By the way, we weren’t kidding about spoilers. The more severe spoilers are hidden from view below, but a lot of what is written below will be a spoiler to those that start playing the game. Read below at your own risk.

Never before has Nintendo published a game like Eternal Darkness, and unless the game spawns a franchise, I daresay we’ll never see another second-party title like it. It’s the first truly “mature” title from Nintendo coming by way of the Canadian developer Silicon Knights. (No, Conker was NOT mature, irrespective of the rating on the box.) And it’s absolutely NOT a game for kids, and if this doesn’t help Nintendo shake off the “kiddy box” image, it’s doubtful that anything could.

Eternal Darkness is the epic story of Alexandra Roivas, a young woman awakened in the midst of a nightmare by a phone call telling her that her grandfather had been murdered. She flies to her grandfather’s Rhode Island mansion to find a rather callous detective looking for answers to how a headless body can be found with no other clues. She decides that since she’s been dragged into this mess, she might as well be the one to find the answers, and she proceeds to investigate the mansion.

In her grandfather’s hidden study, she finds a cache of historical items and documentation … research of some sort. Amongst this research, she finds a strange leather-bound book, entitled “The Tome of Eternal Darkness.” As she begins to read this book, the startling details behind her grandfather’s death come to light.

The book begins by describing the story of a Roman Centurion named Pious Augustus (whom you control) who is magickally transported into a temple of sorts where, after some brief exploration, he discovers three artifacts of unknown origin. As he approaches one of the artifacts, Pious is consumed by its evil energy, and is corrupted to do the bidding of the Ancient of that artifact. As Alexandra reads more of the book, the secrets of how her family relate to the unfathomable stories in this book are revealed. Roivas is SAVIOR spelled backwards.

Seems like a bit of a non-sequitor, doesn’t it? What could the Roivas family and some Centurion in ancient Rome possibly have in common? More than you’d think, and this is the entire appeal of Eternal Darkness. The game’s story isn’t just interwoven into the game and the plot, but into the actual game SYSTEM as well.

The game system has three facets (as you’ll find do many things in the game): Combat, Magick, and Sanity. The combat system is fairly straight forward, using various weapons and firearms to defeat zombies and other horrific beasts. You can lock-on to enemies by individual body parts, resulting in severed limbs and decapitations. This ends up playing a critical role in strategy, as some monsters are only defeated when attacked in a certain manner.

The Magick system is more complex. Again, there are three facets to this system: Runes, Codices, and Scrolls. As Runes are acquired, you are accumulating the building blocks of every spell. The Codices are primers; they tell you what each Rune’s power word is, and what it means. The Scrolls are the actual recipes for the spells. However, the Scrolls aren’t always needed … if you have the runes, you can create the spells all on your own, through experimentation. Very innovative and very, very fun. What at first seems cumbersome and difficult is quickly very easy to understand and manipulate. For faster access, you can assign some spells to each button on the D-Pad and the Y-Button.

But it’s the Sanity system that is the star of the game. Much of the imagery your playable characters will encounter will take its toll, resulting in a loss of Sanity. Just about every encounter with a monster will result in a loss of sanity, which can only be regained by “finishing off” the enemy (aside from magical solutions). Thus, the game discourages you from running from your fears, and encourages you to tackle the darkness head-on. As well, you have a hidden Stamina meter, which is engaged when you’re running. Run for too long, and your character will slow and start to breathe heavily, impacting your ability to do battle. You literally CAN’T run from every battle, or your fear will be your own undoing, as you will go insane, as well as eventually being dispatched by a more agile enemy.

As sanity is lost, which is visible with a green meter on screen, the player will begin experiencing all sorts of strange “Insanity Effects”. These effects can range from the subtle (and sometimes unnoticed) to the very intense and disorienting. If you want examples of these Insanity Effects, please click HERE and drag down. Otherwise, continue on to the next section …

Subtle effects range from unseen footsteps in the hallways, ghostly phone calls, knocks at the door, blood dripping down walls, paintings and statues that follow you as you walk around the mansion, even paintings that change to horrific scenes. You’ll hear voices in the darkness mumbling, crying, gibberish what will certainly help to unnerve you.

More complex effects even play with the player’s mind. There are effects that simulate a reboot of the GameCube, giving you a brief piece of the opening quote from Edgar Allen Poe before you “flash” back to reality. False error messages, effects that simulate changing your television’s settings, the transformation into a zombie … all serve to rattle the player and put you into the mood of the game.

Eternal Darkness has been in development for quite some time, and was originally slated to be an N64 title. The game was nearly finished, and the decision was made to bring the game to Nintendo’s new console. The graphics are fairly good, not quite up to the level set by Resident Evil, but still quite good. Unfortunately, there is some inconsistency to the graphics that can pull the player out of the game ever so briefly. There is some clipping (when objects/enemies will go through walls and other objects), as some collision problems (where weapon strikes do damage, but don’t look like they connect). The texture work is, by and large, outstanding, but there are some blurry or pixilated textures in places. Lastly, and perhaps most disappointing, the character animations are not motion-captured, which has become the norm. Each is painstakingly hand-animated, but this results in characters that don’t always move as you’d expect them to.

But where the graphics excel, they do so in a way that will make Silicon Knights one of the premiere developers for GameCube going forward. Paintings and other objet d’art are incredibly detailed and you can examine a great deal of them up close. Spell effects erupt in a colored light show as your runes are emblazoned on the ground. Enchanted weapons literally drip with liquid magick. All of the environments are rendered in real-time (not pre-rendered, like in Resident Evil), and there is little lag moving between rooms. In fact, Silicon Knights had to ADD lag in order to make the room transitions less jarring. You can not control the camera despite the real-time nature, but there is a great reason for this. Silicon Knights has chosen camera angles that add to the atmosphere of the game, and these angles can dynamically change depending on what’s going on in the scene. Rarely is a camera angle not sufficient to explore or do combat in.

There are no real low points in the sound presentation. Delivered in Dolby Pro Logic II, the rear channels are constantly active with ambient noise, the haunting sounds that are sure to keep players up at night. Sounds fade in and out as you move around the rooms, and change depending on your location. The sounds of the game are probably its scariest asset, as screams and other noises can really get your blood pumping. Most of the game has full voice-acting, done in a very convincing fashion. An excellent device is the way that some scenes will begin with characters speaking their native language (with subtitles), and the game fades into English speech almost imperceptibly.

The game will likely take an experienced player around 20-25 hours to complete on their first run through, including reloads (not counted on the game clock). Casual players may find up to 40 hours of game play as they try to figure out some of the trickier puzzles. But that’s not the end of the game … to experience Eternal Darkness at its fullest you can play through each path and receive a special ending just for being persistent. You don’t just get new endings either … the game is different in a variety of ways on each path, including some different cutscenes and modified puzzles. The game encourages you to play through multiple times, as not every question is answered after one run through. BOO!

This game is, quite simply put, a masterpiece. The craftspeople of Silicon Knights have woven an experience that is new and innovative, yet borrows heavily from a variety of influences. It’s every bit as mature and engrossing as it was hyped up to be, and is very likely to give people nightmares. It’s a game that should not be played by the weak of heart, and certainly not for children. Eternal Darkness is by far the best game for the GameCube right now, easily outdoing games like Resident Evil in terms of atmosphere, and besting other mature titles with a storyline that isn’t insulting in its heavy-handedness. Anyone complaining about the lack of mature titles for the GameCube as the main reason for not owning one just ran out of stalling time.