Yesterday, I was able to sink around an hour and a half into Eternal Darkness. In that time I died three times, all due to the game’s clunky combat system. At this point in the game combat consists of pressing A and swinging aimlessly. You can not block or dodge enemy attacks, you can only swing your weapon. The combat does have the appearance of complexity, as you are able to lock-on to an enemy and select parts of the body to attack. In the segment I played I was able to cut off a skeleton’s arms, and head, which resulted in it failing to the game, at which point the game prompted me to press B to administer a “Finishing Blow”. Cool in concept, but hampered by the controls at this point. I’m hoping that the combat evolves more the longer I play, but I don’t see that happening.
Gameplay reminds me of a point-and-click adventure game, with you controlling the player character instead of controlling a cursor. As you explore your environment, you can examine certain items, bringing up in many cases well written walls of text that describe said item. So far, all the text in the game is well written, quickly establishing the tone of the game. The game’s graphics are also decent for a GameCube game released almost 10 years ago.
Other than the combat, my only other issue is that its not really that scary of a horror game. Going in, I had read and been told that it is a genuinely frightening game, but so far its solicited zero response from me.
