"Not really "scary" more "weird" than anything else"

If you've been watching Eternal Darkness as long as I have, then you'll remember that it was originally being made for the Nintendo 64. But the poor little system was sent to an early grave by Nintendo's poor medium choice (cartridges), and lack of 3rd party support. So Eternal Darkness was delayed and brought to the Gamecube. After numerous delays after that (which is what Nintendo is good at) Silicon Knights (now an official 2nd Party for Nintendo) finally released Eternal Darkness to the starving masses. After not releasing a single game for a full six-months, it's about time for a great game!

Since Resident Evil is the only other M-rated game for the Gamecube, most comparisons will be drawn against the two. It would certainly be wrong to call Eternal Darkness a ''Resident Evil clone'', even though Eternal Darkness is a horror game (a sub-genre invented by Resident Evil). Eternal Darkness has really a very different design from Resident Evil / Onimusha / Dino-Crisis control-scheme. Firstly, you'll notice that the control scheme is much MUCH better (that weird ''up-is-forward-no-matter-which-way-the-camera-is-facing'' is not present!). Also, you can carry an infinite number of items with you, so you won't need to worry about going back to item-boxes to switch around your items because you don't have enough space.

I'll start out with the graphics, which actually aren't all that impressive if you ask me. The characters in the game aren't nearly as detailed or well-animated as those found in Resident Evil (in fact, Resident Evil is quite graphically superior in every way). I'm afraid they still retain that old N64-look to them (even though they have a lot more polygons in them now). All of the backgrounds are in real-time 3D though, with nice volumetric fog too. The particle effects (such as the monster's blood) could have been better though.

Eternal Darkness has plenty of pre-rendered FMV sequences, although they're smaller than I'd like them, and they still have plenty of video-quality loss due to compression. Yet another great game suffers from Nintendo's lack of fore-sight in choosing yet-another sub-standard storage medium (they don't seem to learn from their mistakes, do they?). Or perhaps Silicon Knights should have at least used 2 discs (like in Resident Evil). And as long as I'm at it, what's up with Eternal Darkness' case? It's a standard DVD-case, it hasn't even got a slot for the GC memory card like all other standard-GC cases! And it's large enough to store a full DVD! Hmm...

Unfortunately, the game's battle system is somewhat of a disappointment. Most of the enemies are the same (even the bosses). You usually just run up to them, and hack of their heads. A few swipes and it's all over! Even the bosses aren't particularly intelligent (you can just run around behind them and hack their backs). All 12 of the character's fighting styles are all rather similar, and though you'll get shotguns, cross-bows, and pistols, a good old sword will almost always beat them all (no need to worry about ammo!). Fortunately, the magic system is very sweet (and graphically impressive). You can create spells to entrap enemies in other dimensions, create shield, heal yourself, or enchant items. You can even try to create your own special-spells by combining runes together. You've got to love a game which rewards you for trying your own combinations!

But Eternal Darkness' most hyped feature has got to be the sanity meter, which is quite disappointing considering how everyone was saying it was SOOO revolutionary. If you see a monster, your sanity usually goes down a bit (although your character doesn't look frightened at all, or hesitate, as if s/he were frightened). All they'll say is something like ''THIS... CAN'T... Be... Happening!'', and continue on their merry way. The ''insanity effects'' and, in fact, EVERYTHING in this game, isn't really ''frightening'' at all. It's all just sort of very weird. You'll walk into a room, and find you're on the ceiling, watch blood ooze from the walls, or think you're being chopped into little pieces. Whenever you see something like that happening, you're always just like ''ok, that's weird. Knock it off already so I can continue on in this game...''. It's nothing really frightening (like in Resident Evil, when turn a corner to have a Hunter jump out and slash you, or some zombies jump through the windows at you!), just ''weird''. You'll also hear less-obvious sanity effects, such as foot-steps, people knocking on the door, or whispering. Of course, you might be surprised the first time or two, but after that (they are over-used), they'll just get annoying. You'll hear knocking, but you KNOW that no one is there. No one ever was, or ever will be. It sure would be A LOT MORE SCARY if half the time the foot-steps, whispering, or door-knocking WAS actually something (like a monster or danger), while the other half of the time it was nothing. Now THAT sure would be scary!

Eternal Darkness can also be quite vague regarding what you're supposed to do next to advance the game. Often-times I had to wander around for quite some time before I found what I should be doing. I've often heard estimates of Eternal Darkness' length ranging from 30 to 40 hours, although I think most people won't have any trouble finishing the game in 20 hours their first time through! It is nice to see Nintendo release a game with an intelligent storyline for once though (although it's nothing along the lines of Final Fantasy, it is very good). And it's also nice to see a Gamecube game which actually lives beyond the first 10 hours or so! You can play through the game 3 times as well to unlock everything if you really want to get ''more playtime for your money''.

Overall, Eternal Darkness is a superb game, with numerous flaws (which are easily overlooked), and an even better game-concept (which wasn't all that it could have been mostly certainly). Any Gamecube owner should definitely buy Eternal Darkness (and Resident Evil). It shows what Nintendo-owners actually want: a good, mature game! It's quite appalling that after being out for over half a year, Gamecube still only has 2 Mature games. This game isn't a system-seller, but a game certainly worth checking out at the very least.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/02, Updated 07/19/02