Eternal Darkness has a lot of interesting concepts. It's extremely polished, the magic system is quite deep, the story-line is much better than the average game, and the controls are a big improvement over previous survival horror games (don't be fooled by all the hype, it's still a survival horror game) and yet, I could barely force myself to finish it.
One of the most interesting features in the game is the sanity meter. Whenever you see a monster your sanity starts to drop. As it gets lower you start to hallucinate and really freaky things start to happen. This is without a doubt the coolest aspect of the game. To recover your sanity you must perform a finishing move on a monster. This provides an incentive to kill every monster you encounter and really adds to the game-play. At least for the first couple of hours, that is.
Once you get the recover sanity and health spells the game just becomes way, WAY too easy. Because you can just cast a recover sanity spell any time you please, your sanity meter almost never gets dangerously low, and you never get to see anymore of those cool insanity effects. Your mana quickly recharges so there's no limit to how many times you can cast these recovery spells. It completely destroys the game. It's like playing a game with a God cheat enabled. At times I found myself not even bothering to avoid certain traps in the game. I would simply run through them taking a bunch of damage, then when I was through I'd cast a couple spells and suddenly I'm full on health again. I can't stand easy games and I found myself getting quite bored.
There's no challenge in any of the other aspects of the game either. The puzzles (if they can even be called puzzles) are totally simple and never even gave me a pause. The game is completely linear and there is rarely any question as to where you should go next.
While the game does have a good story, (for a game that is) it wasn't enough to carry the entire game (actually I think the word "game" may be a bit of a misnomer in this case. Perhaps "slightly-interactive-movie" would be more appropriate). I must have game-play, and I must have a bit of a challenge. Eternal Darkness does not deliver this. It's too bad the game designers felt the need to hold my hand through the entire game, showing me exactly what to do, and making sure I was never overwhelmed or frustrated. Nothing frustrates me more than a game that doesn't frustrate me.
Sound: 10/10
Nice voice-acting, and some really creepy sound effects. I especially liked the incantations when you cast your spells.
Graphics: 8/10
Extremely polished. Good character and creature designs, however I think technologically the graphics are a bit under par. The Gamecube can do a lot better.
Controls: 9/10
Best controls in a survival horror game that I've ever seen.
Game-play: 4/10
A lot of interesting potential for good game-play, unfortunately, it's all ruined by a complete lack of difficulty.
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