these characters have one thing in common: they have been chosen to help protect the human race from the Eternal Darkness. The game starts off with Alex getting a late night phone call from the police. It turns out her grandfather has been murdered. She decides to investigate farther.
Needless to say, she is quickly pulled into a world of horror and terror that she never thought existed. The mansion you start off in, basically acts as a "hub" level. You control Alex, and search for clues. When you find a Chapter page, you get to play as another character to advance the storyline. It's a well-done idea, and keeps the games pace at a perfect level.
Gameplay itself is largely action based. As opposed to a game like Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness encourages you to chop, blast and hack your way through all the levels. You regain sanity by finishing off enemies. One might almost compare it to a game like Final Fight, because at times, you will find yourself taking on huge swarms of enemies. That's not to say that it's just a hack and slash adventure, though, because ED includes a very in-depth Magick (yes, that is how it is spelled) system. Gamers can, in essence, "create" their own spells by collecting codex and rune stones. Combinations of these allow you to "align" spells and create different effects. Don't think you'll be creating some kind of spell, which is unique from anyone else, though. Once you find the right codex. Rune stones and scrolls, the game will tell you that you've discovered a new spell. It is possible to create these without finding the scroll, however.
Spells range from healing and recovery, to revealing invisible objects and the power to summon zombies. It most definitely adds an effect that many games don't even think of. Very well done. All characters have 3 meters: Health (red), Magick (blue) and Sanity (green). Besides of course, health. Sanity is probably the most important and cool aspect of the game. It works like this. When an enemy spots your character they lose a certain amount of their sanity. As this happens, players will begin to experience very strange things. These range from slightly tilted camera angles, to hallucinations such as bleeding paintings, moving statues and so on. There are also tons of more crazy ones, ranging from your character suddenly exploding, to all of a sudden being turned into a zombie. They usually play with your mind a little, and then the screen will flash white, returning to normal. These "Sanity effects" will have you wondering what is real and what is fake, and make no mistake about it, there is a HUGE amount of them to discover. Some are incredibly genius, but I won't ruin it for anyone.
The basic goal of each chapter is to reach the end of the level, which seems easy, but there are puzzles aplenty, some of these are decidedly simple, but others do a great job stopping you dead in your tracks. Overall though, the game is more focused on action.
Visuals: The visuals in ED are incredibly solid, but don't exactly jump out and take your breath away like Resident Evil. The character models are fairly well done. Some of them seem to feature blocky limbs and semi low polygon counts. Others, however, look absolutely stunning. They all, though, feature great facial animation and lip-syched speech that is, for the most part, dead on. They also animate beautifully and uniquely, with cool fighting stances, running and so on. There is most definitely a huge variety of everything.
The environments can only be referred to as amazing. They are all done in real-time and feature an incredibly perfect designed, dynamic camera system. The levels feature some of the most advanced architecture ever seen. And are all modeled with the greatest care and awesome texture work. Your jaw will drop when you walk through a huge temple featuring dozens of pillars on each side, as the camera sweeps in and follows you right to the end. It has to be seen to be believed. The camera allows for so much more mood and setting then static angles seen in RE. Wow.
Audio: The music in game that claims to be a "psychological thriller" must be pretty damn good. And it is. A lot of the time, the soundtrack features great tunes that are directly related to the level you are in. Some levels actually feature music that is downright catchy. It all seems to be very "artsy" and heavily influence by some great Hollywood movie. It's hard to explain. But it will be loved.
Sound is another category that absolutely dominates. It's scary to hear whispers and screams from absolutely nowhere. A lot of the sound is directly related to the aforementioned insanity effects. For instance, you will hear very loud knocking on a door, or heavy footsteps on the floor above you. It will have your heart beating very fast.
Other mentions include, of course, top-notch voice work by some pretty familiar people. David Hayter (the voice of solid snake) is included in the impressive cast. All the actors seem to do a great job, without over-doing it, or making it sound incredibly cheesy. That's a hard thing to pull off. Other, standard sounds, such as gunshots and sword slices sound fantastic as well. ED is just as much an aural pleasure as it is a visual pleasure.
Control: Forget the awkward movement found in the Resident Evil series. ED features a simpler, user-friendlier system. Think Zelda 64, or Mario, or basically any 3-D game. Push the analog stick in a direction, and your character will move in that direction. It's also incredibly fast and smooth.
The combat system controls are pretty well laid out. You lock onto an enemy by pressing the R button. You can then move the analog stick up, down, or left and right to target different parts of the enemies body. It's easy to learn and handle, but can become a little clunky when there are multiple enemies breathing down your neck.
Spells can be assigned to the Y button, as well as each direction on the D pad. This is a good thing, because otherwise, you have to access them by entering the inventory screens. Other controls include Z to reload any projectile weapon. A to attack, B to search, talk, examine, and so on. It's a great control system, which allows for some deep gameplay while still remaining simple.
Replay Value: A game like this will take a good portion of your time. It took me around 20 hours the first time through, and I took my time, examined everything and so on. Subsequent runs through the game will certainly be shorter, as ED is a pretty linear game, at its core. But the game will reward you for playing through the a total of 3 times, once on each path (red, green or blue. This will make sense once you play the game). And players will be more than happy to experience a great game more than once.
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