The Darkness Is Coming
Eternal Darkness is centered around the exploits of Alexandra Roivas, a young lass who finds out more about the history of the world than she bargained for when her grandfather’s body is found in his mansion in Long Island. Though it is blatantly obvious that her grandfather has been brutally murdered, the police can do little to uncover what really happened, so Alex heads to the mansion to try and uncover what really went on. Upon searching around the mansion, she uncovers the Tome of Eternal Darkness, a book bound in flesh and bone which holds many of the answers that Alex is looking for.
So here we are in the Roivas mansion, as Alex, with the Tome of Eternal Darkness in our grimy little hands. The Roivas mansion acts as a hub level of sorts, as Alex must rummage through the mansion in search of chapter pages for the Tome. Each chapter is like a level, and tells the story of another character and their exploits with the Tome, and what happened to them. There are 11 chapters, and 12 playable characters in all, spanned over the course of 2000 years. You get to visit many eras of history throughout this period including Rome, the Inquisition and World War One.
Eternal Darkness is an adventure game with elements of survival horror, full of puzzles and enemies for you to solve and defeat, as well as magick and a variety of weapons at your disposal. Combat is operated by a simple lock on system; you target the opponent, move the stick until you have the desired body part highlighted, blast or chop away until the monster is defeated, then hit it with a finishing blow. Magick is controlled by Circles of Power where you choose your alignment, then two runes to create a spell. Spells range from the standard recovery spells to more unconventional summoning and binding spells, which let you take control of enemy creatures, or sway their allegiance towards your character.
Sanity is an important theme throughout the whole game. Your character will have a sanity meter and as they meet monsters or see other obscure things, this meter will fall. As the meter falls, you character will become less sane, which is displayed by way of the game’s sanity effects. The game has no shortage of these sanity effects, including screen tilting, your television suddenly switching off, controller port error messages, babies screaming, blood leaking down the walls, heads falling off, and many more. There are a few ways to regain your sanity; the main way is to perform a finishing move on a monster, which is done after they are knocked to the ground.
Eternal Darkness isn’t without its problems. The simplified combat system, while good in theory, makes combat far too easy, bland, and repetitive. Disposal of enemies simply requires removing the head and limbs from a monster, knocking them down, and performing a finishing move - expand that process out by about 25-30 hours, and you’ll begin to see why. The other gripe comes in the form of the actual puzzles in the game; some puzzles are great, but others you will be required to do many times throughout the game, and because these particular puzzles take so long to do, they become an ordeal, and reduce the enjoyment of the game.
Eternal Darkness started out on the Nintendo 64, and despite being in development for two years after being shifted, the game still retains a portion of the N64’s graphical styling. That’s not to say that the game suffers due to this older technology; Eternal Darkness still produces a lot of great special effects, as well as including a few things that are impossible on the N64. All levels in Eternal Darkness are filled with great lighting and shadowing effects to develop an eerie atmosphere, with bump mapping on objects to make them look a little more real. All of the environments and objects in Eternal Darkness are produced in real time, which gives them a look of being more authentic, as opposed to pre-rendered backdrops.
There are four main levels in Eternal Darkness; the Roivas mansion, a hidden temple, an underground excavation site and a cathedral. You’ll visit each area at different eras throughout the course of history, which allows us to see how each area develops throughout time. All environments are oozing with atmosphere, and when all the features of the game come together (insanity, etc.), things become downright creepy. As previously mentioned, there are 12 characters in Eternal Darkness, though it is obvious that certain characters were better thought out than others. Never fear, all characters have seen the same level of work put into their models and animations, and they all come out looking fairly sharp. The same thing cannot be said for most of the game’s enemies, as there isn’t a great variety of them, and they’re rather lacking in design, though their in game presence has been adequately created. Boss enemies saw a greater level of design and animation than the normal enemies and will cause a chill to shoot up your spine when you first encounter them.
The aural department in Eternal Darkness is an absolute delicacy. The music is a chilling orchestral fare, which is toned to suit the mood that your character is currently in, as well as the theme of the chapter that you are on. The level of excellence and immersion created by the sound effects is hard to put into words. Effects are spine-tingling, scary, chilling, and have been produced with the utmost care at very high quality. Eternal Darkness’s voice acting is second to none, as voices have been directed and supplied by well known talent, including Metal Gear Solid 2’s David Hayter. The final sweet touch of the sound department of the game is the inclusion of Dolby Pro Logic II, which provides a near perfect surround sound experience.
The glaring problem in Eternal Darkness is the length of the game. Anyone who recalls the pre-release hype surrounding the game would remember that we were fed all sorts of crap about the game being 60 hours long. In essence, the game does need to be played through three times to see the real ending, but this is merely artificial lengthening of the game. First time through the game takes about 15-20 hours for the average gamer and about 6-8 hours on the next two trips through the game, totaling about 25-30 hours total. The game isn’t exactly a great challenge – most of your time in the game will be taken up trying to figure out some of the more annoying puzzles, or running around in circles to recover your magick.
Eternal Darkness still prevails over its minor problems, and provides for some relatively innovative and compelling gameplay. Anybody looking for a deep, mature storyline should take a look at the game, though they should be weary of the length of the game, while game fans should take a look at the game for the unique premises it introduces, such as the sanity effects.
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