"Possible Game of the Year!"

This game hit shelves around June. This game is always being compared to Resident Evil! In my opinion these 2 games are totally different, let me explain….

Gameplay - 10/10
Just like all games this is probably the most important part of the game. Eternal Darkness has a very good story line to it. In the game the main character Alex, her father died. What they are trying to do is get to the bottom of this. She comes across some very deep and dark family secrets. You will be amazed at what this game has to offer. Unlike Resident Evils “BOO” scare, this game has more of an eerie kind of scare to it. If you’ve played this game you’ll know the only real “BOO” scare is the famous “Bathtub scene”. They have a pretty limited amount of enemies. Limited but still good. They have trappers which bring you into different dimensions. The place it brings you to gives you a chance to refill either your health, magic, or sanity. But you can only refill 1!

The gameplay is different on this game because you start off in Alex’s grandfathers house. You go through the house and find different Chapters to a book. In each chapter you will play as a different character. There are over 10 chapters in the whole game! That means there is also over 10 characters! With each character you will see new and different weapons. This game has lots of different kinds of swords. They also have guns and such but not very often! Even though most games have guns these days you will definitely enjoy the swords for they fit this game almost perfectly!

You will also gather magical ruins throughout the levels. Each magical ruin is unique. But see you can’t use each individual ruin by itself! You must combine different ones using the 3, 5, or 7 star spells! It’s not that hard to figure them out but once you get it you’ll go crazy. The spells are awesome! They have tons of different ones, from enchanting items such as swords to make them twice as strong, to revealing things that you couldn’t see before that you need to see to complete the chapter, to magical spell attacks which will blow your mind away! At the beginning of the game you will choose your path, either red, green, or blue. The red path, has enemies that grow back their limbs, which makes them harder to kill, the blue path makes the enemies self destruct more than usual, and the green path makes you go insane more!

Now that I’ve pretty much covered everything, I’ve decided to save the best for last. I know you’ve heard all of these things about “sanity”. Yes that is correct and this is by far the most eye pleasing wonderful thing about this game. You’ll be sitting there playing and all of a sudden you’ll see blood on the walls, but it’s not really there! Your hallucinating! You will also see lots of other things. Sometimes you will go into a room and you will being attacked by zombies, or you’ll go in a room and you’ll notice it’s something odd. You wonder what it is, well the problem is your standing on the ceiling! But the game doesn’t just do things like that it also messes with YOUR mind! How you ask? Well you can pause the game and all of your items will be gone, and then all of a sudden they’ll come back. Also when your playing it will have the TV go on MUTE, or the volume turn down, and it will even show it on the screen in those little green letters on basic TV’s. It will truly mess with you until you realize what it’s doing! How does all of these things I’m talking about look you ask? Let me move on…..

Graphics - 9/10
This game actually has very good graphics! The visuals will amaze you. Just how some of the enemies look are just really awesome, along with the character models! Silicon Knights took this game to town with the graphics. A game like this is hard to create! Focusing on graphics and gameplay is what really makes a good game so good. I don’t think there were any really noticeable things in the game that just didn’t cut it. Most things were very high quality, and you could tell they put a lot of work into it! The graphics in this game are so good I would even go as far as to say that the cut scenes almost match the gameplay graphics! Seriously people. The movement of the characters was done very well. Every time they move you can see there whole body move and there arms and everything. I mean if you want realistic graphics, pick up this great title!

Controls - 8/10
This is one of those games that can be very hard to get used to the controls, but then again can be easy. I guess it all depends on what kind of games you usually play. In my opinion they aren’t easy to get used to but they aren’t hard. They also made everything just where it needs to be. For instance when casting a spell you must go to your menu and go over to spells then pick which spell you want to cast, with what rune, and which point star! But they isolate Y, and all 4 buttons on the D-Pad for you to make “Quick Spells”, meaning you can pick 5 different spells and put them on a button and when you press that button you can cast the spell. For instance your life is low, so you need to refill it, instead of going through all of the menus make it a quick spell! Believe me this can be very helpful. You weapon is on the easiest button of all, the “A” button! That makes it easy to whip out your sword and start at your opponents. Of course you do have to go to the menu to pick which weapon that you want to use!

What I’m trying to say people, is that if you don’t have this game then shame on you! Go pick it up now! It’s a very good game you would all enjoy it. No matter what type of genre you like this game will slowly addict and draw you into it. I would believe that this game even has change at game of the year, along side Mario Sunshine, Animal Crossing, Resident Evil, and other great Gamecube Titles!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/13/02, Updated 09/13/02