Game:

Eternal Darkness (2002)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 2:09:19

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118

The Gamecube may have a small library of games, but it sure has high quality titles and some "hidden gems" like Eternal Darkness. Sure, it is not obscure at all and shows up in a lot of games lists - top Gamecube games, top weird games or memorable "horror" games. And that's the point where the controversy starts. is it a horror game? not in the regular sense of "in-your-face violence". it uses horror elements from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mytos which I will point out throughout this text.

Eternal Darkness is an action adventure that plays in a lovecraftian horror setting. You are Alexandra, granddaughter of Edward Roivas. One night the police informs you that he was brutally murdered under unknown circumstances since there is no sign of intrusion. The police doesn't have a clue as to what happened so Alex intends to find out herself and starts to do some investigation on her own in Edward's former mansion which is where the game starts.

You play in 3rd person perspective. In true adventure style you can interact with objects in typical adventure fashion. there aren't many objects per chapter so their purpose is always obvious.

Your antagonist is Pious Augustus who found an artifact 2000 years ago and uses it to prepare a spell to call an "ancient" into our universe. this "ancient" is utterly evil in a lovecraftian sense and all that keeps it from entering our realm is that Pious needs to wait for a planetary alignment to cast his summoning spell. Should this succeed, it will shroud the world in an eternal darkness. there are actually three ancients, akin to the elder gods and old ones in the cthulhu mythos, that are like paper-rock-scissors to each other. each enemy you encounter is aligned to one of them and spells have an alignment too. therefore, it is helpful to use the properly aligned spells for some extra damage.

You soon find the "Tome of Eternal Darkness" and each chapter of the game is a page of said Tome that you have to find somewhere in the mansion. In the mythos there are many similar books such as the Book of Eibon or the Necronomicon. As you progress, more areas become accessible as you get new magic or items. Each of these chapters tells the story of one of your ancestors throughout history. All of them were involved in fighting the "Eternal Darkness". With every chapter, Alex learns more about the Eternal Darkness, finds spells and each page she reads from the Tome prepares her for the final confrontation.

you often revisit the same locations at different points in time with different objectives. this sounds like a cheap way to extend the game, but it's quite the opposite: the locations are familiar, but all revisited areas have their own and new layers of mystery. rarely have i seen this done in such a clever way.

combat is simple: you slash, shoot or zap enemies with magic. most enemies are undead, some are alien-like creatures. most enemy encounters are not hard or can be avoided entirely. the game has no difficulty setting, but you can select the opposing ancient which acts as a difficulty setting. blue = easiest, red = hardest.

if an enemy looks at you, you lose some of your sanity. once you strike them down, you can re-gain lost sanity by finishing them off. once your sanity meter is depleted, you lose health instead. at low sanity, you start to see strange "sanity effects". you see blood dripping from walls and the ceiling or much weirder things. I won't spoil them because that's what makes Eternal Darkness unique.

the controls are intuitive. you can assign four spells to buttons and targeting is easy. at first, the game is fairly difficult until you figure out the controls, but then it becomes a breeze. the game is also quite short. it will take about eight hours to finish your first run.

the graphics are somewhere between good and amazing. I do own a physical copy of Eternal Darkness, but decided to play and record on the Dolphin emulator. usually, i like to preserve the original look. in the case of this game, my mind was blown by how good it can look at high resolution. the textures are crisp and it doesn't look ugly at all. the game even supports a 16:9 aspect ratio out of the box.

the audio creates a tense atmosphere. there is no music, but the ambient sounds add a very interesting and mysterious feeling to the gameplay especially once your sanity drops. the voice acting also does the job and is of good quality.

this game makes me wonder why I didn't try it earlier. if you only give it a few minutes, you may be turned off by the cliché spooky mansion and the lack of "horror" that many people expect. it's all subtle. if you give it a chance to finish it and you like the lovecraftian approach to horror, you may be in for a great ride.

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