Reviewed by CL on 8/7/2004
For some reason, this game got very good reviews from IGN and other sites. In my opinion, this game feels distinctly dated. Despite this, there are several nice features to this game, so let's start with these first. The most noticeable is that the storyline in the game is pretty cool. In order to help the story along, there are many, many cool cutscenes and cinematics. However, you usually don't play a game to see the cutscenes, you play it for the gameplay and this is where the game begins to falter. The game plays a lot like Resident Evil without the cool feel to it and the scary moments. In Eternal Darkness, you play as a different character every 20 minutes, so there is never a feel of improving your character with new items or weapons. It's like starting from scratch every 20 minutes. To make it stand out from Resident Evil, there is a goofy magic system that is way too complicated.
The game is very dark and has some occult themes. This goes to show that the Gamecube is not just a kiddie game machine. This game can be as gory and disturbing as anything on PS2 or Xbox.
Overall, this was a very underwhelming experience and I wouldn't strongly recommend it to you. However, I only paid $14.99 for it, so if you happen to have a lot of spare time and 15 bucks to spend, you probably won't be sorry you bought it. At least it makes your collection look bigger.
