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Eternal Darkness

by Billy Berghammer - September 4, 2001, 5:45 am EDT

It’s got a slight name change, and a new playable character, and Japanese subtitles! What did Billy think of Eternal Darkness at Spaceworld?

Silicon Knight's Eternal Darkness was a game that I really didn't play a whole lot at E3. It's not that I didn't like the game, or I wasn't intrigued by it – I just wanted to save the experience until the final game was released. Eternal Darkness isn’t really a game to just pick up and play for a few minutes. At SpaceWorld, I decided to screw that whole concept and give it a go.

According to the sign, the game is only 70% complete, and it still looked a little early. While we were waiting in line, we actually saw the game crash twice. I mean, it’s still a non-finished product, but it was one of the few games that I actually saw crash at Spaceworld.

I chose the new playable character…the girl with pink hair. It’s nice to see that so far there’s three playable characters so far that we could choose from. In a sense she kind of reminds me of one of the Gerudos from Zelda. Kind of a new wave genie looking chick. Her weapon of choice is a shorter curved sword, and it packs a decent punch.

The level that was playable was more of a puzzle level set in a catacomb-ish type temple looking area. I didn’t see any insanity effects or anything like that. That could be due to the fact that I was killing everything that I could. There were hallways that you would run down, and have to avoid traps, and swinging blades…as well as simple hieroglyphic type puzzles to solve. It was a little Indian Jones-ish but cool and a lot of fun nonetheless.

Graphically I thought Eternal Darkness looked brilliant. From the lush environments to the detailed characters, visually ED will not disappoint. The fog effects didn’t seem completely finished in this level…but the shadows and other lighting effects looked excellent. ED definitely has an eerie feel to it. You can see though the missing parts on the zombies. Kind of gross, but very cool.

Something that I know will excite people that have the new wide screen TV’s are the fact that Eternal Darkness supports them. You can select ratios of either 4:3 (normal), or 16:9 (wide screen). If anyone out there wants to send me a wide screen TV feel free!

One of my biggest complaints about ED at E3 the past two years (the N64 version, and the GameCube version) was the control. This version cleaned this up quite a bit, and control felt a lot tighter. Moving my character around was a lot smoother, and targeting the enemies (and their different body parts) was easier. By clicking the R shoulder and moving the analog stick, slicing off an enemy's head or hacking off an arm was almost effortless.

Overall I’m happy to say that Eternal Darkness is shaping up to be an excellent GameCube title. It’s beautiful, fun, and an excellent switch from the Resident Evil-ish titles out there. It’s just too bad we have to wait until December to get our hands on Eternal Darkness... I’m really in the mood to lop off some more limbs.

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Eternal Darkness Box Art

Genre Adventure
Developer Silicon Knights
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Eternal Darkness
Release Jun 23, 2002
PublisherNintendo
RatingMature
jpn: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Release Oct 25, 2002
PublisherNintendo

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