Broken
Apparently this game was in the making for quite a while before finally being released last year. Not having an N64, I never follow it's development and didn't even hear about it until the GameCube's launch. It looked neat though, so once I got a GameCube, I bought it. And uhh... I hate doing the intro paragraph so let's just get right to them game then.
Eternal Darkness has you playing as Alex Roivas, who's grandfather was recently murdered at his mansion in Rhode Island. After a few weeks and no progress from the Rhode Island PD, Alex decides to investigate the mansion herself and look for clues about her grandfather's death. This is where the game begins. Eventually you come across the Tome of Eternal Darkness which reveals a secret conflict that began over 2000 years ago and involves many different people that you'll get to play as. I prefer to leave the storylines unspoiled (and I don't remember this one clearly enough to talk in depth about it), so I won't go much further than that. It is fairly interesting though. It's certainly the best I've seen for a survival horror game so far.
The gameplay is actually quite different from most other survival horror games. It centers on combat much more than most other games of this type and there isn't quite as much puzzle solving or item collecting. Actually, there are more than a handful of puzzles, but most of them are pretty obvious with only a few that you might not solve immediately. The big thing here is the insanity meter which slowly drops every time you see an enemy. The lower it gets, the crazier you get. Some of the "insanity effects" can be damned amusing. I don't really want to spoil them because they're much more effective when you don't know what they're going to throw at you, but it's kind of hard not to talk about them. There's just something really uplifting about walking down a hall and then suddenly having your character's head pop off. Their arsenal of effects is surprisingly large and I'd occasionally keep my sanity really low on purpose so I could see what they'd do. I wouldn't recomend playing the whole game like this though since the room tilt (the most common effect) can get irritating after a while.
Other than insanity, another notable gameplay mechanic is the combat system. Holding down the targeting button and then pressing the analog stick in different directions will allow you to target specific body parts of enemies. For most enemies, you can target their torso, left arm, right arm, and head. Certain other enemies have more areas you can aim for. So if a certain part of their anatomy is offensive to you, just target it and remove it. Then once you've wailed on an enemy for long enough, you can do a finishing move which restores some of your sanity, but why do that? It's fun hearing your character scream "THIS ISN'T REALLY HAPPENING!" after having a disturbing hallucination.
Another way to fight is to not use the targeting system at all. Just grab a sword or something, point yourself in an opponents direction and go nuts. This actually works pretty well because your attacks will be much quicker and you can pull off little mini combos. The only reason I mention this is because fighting in this manner felt kind of like Final Fight and other old school beat 'em ups for some reason.
Lastly, there's the magic system which uses combinations of runes you find to create spells for you to use on yourself and all the little demons walking around. Most of the spells are pretty basic. All the stuff you'd expect to find in a game with magic in it is there. Not much else to say on that.
My biggest complaint about the game is probably the lack of replay value. There are secrets and stuff, but I didn't feel the urge to play through it again after I had beaten it. Other imperfections would be that there's not much of a variety in enemies and that there are, I think only 2 boss fights, both of which are stupidly easy. Some of the regular enemies pose a much greater threat, especially when in groups, than either of the bosses.
Graphics are, for most of the game, nothing spectacular but they're good enough. Some of the locations (especially at this one area that I can't talk about) look great, but most were just decent. Sound effects are good too but my TV's sound system is pretty mediocre so nothing really stood out for me. Voice acting was nice though. I recognized a couple of the actors from other games like Metal Gear Solid. Anyone who's played that should know that it had really good acting, so these guys picked the right people for the job. It's certainly got better acting than other games in the genre like say, the Resident Evil series. Though that's not really saying much since you can find better voice acting than Resident Evil's in NES games with digital speech.
Overall, Eternal Darkness is a good game, with an interesting story, and plenty of refreshing twists on the whole survival horror subgenre. It definately manages to stand out from other games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Not a lot of replay value (though you may find more in it than I did), but it will last a good 15-20 hours. At least half of those hours should be pretty fun, so go and buy if you like this kind of thing. Later friends.
