22nd February 2003, 8:01 PM
<b><i>"May the rats eat your eyes! The Darkness comes, it will damn us all!"</b></i></font>
The words of noted scholar Maximillian Roivas echo true in this creepy game. An early morning phone call alerts Alexandra Roivas (note that Roivas is Savior spelled backwards ;)) that her grandfather, Dr. Edward Roivas, has been murdered. She flies to Rhode Island and after seeing the grisly scene, she vows to find out what happened, thus begins the game. Since it is so integral to the plotline, I will now tell you how the next part of the game unfolds. It contains some mild spoilers, so if you'd rather play the game for youself, skip over this next paragraph and move on to the next.
You open a secret passageway in the mansion by solving a fairly straightforward puzzle. Inside the room you find, among other thins, an old book: The Tome of Eternal Darkness. Get used to seeing it, it's a big part of the game. When you find the tome, only one chapter page is inside, the story of Pious Augustus. Pious was a centurion in the Roman Army, when a strange calling led him to a ring of stones in the desert, where magic transports him to a hidden temple. Inside he fights zombies and collects items, until finally getting to the last room, which holds three artifacts. The choice you make now influences the rest of the game. Pious picks an artifact, but before he can grab it, energy from the artifact overwhelms him as he lay screaming on the floor. When he rises to his feet again, he has been horribly changed and is now a dark master under the clan of the artifact he chose. Chattur'gha, the red artifact, makes enemies stronger and gives them the ability to regrow lost limbs or heads. Xel'lotath, the green artifact, will cause your sanity to fall quicker during the game. Ulyaoth, (you guessed it) the blue artifact, focuses more heavily on magic use. Pick your poison, none of the paths are easy.
Riding out on the coattails of the GameCube scarefest remake of Resident Evil, Nintendo shows a little more of the dark side their little console has. It's not as gory as Resident Evil (no grenades in zombies mouths here) but it makes up for it with one of the best, most immersive storylines I have ever seen. You must solve puzzles as Alex to find chapter pages to the Tome of Eternal Darkness and once you find them, you enter the chapters character. A sample of the handful of characters include a young man from the ancient Middle East trying to win a womans heart, an archealogist from the 1980s, a fransiscan monk from the time of the inquisition, and a cambodian dancer.
The graphics here don't stun you like Resident Evils did, but they don't disappoint either. The camera pans and zooms smoothly as your character walks or runs and will almost always have a clear view of what is ahead.
One of the coolest effects in the game is your characters sanity. Every time you are spotted by an enemy you lose some sanity. The more sanity that you lose, you start to hallucinate. Hallucinations can either happen to your character or they can mess with YOU directly, such as showing you false error messages suddenly. You can regain some lost sanity by performing finishing moves on enemies and by casting spells once you learn them.
As long as we're on the topic of magic (don't worry, I'll shut up soon), lets talk about spells. As you go through the game, you find runes, scrolls, and codeces. Runes are the building blocks of spells, however without a codex to decipher them, they remain a mystery. You can build spells with undeciphered runes at this point but it's very hit-and-miss. After you find a scroll and have all the appropriate runes, the spell automatically builds itself and stores in the the Tome of Eternal Darkness, so every character you play form now on will have access to this spell. Use of spells are certain times is crucial, for example, enchanting a weapon with the power of Ulyaoth will deal extra damage to Chattur'gha enemies. Conversely for Chattur'gha / Xel'lotath and Xel'lotath / Ulyaoth. It's a ring of power, red beats green, green beats blue, blue beats red. IT's a very useful thing to remember when you start fighting the big boys.
There is probably quite a bit I did not cover in this review, there is very much to this game, yet it remains very easy to learn and play. I give this game a 9.2 score and I <i>assure</i> you that this review is NOT a hallucination...or is it?
The words of noted scholar Maximillian Roivas echo true in this creepy game. An early morning phone call alerts Alexandra Roivas (note that Roivas is Savior spelled backwards ;)) that her grandfather, Dr. Edward Roivas, has been murdered. She flies to Rhode Island and after seeing the grisly scene, she vows to find out what happened, thus begins the game. Since it is so integral to the plotline, I will now tell you how the next part of the game unfolds. It contains some mild spoilers, so if you'd rather play the game for youself, skip over this next paragraph and move on to the next.
You open a secret passageway in the mansion by solving a fairly straightforward puzzle. Inside the room you find, among other thins, an old book: The Tome of Eternal Darkness. Get used to seeing it, it's a big part of the game. When you find the tome, only one chapter page is inside, the story of Pious Augustus. Pious was a centurion in the Roman Army, when a strange calling led him to a ring of stones in the desert, where magic transports him to a hidden temple. Inside he fights zombies and collects items, until finally getting to the last room, which holds three artifacts. The choice you make now influences the rest of the game. Pious picks an artifact, but before he can grab it, energy from the artifact overwhelms him as he lay screaming on the floor. When he rises to his feet again, he has been horribly changed and is now a dark master under the clan of the artifact he chose. Chattur'gha, the red artifact, makes enemies stronger and gives them the ability to regrow lost limbs or heads. Xel'lotath, the green artifact, will cause your sanity to fall quicker during the game. Ulyaoth, (you guessed it) the blue artifact, focuses more heavily on magic use. Pick your poison, none of the paths are easy.
Riding out on the coattails of the GameCube scarefest remake of Resident Evil, Nintendo shows a little more of the dark side their little console has. It's not as gory as Resident Evil (no grenades in zombies mouths here) but it makes up for it with one of the best, most immersive storylines I have ever seen. You must solve puzzles as Alex to find chapter pages to the Tome of Eternal Darkness and once you find them, you enter the chapters character. A sample of the handful of characters include a young man from the ancient Middle East trying to win a womans heart, an archealogist from the 1980s, a fransiscan monk from the time of the inquisition, and a cambodian dancer.
The graphics here don't stun you like Resident Evils did, but they don't disappoint either. The camera pans and zooms smoothly as your character walks or runs and will almost always have a clear view of what is ahead.
One of the coolest effects in the game is your characters sanity. Every time you are spotted by an enemy you lose some sanity. The more sanity that you lose, you start to hallucinate. Hallucinations can either happen to your character or they can mess with YOU directly, such as showing you false error messages suddenly. You can regain some lost sanity by performing finishing moves on enemies and by casting spells once you learn them.
As long as we're on the topic of magic (don't worry, I'll shut up soon), lets talk about spells. As you go through the game, you find runes, scrolls, and codeces. Runes are the building blocks of spells, however without a codex to decipher them, they remain a mystery. You can build spells with undeciphered runes at this point but it's very hit-and-miss. After you find a scroll and have all the appropriate runes, the spell automatically builds itself and stores in the the Tome of Eternal Darkness, so every character you play form now on will have access to this spell. Use of spells are certain times is crucial, for example, enchanting a weapon with the power of Ulyaoth will deal extra damage to Chattur'gha enemies. Conversely for Chattur'gha / Xel'lotath and Xel'lotath / Ulyaoth. It's a ring of power, red beats green, green beats blue, blue beats red. IT's a very useful thing to remember when you start fighting the big boys.
There is probably quite a bit I did not cover in this review, there is very much to this game, yet it remains very easy to learn and play. I give this game a 9.2 score and I <i>assure</i> you that this review is NOT a hallucination...or is it?