Impressions....

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting... dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream to dream before... but the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token..." --Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven, 1845

the deepest reaches of their sanities explored, and the farthest reached of their creativity tapped.. Eternal Darkness embodies all the features that make it a solid game, and even just a little more..

the initial response that so many ignorant gamers declare when the first view this title, is "oh, its just another Resident Evil game.. i think i'll pass.".. This game offers much more than any Resident Evil game to this day... it matches or outdoes all the aspects of that game, and has more addition features that make this game truly unique...

The Story of the game has quite a timeline.. one that you go back and forth along quite often, yet never really go anywhere.. The main source for the story is offered in The Tomb of Eternal Darkness.. a book that all the playable characters get their hands and add to the story... The main character is young woman, Alex Riovas... whose discovery of The Tomb has set the final chapter upon herself... you have her go around her newly inherited anicestor's manshion recompiling the tore apart book, and with each page you find and read, the game goes to the past when it was writen and added to The Tomb...

Eternal Darkness has an incredible sense of Legacy... such a long story to tell, the actions of very important people in the past and how they reflect on the present day, when Alex needs them the most... great idea..

the core of the gameplay is a little static, you're seemingly usual walk/run method of movement.. you have your other trigger button to help you aim your weapon at an enemy.. you can change from aiming at their torso to their head, and then lob it off... you can also target their arms, and lob those off.. so you have a zombie stumbling after you with no arms... heh.. its pretty amusing what you can do...

You main sense of health, and magic are provided by the Red and Blue vials in your status screen.. but their is a third Green vial.. that is your sanity level, which is the most ingenius aspect of the gameplay... as your Sanity dwindles, things begin to happen...

sometimes freaky things like the background noise turns askew.. you now here rampent mumblings of madness, babies sounding like their being tortured, as you approach a door to open it, someone will loudly knock on it, and an eerie ambient sound of a gothic feel... some statues will turn to look at you..

sometimes physical things will happen.. like your character being too nerve wrecked that the trigger on your gun is pulled for no reason, the area will change without warning.. you'll come into an area litered with ammunition, only to realize after picking them up, that they never really were there.. you'll come into an area and suddenly your head will just fall off.. if you move your headless character next to you head, you can pick it up and put it in your inventory.. another time, you'll come into an area and as you progress you'll gradually grow larger and larger, or you'll shrink smaller and smaller... sometimes you'll sink into the floor... other times you'll just explode for no reason...

sometimes ridiculous things will happen.... like you'll finish up a chapter in the book, when a graphic screen will be displaying, "To be Continued....".. urging you to buy the sequel to the game.. sometimes you'll just be walking along, and the infamous Microsoft Blue will simply pop up... other times you'll walk into a room filled with zombie tearing you apart, you try to move or attack, but the gamecube controller graphic will be displayed telling you that the controller has been removed... alot of these type of tricks being played on you, you may reminded of fighting Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid.. but Eternal Darkness' tricks go much further than simply trickery...

all these tricks make the game worth exploring with a completely empty sanity meter.. so much fun... the more large part of the gameplay is also determined by these 3 meters.. for in the begining, the first chapter of The Tomb desides your main weekness... all 3 aspects, Red: Health, Blue: Magic, and Green: Sanity, have their god in this game... The first chapter you play Pious, a roman soldier, who has been lured and called into a god's temple...As Pious you choose your poison... and from then on, that god is your enemy...

throughout the game, all the scenes and temples will change accordingly making each of the 3 times through the game different... Items will have their meaning changes to suit, and the order of spelltypes has also changed... each of the 3 gods has another one of the 3 gods that it is week against, and vice versa.. Chattur'gha is Red and powerful against Green.. Xel'lotath is Green and powerful against Blue, Ulyaoth.. who is powerful against Chattur'gha... there is a 4th god, Mantorok, Purple, who is powerful against all other gods... although you can't choose Mantorok as your enemy, in the end you'll find his true purpose in the story..

The magic system in Eternal Darkness is quite unique as far as i know.... you learn spells, but thats later.. you must create magic spells using Runes which act as the ingredients... you usually find Runes guarded by monsters, and then also need to find a codec to decode the rune for use.. all these Runes and spells are written into the Tomb, and once learned by one character, all other characters have the knowledge... spells are created using a template of 3, 5, or 7 rune spells.. from there you choose you spelltype rune, which is color of the spell... and from their you combine 2 runes to make your spell.. higher level spells simply take the Pargon rune to make the spell more powerful...

you learn a number of spells, and only 1 out of 12 spells is an attack spell.. all other spells either aid you or complement you... when casting a spell during gameplay, you must stand still until the spell is completely cast, or else you're shatter your concentration and the spell fails... when you cast a spell, the runes appear on the ground near you in a circle, and the voice of the god your spell indentifies, resights each rune of the spell.. very eerie voices... higher level spells take longer to completely cast, but are much more powerful...

there are few negative things i can say about this game that aren't immediately canceled out by the overwhelming positives... this game is short... there are few hidden secrets... and some parts are tedious... i beat the game in 9hrs.. and that was after watching two of my roommates go through it the first 2 times.. there are 2 hidden items in the game, and after obtaining them, the game is a cakewalk.. the whole scenario of setting up the final 9 circle spell, is just going back and forth between spots on the map... but so what... 9hrs is about the standard for 3d adventure games these days, you can have higher difficulty later on, and the tedious parts don't really last that long... so there

The combination of the sanity effects, legacy of story, and intrecate meaning of spells and items make this game truly unique among others of its genre.. although its home is on a Nintendo system, its a very adult oriented game... alot of thought went into how the game would be layed out and it shows... unfortunatly because of its general game genre, it will be lost in time shortly, so don't wait to play it... Story intensive Adventure game are rarely timeless nor admired...

- Dyre - 9.28.02