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Boring after the first playthrough

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I started a new game in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem the other day. When this game came out, all the reviewers talked about how it was the Greatest Game Ever, and how unique and cool and fun it was. And for the first playthrough, they are right on. I played through the game with a deliberately low Sanity Meter just to see all the different insanity effects. And the storyline was complex enough to be interesting through the whole game.
But on the second playthrough? Not so great. Skip the cutscenes, strip away all the insanity effects (since you've seen them all several times over by now) and you're left with a bland, slow-paced and quite linear action-adventure game. For me it's way too easy and at times very annoying (those stupid Trappers keep teleporting me, gaaaah). Underneath the sanity gimmick, this game is seriously lacking in gameplay meat. There are only three different types of enemies (which come in 3 variations each) that you'll see across the entire 10 hour playtime, and killing them off doesn't take any great strategy - R+up, A. Repeat. I certainly don't have enough interest to play up to the repetitive ending part where you have to backtrack nine (!) times. And there is (I think) one lone unlockable feature: beat the game three times over and you're given the ability to play through with unlimited life, mana and sanity. Whoopee.
Don't get me wrong: this game is a trip the first time through. If you haven't played it, you owe yourself a rental. But it's too bad this game doesn't hold up on multiple plays. No other franchise has yet duplicated the Sanity Meter, but the rest of the game's mechanics have been refined in a half dozen games since ED's release.

A Gamecube Classic

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I sold my Gamecube a number of years ago and always regretted it for a few reasons. This game is one of them. When I got the Nintendo Wii, I made sure to track this game down. It is just as entertaining as it was when I first played it. For fans of survival horror, I would definitely recommend it. I would also recommend this game to readers of H.P. Lovecraft as the theme of the game is most definitely in his style.

A great game, and a unique one at that. You will not be disappointed with this one.

great

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

good game play n great purchase
thnx for everything
will buy from dis company again

I rather play RE4!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 54
Date: June 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Graphics are terrible. this game is boring and the game play is so bad it's not worth playing. do not play this! also Allen Poe is a sick man! this game is not scary at all! RE4 however. scared me. it was amazing gameplay this game however isn't I would not play this again. skip it!

Not for children!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I used to play horror video games such as Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, and many others. However, all those games are baby games compared to this one. Eternal Darkness is in a whole other level of horror games. The graphics are decent, and the gameplay is ok. But the real deal is the horror experience. Sometimes you see blood coming out of the walls, a bunch of enemies surround you, your character's head suddenly blows up, the t.v.'s volume is turned down, and many other things. All of this stuff are things that happen in the game to make you feel fear, but they just disappear. The storyline is one of the best I've ever seen. This game may not have excellent graphics and the gameplay may not be the best; but if you're looking for a horror game, then Eternal Darkness is the best choice. I remember I used to play this game around 1:00 A.M., that is the perfect time to play this game and feel its creepiness. I really recommend this game for those hardcore gamers, it is worth it the money and the time you spend playing it.

A horror adventure that alters the game unexpectedly to play tricks on you.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is really different from any horror game, any action adventure game, and in fact any game in the market. That is because the game has the sanity meter. When it lowers, your character goes insane. He/she hallucinates many different things. You can cast spells and fight with many different weapons by designating the certain body parts. Usually the rooms have bad lighting. It's not to irritate you. This is what horror fans have always wanted. It's about a girl named Roivas. Somebody close to her was killed, so he is checking for clues and studying the history of what happened. And you get to follow around with the exciting story. It's to portray realism. The graphics are amazing, even to this date. So is the sound. There are unlockables in the quest. When people say Gamecube lacks
dark titles, show them to the darkness, eternally.

9/10

Best Psychological Horror Action-Adventure game on Gamecube

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: October 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Well to be fair this is also the only psychological horror action-adventure game on any platform that I know of.

This unique game has an amazing atmosphere and really great soundtrack. The graphics are also really good.

You play the game as the grand-daughter of some guy that just died and so you visit her mansion. While you are there you start finding chapters of this ancient book and for each chapter you find you get to play as the character the chapter is about. The first chapter is a guy from ancient roman times so your gameplay is a legionaire with a sword... during your play of the first chapter you make choice that effects the rest of the games story so you can play the game three times with the three choices available to you at the end of the first chapter. If you play all three story lines then you get the full ending...

First play through took me about 20 hours. Second and Third time took me more like 10-12 hours each cause the puzzles are pretty challenging the first time through.

I think there is something like 12 or so chapters and in each one you play a different character. Everything from legionaire to priests to reporters to fire-men. Male and female characters both. In between chapters you have to spend time with the lead character in the mansion finding the next chapter.

The story of the game makes it well worth playing through three times. It is a classic and it deserves the good reputation it has.

Unrealized Potential, Undeserved Recognition

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 35
Date: March 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Originally penciled in as a late addition to the N64's library, Eternal Darkness was eventually shifted over to the freshly born GC, where it was meant to be the first of many mature-themed first party titles brought to the system. Looking back over the years that have come and gone since, that string of adult-leaning N-published games never really came to be, and the Cube faltered in a similar fashion to its immediate predecessor. But this is now, and for Darkness, that was then. The birth of a new console meant an opportunity for a clean slate and instant anticipation.

The storyline revolves around a blonde-haired, blue eyed, athletic woman named Alexandra Roivas. Constantly haunted by dreams of the undead, she's awakened late one night by a telephone call that informs her of her grandfather's brutal, untimely demise. As the man's only living relative, she's asked to meet with police about the situation, and quickly finds herself drawn into the web of magick, satanism and otherworldly struggles that had defined her late relative's life. The entire story effectively transpires on the grounds of the old man's mansion, which isn't nearly as dull and repetitive as you'd think, thanks to the inclusion of a single intuitive plot device. Hidden among her deceased patriarch's things, Alexandra discovers the necronomicon, a book bound in human flesh that holds the secrets of her family's legacy and the majority of the game's variety. Most of the book's pages have been torn out and scattered throughout the mansion, naturally, but upon discovering a new chapter, Alexandra will dive right in - somewhat literally. Each new set of pages tells the story of a different character and his or her interactions with the book itself, and as Alexandra reads, you'll take control of that character, playing your way through their tale. As such, Eternal Darkness feels more like a series of intertwined short stories than a single, game-spanning epic... a welcome change of pace . What's more, it allows players to travel unbound throughout time and space, adventuring through a roman war expedition one chapter, conquering an Indiana Jones style aztec temple the next, without the need for a silly, out-of-place object like a time machine (or worse).

Truly, there are a lot of really good ideas at play here. I loved the idea of playing the role of an 18th century noble with medical aspirations, performing rudimentary autopsies on the bodies of demons after a battle. The suggestion of a steep tower of corpses, a sacrifice to an ancient, forgotten god, is an amazing mental image. Even the continued use of the book itself as a means to explain Alexandra's growth as a character and a magician was extremely well-concepted. Upon reading in explicit detail about a distant relative's discovery of a magical spell, it's only natural to assume she'd have a fairly good understanding of how to go about casting it herself. Imagination most definitely isn't the weak spot in Sanity's Requiem; it's the execution and realization of those ideas that bothers me.

Take the system of magic, for example, what should've been one of the most important aspects of the game. The idea is that there are three distinct pools of magical energy, a red pool, a green pool, and a blue pool, that simultaneously have power over one color while falling victim to the other. Green is stronger than red, for instance, while blue overcome green, and red conquers blue. It's a brilliantly simple idea, but one that falls flat due to being underexplained and overly detailed. You'll know that the boss you're fighting is using a green special attack, and that you should be counterattacking with a blue assault, but exactly which spell you should be using is only revealed through an abysmal series of trial-and-error kamikaze strikes. Even then, half the time you aren't casting at the right time, or you're not standing in the right place, or the boss has shifted to another form. If I had a dime for every time I had to resort to an online FAQ after reaching the point of frustration during this game, I'd be able to buy a replacement copy and hurl the original into the wall, frisbee style, as stress relief.

It's this maddening sense of frustration and helplessness that really strikes the most damning blow to my overall opinion of the game. After a half-dozen hours or so of gameplay, you'll be so utterly defeated and annoyed that your motivation to continue will begin to pay a heavy toll. As Alexandra learns more and more about what's going on with her heritage and what was really behind her grandfather's murder, you'll find yourself actually comprehending less and less. It's a problem I had with what was formerly one of my favorite comic books, Hellblazer, a year or two ago: because the story is supernatural and underworldly in setting, the writer(s) assume that the solutions to problems don't necessarily need to make sense, so long as they sound spooky and look cool.

Much of the gameplay is in keeping with that same ongoing trend: stupendous ideas, lame execution. Probably the most unique element of the game is its "fright meter," which slowly drains as the on-screen individual sees freakier and freakier things. I know I'd be a little weirded out if a rotting hunk of meat and bones suddenly climbed out of the wall and started lurching toward me... we're conditioned to expect our heroes to immediately continue their quest without missing a beat, so it adds a new dimension to the proceedings when you realize that video game characters can get scared, too. If your fright meter gets too low, you'll even start to experience some hallucinations and so-called "horror effects," which are a real blast and range from the minute to the absurdly out of place. Sometimes you'll see something moving in the corner of the room, other times you'll actually foresee your own death, but the hallucinations will always subside at some point. They don't move the plot along, like the amusing asides in the original Metal Gear Solid did, and only seem to exist to provide a few extra "holy crap" heart-skipping moments. Which is par for the course with a horror game, I'll concede.

Gameplay in general is fairly slow-paced and monotonous, with few action-heavy sequences and a whole lot of aimless wandering and exploring. Even the boss battles are usually relegated to long sessions of striking, wandering around avoiding attacks for a few minutes, and then striking again... like a hilariously slow chase scene. For a game that's so overflowing with narrow corridors, doorways and exquisite surroundings, you'd think that collision detection with the walls wouldn't be such a handicap, but in Darkness it quickly becomes your worst enemy. If your weapon should happen to strike a wall in mid swing, your character will immediately halt their attack and stumble backwards for a few moments, giving your enemies all the time they need to tear you to pieces. Attempting to fight a single enemy in a hallway is often like threading a needle: you'll miss half a dozen times before you get it right.

In the same vein as the Resident Evil series, the teenaged bonding moments that are used to fill out a blockbuster horror film are replaced here with a series of riddles, puzzles and tricks. I expected as much, but couldn't have anticipated how easy and linear most of Darkness's riddles really are. With only a few exceptions, every item is miraculously found just before it's needed, to the point that the pieces basically solve the game's problems for you. If you find a statue, chances are good you'll find a peculiar, statue-shaped hole in the next room.

Eternal Darkness' visuals have aged even worse than the rest of the title, and I'm not entirely sure they were ever really up to snuff. Sure, there's always the argument that these graphics were "stunning when they first came out," but I didn't play this game when it was first released, and even though it's just four years old, today they look extremely shoddy. Human skin textures are particularly bad and lumpy, but even the environments and items suffer from weak textures and a ragged, blocky basic structure. The one exception to this rule is with the creatures themselves, which are all brilliantly designed and extremely well-executed. I'd compare the lot of them to most of the bad guys in Silent Hill and perhaps the most gruesome baddies of Resident Evil. It hurts just to look at most of these guys, the way their flesh seems to stretch and strain to withhold the ugliness that's going on underneath. The only thing I could wish for there is a wider taste of variety, since the rogue's list seen here is extremely shallow.

Considering all that came before it, Darkness' audio is surprisingly well done. The Cube does everything in its power to deliver a solid surround-sound experience, and those effects come as close to accomplishing the spooky vibe these developers were obviously shooting for as any other aspect of the game. Musically, the game's soundtrack is uneventful. It swells and sways as necessary, and occasionally gives a nice bit of mood to a location. It isn't repetitious, which is probably my greatest pet peeve about in-game music, and it doesn't get in the way, but it also doesn't stand out on its own. Let's put it this way: I wouldn't rush out to the stores to buy Eternal Darkness: The Original Symphonic Score. The voice acting in general is very good, with few exceptions, and though the dialog the actors are asked to deliver is usually stilted and unbelievable, they go beyond the call of duty to give their roles a personality and motivation that was sorely lacking in the script. Especially good are the noises, shallow screams and ambient ticks of the insanity effects, and each character's resulting reaction to them. While the same phrase is sometimes repeated at the conclusion of one of these sequences, it's not something that ever really bothered me and actually took steps to reveal the characters as more honest and true to life. If you're freaked out and seeing things in an unfamiliar mansion, I doubt the first thing to enter your mind is "come on, let's at least get a little variety into the dialog." You're going to scream the first thing that comes into your head, whether you've said it before or not.

To summarize, this feels like a series of very good concepts that were just drawn too thin, which is odd because the game itself, clocking in around twelve hours, is fairly short. There were so many superb, imaginative concepts that died on the way to the screen here that it really became something of a sad theme for the whole picture. Whether it was the truly surprising insanity effects, the unique limb-targeting system or the original system of magic, no matter how good the idea, the execution was always killing the potential for me. Despite the lingering offering of replay value here (there's supposedly a super secret ending if you finish all three potential paths) I just didn't find myself motivated to go through it all again, especially considering how slow, plodding and ultimately dreary the majority of the actual gameplay was. Considering the amount of people that had pimped this game to me, and the incredible reputation it seems to have gathered in the years since, I found myself more than just a little disappointed. As a "must-have" title for the GameCube, Eternal Darkness is nothing but a major league let-down.

THIS IS WHAT GAMECUBERS NEED!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 38
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

There are wayy to many Pre-Teen games out,And its nice to have a game rated M for once.Resident Evil 1-4,Metal Gear Solid:The Twin Snakes are some of the only M rated games on GameCube.
The Nintendo 64 had lots of M and T rated games-infact last gen if you were looking for volent games most people would get N64 over PS1 and DreamCast.
Hopefully the N-Revolution will be up to scratch with M and T rated games-Well by looking at its launch it does have a couple of violent games.I hope the N-Rev is atleast as powerful as XBox 360.I`m not saying "dump Mario" or anything like that-they need more gruesome games!
bye

------------------------
SIGNATURE:i am TOMKAT
Consoles currently own:PS2,XBox,GameCube,Nintendo DS,GBA and PSP.
Consoles previously owned:N64,GameBoy:COLOR and PS1.
Consoles which will be had in the future:PlayStation 3 and N-Revolution-Not in anyway impressed with XBox 360.
Games previously played:Metal Gear Solid 3:Snake Eater,Metal Gear Solid 2,ShellShock:Nam `67,GTA:San Andreas,DRIV3R.
Game playing now:Far Cry Instincts,Return To Castle Wolfenstein,MOH:Frontline,COD:Finest Hour,BIA:Road to Hill 30,Men Of Valor.
Games to be played in future:Metal Gear Solid 4,KillZone 3,GTA4,Far Cry Intincts:EVOLUTION,Driver:Parallel Lines.

Splinter Cell SUX,Far Cry ROX,Metal Gear ROX.
SOCOM is GREAT,Ghost Recon is GREAT,Rainbow SIX is great.
GTA ROX,Driver ROX.
MOH is OK,COD is GREAT,BIA is Great.
HALO is OK,DOOM ROCKED,Duke Nukem was good,QUAKE was great.
Super Mario is great,Zelda is great,FABLE is great.
NintenDogs is better than Tamigothchi-MUCH better.
bye.
My COLLUMN was GREAT WASN`T IT!?

I want Eternal Darkness 2 NOW!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: February 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I just finished ED and loved it!
Chthulian monsters, ritual magick, zombies,puzzles,and a great storyline made this a winner for me off the line.
It's nice to have another quality spooky adult game come out of GC.
The graphics definitely could have been a little cleaner, and there were a few minor glitches, but overall great game!

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