FEATURED EXCLUSIVE
to jump into the title and reap all of its
benefits within a half hour are in for a
disappointment. On the other hand,
committed gamers will be treated to a
long, epic adventure filled with surprises,
unpredictable twists and turns, scares,
and a magnificent sense of
accomplishment, both from a completion
sense but also from a character
development standpoint.
The story follows Alexandra Roivas, a
young, beautiful woman whose
grandfather 's body has just been
found in his dark and moody
mansion, bloodied and torn
apart, his head missing. When she
learns that the local police have been
unable to uncover any clues regarding
the obvious murder, she decides to
take matters into her own hands.
It's when she arrives at her
deceased relative's mansion to
investigate that the tale of Eternal
Darkness truly begins.
We're not going to give away a single plot
development. But there are a couple of
facts about the game players should
know. First, the storyline and related
quests span time itself -- a period of some
20 centuries to be specific. Players will
take on the role of 12 different characters
through the ages, from a Roman
Centurion to a priest during the period of
the Inquisition, a hunter and collector in
the 1980s and even ancestors of the
Roivas family line. Each character in the
game has a point and a place relative to
the overall storyline, which slowly unwinds
and unravels as players make progress.
At first glance, players may shrug Eternal
Darkness off as a Resident Evil clone, a
prejudgment that couldn't possibly be
further from the truth. Sure, the two
franchises share a third-person view in
common, and admittedly Silicon Knights'
title also features some zombies, but
beyond these similarities the efforts are
surprisingly different. Eternal Darkness
delivers a much deeper experience than
Capcom's survival horror series has ever
conjured in any of its games. Control,
which coincides with true 3D worlds
versus 2D pre-rendered ones, is
undeniably tighter, enabling gamers to
run and turn swiftly and accurately
without worry of the robotic limitations
associated with Resident Evil. But beyond
this, players have access to much, much
more, including weapons and items, of
course, but also a wide assortment of
magick, which we'll detail below as it's so
important to the adventure. It's all
intertwined flawlessly and as a result the
play experience feels much more
polished.