Very gracious and very solid game – typical Nintendo stuff. This title works on so many levels – it comes with captivating gameplay, solid survival horror genre to explore, great and I mean great controls, deep storyline, open-endedness, multiple characters, problem solving, great creepy music, beautiful cut-scenes, and amazing Cube graphics. Overall Eternal Darkness is a splendid achievement.
First things first though – let's being with gameplay. You are a young female character (have you noticed how many Nintendo games have a lady for a protagonist – how awesome) who is locked in her Rhode Island family estate trying to solve the death of her grandpa. In the process she finds about an Ancient Evil trying to take over our world and stops it successfully. The one sparkling side of ED is that its gameplay adapts to you and based on which style you choose the game has three different standalone plots. You can elect to progress thru ED via sanity, magic or blood veins. I did it thru sanity and boy was I glad I did so. Nintendo proved brilliant yet again. To convey insanity effects your characters often are sucked into imaginary non-real worlds, at other times the screen of your TV turns blue, or there will be cockroaches crawling on it, etc. Originally Nintendo programmed the Cube to make funny sounds also but they had to pull it out at the last second because people thought their consoles were broken – how ingenious is that.
Another brilliance in gameplay is that you play with as many as 7 characters (if memory serves right) throughout the game, each with different weapons, moves, storyline, agendas, etc. In usual Nintendo fashion all their destinies follow a common overarching theme. You can simply forget about being bored by this game – it is that much fun.
The controls are phenomenal; there is a certain targeting technique that lets you choose which body part you are aiming at. You can take the legs of a mummy out but it would still slash at you with its arms (the best bet is to shoot off the head). Such is the attention to grace and detail that make ED breathtaking. The camera is awesome – very intuitive and very unnoticeable. The music feels likes a Stanley Kubrick soundtrack, it could get nerve-rattling especially during the insanity effects. The graphics are wonderful, the environments are ever-varying – from the Inquisition age thru the Middle East times to the modern day Rhode Island – it's all interwoven so masterfully.
The game is overall quite difficult, but after you get enough magical spells under your belt you'll be pretty tough to kill. The puzzles are the toughest part as usual, and the ammo is unlimited – a breath of freshness for a survival horror game.
There will definitely be ED2 – the first one was just that good.
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