|
YOU DON'T
PLAY THE GAME, IT PLAYS YOU
ETERNAL
DARKNESS : SANITY'S REQUIEM
Written By Shaun McCracken
Eternal
Darkness has this kind of situation. Most people who see it and play it
for about 5 minutes would easily disregard this as a Resident Evil
clone. But there are so many things different about it that it has less
to do with Resident Evil and has only a little in common with Silent
Hill, that it ends up being a completely different experience from the
previous said games. Eternal Darkness remedies what was wrong with the
Resident Evil series (which it's not even a part of) and at the same
time brings something new to the plate. The game spans across almost
2000 years, and allows you to become different people who each have
their own destiny in their time. And all of these people are connected
to the present day character, Alex Rovias, who is investigating her
recently deceased realtive's mansion. As she finds "chapters" into the
past, she discovers dark secrets about her bloodline, as well as the
others connected to the "Tome Of Darkness". The "Tome Of Darkness" is a
book fashioned from bones and skin, and contains spells called "magick"
that protect you, show you hidden objects and more.
Eternal
Darkness's game play is not as linear as you think it would be. The
first couple of chapters are pretty sequential, but then I found two
chapters, and I had a choice of picking either one. While the stages
follow a certain path, it could be easy to miss some things along the
way. There's a lot to discover and look at in this game. The depth of
exploration is not like Metroid Prime's, but it far exceeds what
Resident Evil has thrown. The game play also has a twist. In addition
to your health and magick meter, you have a "sanity" meter as well.
This is Eternal Darknesses key element which can totally shift game
play to a whole other direction. The more your sanity meter drops, the
stranger the surroundings become. The character starts to see and hear
things that aren't there, and this will affect the player as well.
Silicon Knights had a lot of tricks up it's sleeve when it came to the
sanity meter. It could be something as funny as turning everything
upside down when you enter a room or shrinking you down, or something
as drastic as making it look like your game just turned off or
exploding your body parts when you try to use certain magicks. The
first strange sanity effect I noticed ever was when bugs started
crawling on screen, which almost looked like I really did have bugs on
my TV. There's probably many more strange things that go on than I
know. But it's best to keep your sanity high by finishing off every
enemy and replenishing it by magick, when possible. But the sanity
feature is not a gimmick, it really does shape, mold, and intensify
game play.
Eternal
Darkness showcases what the Gamecube can do in terms of graphics. ED
can easily be mistaken for an X-Box game with it's high-resolution
textures, excellent lighting, bump-mapping and so much more. Plus, the
game is very moody and atmospheric. This is a horror game done right,
and there hasn't been one this good since Silent Hill. The game, best
of all, is NOT pre-rendered like Resident Evil. Everything is in
real-time, and there is a camera that does follow the action. And
surprisingly, the camera is not problematic! Almost every time, the
camera provides the best possible view. The character models, while
look pretty good, don't seem realistic. You can tell they look like
video game characters. The GCN remake Resident Evil and Silent Hill 2
hand more human-like models than what is here. It totally doesn't kill
the gameplay, but it does knock a point or two when it comes to a
realistic experience.
The
sound is excellent. Just like Silent Hill, Eternal Darkness has the
right cues to scare the crap out of you, and has the right
environmental sound for the situation. And best of all, it's in Dolby
Pro Logic II, for those who have a sound system that supports this. But
even on a normal stereo, ED begs you to turn this one up. The voice
acting, surprise surprise, is a lot better than Resident Evil. Here,
professional actors that have come from other games (I think Soul
Reaver was one of them) do the job, and they did it well.
Finally,
we hit the controls. A lot of "survival horror" games were never able
to get this right. Silent Hill 2 came close, but at times that still
felt a little clunky. But ED is not "survival horror". It's an
adventure game, and the controls need to reflect that. Luckily, it
does. Control is so much smoother then RE's and so much easier as well.
Here, I don't think you even need to hold another button to attack, you
use the A button. The Control Pad can hold up to four magicks that you
create for easy execution. A game like this demands precision control,
and Silicon Knights game it to you.
Eternal
Darkness comes as a surprise in a couple of ways. For one, it's a great
horror game that brings a whole lot of new things to the table and
changes the way horror games are made. Second, It's published by
Nintendo and it's a mature-rated game. For those whoever thought of
Nintendo as a kid-oriented systems really needs to re-think their
position after playing this game. Nintendo and Silicon Knights have
teamed together to provide gamers with something they won't forget, and
remembers the importance of quality over quantity. If you love horror,
suspense or the macabre, you owe it to yourself to pick up Eternal
Darkness.
|
Published
By :
NINTENDO
Developed
By:
SILICON
KNIGHTS
Year Published :
2002
Players :
1
ESRB Rating:
MATURE [17+]
OVERALL
SCORE
9.3
VISUALS |
9.5 |
AUDIO |
9.4 |
GAMEPLAY |
8.7 |
REPLAY
VALUE |
8.2 |
INNOVATION |
8.8 |
One of the best adventure-horror titles for the Gamecube, or any
system, and yet many don't even know it.
Resident
Evil
Resident Evil Zero
Silent Hill 3
Fatal Frame
Siren
Resident
Evil 4
Silent Hill 2
|