Eternal Darkness: The Movie

[Dark Jaguar]

The proper term is REbirth, because that's what it is in Japan, where it has a small subtitle, and it sounds cooler. The thing is, ED and RE aren't really the same genre. ED can hardly be called a survival horror at all, because surviving isn't even an issue, ever, when you have infinite health and ammo. It's more of an adventure horror.

[OB1]

REmake.

[Undertow]

It's more of a suspence than horror.

[OB1]

Well I never got even slightly scared while playing REmake so I don't know if I'd classify that as "horror".

[Dark Jaguar]

But... the zombies, and the "ooh" and then they grab you and it's like "get it off me!" and you scream, and then the authorities arrive, and you are all like "save me from the wee turtles!".

[OB1]

No it's more like I see the zombies and go "oooh! scary!" all sarcastic-like and then I shoot them in the head and go "wee" and then throw down the controller five minutes later because of the piss-poor controls.

[Dark Jaguar]

You... you just can't get into the mood of anything can you?!

[OB1]

Can too! I feel like I'm on vacation whenever I play Mario Sunshine and feel like I'm in an incredible fantasy world whenever I play ICO.

[Great Rumbler]

What kind of vacation is it when you have to clean up paint!!

[OB1]

A CRAZY FUN one, is what!

[Great Rumbler]

Mo' like NOT crazy fun!

[Dark Jaguar]

You were arrested and put on clean up duty as punishment! That's not fun, as any prisoner cleaning graphiti will tell you

[OB1]

But you spin around and crap!

[Undertow]

Originally posted by Great Rumbler
Mo' like NOT crazy fun!

If only he was cleaning dried feline feces out of a giant litter box with his big water gun instead, now <i>that</i> would be the money game!

[Great Rumbler]

Originally posted by Undertow
If only he was cleaning dried feline feces out of a giant litter box with his big water gun instead, now <i>that</i> would be the money game!

You hear that, Nintendo?!

[Weltall]

Originally posted by Undertow
If only he was cleaning dried feline feces out of a giant litter box with his big water gun instead, now <i>that</i> would be the money game!

As any person who owns both dogs and cats knows, all you need to maintain a clean litter box is a dog. For some heretofore unknown and mysterious reason, every dog I've ever owned is a veritable gourmand for cat shit.

[OB1]

My old dog in Croatia used to eat my cat's crap.

[Dark Jaguar]

Actually, there is a logical reason for it according to vets and various books I've read.

It would seem that cat feces are in fact higher in protein than dog feces, quite a bit higher. So, a dog smells a high protein snack when it smells the stuff, not stools. Thus, they eat it.

Still VERY disgusting and germ ridden, but at least you have the reason. Of course, the OTHER reason is that, unlike cats who are pure carnivors, dogs are scavengers who only hunt when they need to, and thus eat anything and everything.

[Great Rumbler]

So, a dog smells a high protein snack when it smells the stuff, not stools. Thus, they eat it.

That's just plain nasty.

Another question would be why do dogs eat their own barf?

[Dark Jaguar]

Two reasons: First off, they ate it once, didn't get all the nutrients, might as well eat it again. Second off, they don't seem to have the ability to learn from their own self-poisoning mistakes.

[A Black Falcon]

Darunia, Darunia... complaining about ED's controls when you don't mind RE's? Uhh...

Oh, and the best parts... I don't know. I really liked a few chapters... Karim's chapter was quite good, but so were some others... honestly I liked pretty much all the chapters. Max has a great, great chapter though...

Oh, and the magic is really, really cool.

The ranged weapons? They stink. Trust me and stick with the swords!

Except for that darn level in the cathedral in WWI... that level was SO HARD until you got a sword! That was a great level too... but I don't understand how anyone could ever beat it without Magic Attack, that's for sure. And you're not supposed to have that spell yet at that point in the game...

[OB1]

I love the magic spells in the game, but I really got sick of the chanting after a little while.

[A Black Falcon]

I never minded the magic... I think its a great magic system!

[Weltall]

I HATED Max's level. The guy was so fat. I hated Roberto's level too for the same reason: You could run for all of about two and a half seconds before they start hyperventilating.

Don't you get Magickal Attack in the WWI level? I'm certain you do. Right before the boss as a matter of fact.

[A Black Falcon]

Max might have been fat but his chapter was still really cool... and I thought Roberto's was okay. Not great, but okay.

Oh, and you do get magic attack right before the boss.

I just don't see how you can possibly get through the first half of the level without it. I mean... there are like 10 m bonethieves and a bunch of zombies to kill with no sword and all you have is a pistol and rifle that very quickly run out of ammo! Without magic attack that half of the level would have been SO, SO hard... but I had it from experimenting with spells.

[OB1]

Originally posted by A Black Falcon
I never minded the magic... I think its a great magic system!

I'm talking about the chanting whenever you perform a spell. That got old real fast.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I liked the chanting too...

[OB1]

I liked it the first few dozen times I heard it, but after several hundred stupid friggin' chants I had to turn off the sound.

[A Black Falcon]

Huh... I never minded at all...

[OB1]

I get sick of constant repetition like that real easily.

[Weltall]

It was even more annoying because the chanting voices often mispronounced the names of the runes. That you had to hear those mispronunciations repetitively hundreds of times made it worse. I think the Ulyaoth voice was the only one who consistently got it right. Chatturgha's voice alone was incredibly grating as it was, but that actor seemed to constantly get the rune names wrong.

[lazyfatbum]

I think that had more to do with the accents of the character/voice actor, not all-out mispronounciations.

Rtan, you didn't get freaked out at all from the Vampire? That was my favorite part of the game. You could hear it running around, sometimes sneaking right by you. And i loved the way he sucked the blood out of people, right out of their mouth, nose and eyes.

As far as insanity effects, there were two types. Character driven and gameplayer driven. Gamplayer driven were things like "No controller in controller port 1, please connect a controller in to controller port 1 to resume gameplay" ...as zombies eat you. :D or the TV switching video modes, bugs on the screen, etc. But there were subtle effects as well, paintings would change, as would lighting, and of course the occasional blood from the walls or cieling. Not to mention all the neat audio stuff that was done, including the sounds of enemies walking or moaning mixed in to the soundtrack and the foot steps... man I hated the foot steps. :D

Character driven insanity effects were awesome. Some were scripted events but still cool, like the telephone ringing. I absolutely loved the insanity effect where you're playing in the past, and suddenly see Alex sitting at the desk reading the tome. Her grandfather appears and begins to make you question the validity of her grandfather's spirit. That the spirit Alex has been following is actually Pious. That was just brilliant and until you found out the truth you had a sense of dread for the characters, that the entire story was going to end up favoring Pious. And remember seeing Karim being erased? gah.

The maid's "I cant get the blood out". The hangman in the dining room, poor Alex in the bath tub, all Good stuff. I cant believe that none of it atleast freaked you out a little.

[OB1]

Wow this is a very late reply.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, almost two years ago...

[EdenMaster]

Better late than never?

[Sacred Jellybean]

Whatever happened to this project, anyway? Was it reported to be canned and I never saw the news or forgot about it? I remember that there were talks of a TV mini-series as well. It wouldn't surprised me if most of it was scrapped, though, considering that Eternal Darkness sales weren't exactly spectacular...

On the other topic at hand: I also didn't find Eternal Darkness's insanity effects to be very unsettling. I think it's partly because I just hyped myself up too much for the game and pretty much knew what was going on any time an insanity effect took place. Also, it kind of ruined it for me to see the screen flash and hear every character exclaim "THIS... ISN'T... HAPPENING!!" every time, damn it. It made the effect a little cheesy and unnatural. It made it obvious that the game designers were trying to convey an insanity effect, instead of being subtle and making the player question what was actually happening.

I think there should have been more subtle effects. When I say that, I mean quantity-wise. There WERE some pretty good ones, like the head of the statue looking at you wherever you turn, but I'd like it better if they were all like that. For example, let's take the effect where your character slowly sinks into the ground. By the 3rd or so time that happened, I simply said, "Yeah yeah, get on with it, I want to see what's behind the next door." It'd be cool if the game messed with your head a little more, like making your character fall down to the floor below. Then, you'd think there was something wrong with the actual floor, so you'd go up to investigate, and bam, no more quick-sand carpet. So you spend the next few minutes trying to trigger that same effect to figure out why it happened and what you need to do to solve it (because it could be a puzzle or something important), but you can't.

Little inconsistencies like that would get a tad frustrating if they were done in excess, but if the game delivered them in just the right way, it would have been a lot more thrilling. To be honest, Silent Hill freaked me out a lot more than Eternal Darkness. The background noises and music (crackling radio, moans of monsters, faint sound of something beating against a loud metal surface) made the experience much more unsettling.

[Weltall]

... I love you, Dan :love:

[Sacred Jellybean]

And I, you, my dear. <3

[OB1]

[lazyfatbum]

I think that SH is alot scarier than ED but you guys are saying that ED wasn't scary or freaky at all, which I just cant agree with.

I loved playing as the 'fay guys' because it made the game alot more interesting. Here are men that have no training in defense or weaponary aside from some trivial knowledge.

[EdenMaster]

You're telling me there wasn't any time, not even a moment, when you believed a sanity effect? I remember being fooled by one in particular. My sanity level was only slightly below full, and I attempted to cast a spell, and my character (I think it was Roberto) exploded. I jumped. I cursed. :)

That one got me. And Alex in the tub? Knew it was a hallucination, but that image and that scream gave me chills.

[A Black Falcon]

A few of them surprised me, like when I entered the room and was on the celing, but not a 'scared' surprise, mostly... more of a 'weird' or 'that's neat'... but still, it was a fantastic game. And most of the sanity effects were interesting... really, the biggest problem with them was how after a little while you got the spell that let you heal your sanity, so really it'd only be low if you wanted it to be low.

[EdenMaster]

I tried to avoid the sanity healing spells. They ruin the game. I did use Paul's Meditation Rod, because his character had the ability, being a monk, to calm himself and keep his facilities in check. Everyone else, though, is perfectly able to turn into a raving nut. It's easy to get your sanity back, too. Just finish off that dying monster and you'll get back all that it took from you. Simple. If a characters sanity is low, then you're experiencing Eternal Darkness the right way.

I did, however, heal Alex's sanity between chapters. It was just easier and really didn't affect the game much. All I needed to do was find the new chapter page.