Eternal Darkness and Other Cube Impressions

[burgundy]

Darkness and Wavebirds and cards – oh my!

As if releasing one of the most anticipated games on any of its platforms for years wasn’t enough, Nintendo really through down the gauntlet over the past week and shipped a revolutionary new wireless controller and a memory card that doesn’t suck.

Basically, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem chronicles the adventures of people who, over the past 2000 years, have come into contact with the Tome of Eternal Darkness, a book of arcane magick and other dark secrets. These characters include a Roman centurian, a priest from Charlemagne’s empire, a Cambodian courtesan, an early American doctor and a modern-day grad student. The game begins when Alex, the grad student, learns of her grandfather’s death in his Rhode Island mansion and goes to investigate. She comes across the Tome and its various scattered pages throughout the mansion, and the other adventures are accessed through Alex’s reading of the Tome.

ED may just be the most bizarre and disturbing game released on any console, Nintendo or otherwise, ever. ED is best described as a mix of survival horror and traditional dungeon adventure. Like Resident Evil, ED throws zombies and other undead at you from dramatic camera angles, but Silicon Knights’ long awaited offering takes terror to a whole new level, in that the game interface itself (not merely its inhabitants and environments) is built to freak you out. In addition to health and magick meters, ED forces you to monitor your sanity, which steadily decreases when you encounter monsters or do things you shouldn’t. Killing a friendly guard, for example, decreased my sanity meter to…well…insanity, and I instantly found myself grappling with shifting camera angles, enemies that could suddenly explode, and blackouts that would set me back a few rooms. After going down a wrong path, I didn’t know whether the game had misled me or I had simply been confused – I guess the game was making me question my own “sanity.” These effects – and the mere thought of them – makes ED a lot more disturbing that mere zombies or evil devil children or whatever. Let’s just say that Tron is actually afraid not only of the game, but the game disc, as well as the Cube when ED is in it.

Silicon Knights deserves a big round of applause for showing that a game can be frightening without broken controls. The heroes and heroines of ED don’t control like Dante, but they intuitively run in the direction that the analog stick is pressed. Easy enough. You can’t hack your way through everything, though – your character only has a limited amount of stamina, and running and attacking rapidly will you exhausted and gasping for air. Massive injury will also slow you to a limp, which is a neat effect, but also makes the game maddeningly frustrating when you’re hurt and just trying to escape to a safe haven. Still, I’d prefer to feel helpless because of an actual injury than a controller that just won’t respond. Attacks are aimed with the R trigger – generally, you can target a monster’s head, chest or arms, much like Vagrant Story but much simpler. One neat effect occurs when you lop off a monster’s head – it will feel around for its head for a bit, as if to say “Hey – what happened to my head?” before flailing around blindly for you, and possibly damaging other monsters around it. Usually, your best bet is to behead all the monsters first, to protect your health and your sanity, before killing them. Performing a finishing move on monsters after they’ve fallen sometimes triggers a neat little cutscene and always restores a bit of sanity.

Visually, ED makes up in style for what it lacks in polygon count. Originally a N64 title, ED occasionally “shows off” its roots. Strangely, some scenes and characters seems blockier than others – it appeared that the quality of the graphics took a hit when Alex’s mansion scene gave way to Pious’ Persian scenario – although better lighting may have made the flaws more discernable. In any event, the graphics are certainly good, if not stunning – about on par with a second-generation PS2 game. The visuals are initially very dark – while this is used to convey atmosphere, it also can make the game difficult to see. Fortunately, ED includes a brightness setting in the options menu – thank you, Silicon Knights! The game also has a host of cinemas which move the story along at various points. The good news here is that they are catalogued in the options screen for future viewing, but the bad news is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to skip through them, making replays a drag. Aurally, ED doesn’t show much in the way of music, but it has loads of sound effects, ranging from the groans of the undead, the swish of weapons, and the voices in your head – which of course grow louder and more disturbing the lower your sanity drops.

Overall, ED seems to be the GameCube game to pick up – at least until a certain fat little plumber takes a vacation this August. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick up any other treats for your little purple buddy – the Wavebird and the Memory Card 251 are now available too. The Wavebird is Nintendo’s wireless Cube controller that works perfectly – I cannot stress this enough – although I have yet to play with multiple Wavebirds operating simultaneously. The controller feels perfectly natural, except for my constant surprise that I don’t have to worry about tripping over my controller cord. The rumble feature is missing, but I haven’t really noticed it during gameplay. And the reach seems to be further than advertised – signals were still registering outside of my apartment, two doors down. The Mem Card 251 is exactly what it says it is – a first-party card with over four times the blocks of the original. It looks the same, except it’s black instead of grey – I’m sure it looks great with the Jet Cube, but it clashes a bit with Indigo. The card doesn’t seem to use any “page” formats, like the Sega 4x DC card does – it just has more blocks, so files larger than 59 blocks can be saved. The downside to this, however, is that you'll still need two different cards if you import and want to save game files from different regions. At an MSRP of $20, the 251 is a steal for anyone buying their first Cube card, or just looking for additional memory.

[Nick]

Originally posted by burgundy
These effects – and the mere thought of them – makes ED a lot more disturbing that mere zombies or evil devil children or whatever.

Make light of Silent Hill's Devil Children at your own peril! Don't be a fool!

Um, good stuff, as usual. The game seems to get better the farther into it you get, so you will probably spend a lot more time holding the Wavebird and a lot less time holding your special gal over the next week. (It just makes 'em want you more. )

Again, excellent post.

[BEBOPlover]

I'm glad someone mentioned the Wavebird. I absolutely love the controller--I hope other consoles follow up (of course they always do).

Gotta grab the memory card.

[Despair]

Good impressions Burgundy

I'm also enjoying the game, it has great atmosphere, cool combat, that works well, and I love creepy sounds. I only seen a few insanity fxs so far, but those were cool nevertheless

I mentioned before, it has couple flaws like pixely cinemas, blocky characters in cut scenes and not being able to skip through the cinemas, but those are minor, and wont distract you from the enjoyment this game provides

[burgundy]

I'd just like to note that this game gets really frightening once you make it to the second floor of the main mansion. I screamed several times and Tron was crying. No other S-H game has even fazed me - except for the controls.

[Despair]

Hmm, Cant wait till I get there then

Last game the scared me was Fatal Frame. I want to see what ED got to offer.

[BEBOPlover]

I'm about 10 hours in, and I can't rave about this game enough.
It has that Nintendo feel to that just seems to elude all other games in this genre.
This might be my favorite game of this year, so far.

[Pücas Farton]

I don't know if I like when you go insane, and the dials on your TV go wacky.

It sort of takes away from the story like a cellphone going off in a movie theater that's playing and old-time western.

But then again, it makes you go nuts, as if you're the one hallucinating.

[Despair]

Well, Played some more last night and it liking it even more.

I cant call it a horror game, at least not yet. Its more of an action game with horror elements. There are some spooky locations, and Insanty FX do add alot of tension to the gameplay. Combat is more action oriented than in regular horror games like RE or SH, and you move faster and more freely when fighting monsters.

Got to the 2nd floor, and that Bust is frikin creepy

[burgundy]

Originally posted by Despair
Well, Played some more last night and it liking it even more.

I cant call it a horror game, at least not yet. Its more of an action game with horror elements. There are some spooky locations, and Insanty FX do add alot of tension to the gameplay. Combat is more action oriented than in regular horror games like RE or SH, and you move faster and more freely when fighting monsters.

Got to the 2nd floor, and that Bust is frikin creepy

The only thing that horror games have that ED doesn't is ass control.