ETERNAL DARKNESS

One of the games I'm personally anticipating a whole lot is Silicon Knight's "psychological thriller" Eternal Darkness.

Eternal Darkness is a new take on the "Survival Horror" genre. And while it has been compared to the Resident Evil series and other popular survival horror games, Silicon Knights has added their own unique twist that will make this game stand out from the others.

Silicon Knights has dubbed Eternal Darkness a "Psychological Thriller" . . . A game that will mess with your mind . . . And that can be taken pretty literally.

You see, one of the key elements in Eternal Darkness is your characters' Sanity Meter.

During the game, the characters you control will meet some very scary creatures and events, and with each one, they start to loss more and more of their sanity.

It can get so bad to the point where you character will literally start hallucinating in front of your eyes (Or in this case, on the TV screen), giving you, the player, the choice to judge between what is real, and what is just a figment of your characters imagination.

Before human beings walked the Earth, their was a race of alien beings who inhabited the planet.

By the time human beings had started coming around, the aliens lived in shadow and secret, never showing themselves.

But, they aren't there to simply watch us . . . oh no . . . they have a much more sinister plan in mind.

They are playing with us. Playing with our minds using one of the very things that makes us human, against us

They are there to drive us insane, they haunt certain people, making strange things happen that start messing with our very minds.

They are trying to break us. And they know it can be done . . . If the person isn't strong enough.

You need to be able to tell the difference between what is real . . . and what is just an illusion.

They are here to feed . . . . . And you need to stop that from happening.

While playing, your character can literally start going insane.

If your character does, they will start hullacinating and illusions will start popping up all over the place. Making it hard to tell the difference between the illusions and reality.

Insanity can affect almost every single aspect of gameplay.

Some things that can happen to your character were demonstrated at E3.

There were two main kinds of illusions: What they call, "In-Your-Face" illusions, and then there are ones that are more subtle.

One "In Your Face" hallucination involved what happened when your character went through a door.

The character comes to the door, opens it, and continues to walk into the room like normal. All of the sudden his right arm falls off! Then his left . . . Then his head and torso, until finally his legs just crumble to the floor.

And then it shows your character again . . . Holding on to the door knob, shaking with fright.

He had never even went in the door. The whole thing had just been a hullucination!

Now this is the "In Your Face" stuff they were talking about.

But there are more subtle effects too, such as one where you go into the "inventory" screen, only to find ALL OF YOUR ITEMS ARE GONE!!

Of course, they aren't really gone, your character is just hullucinating again.

No longer can you just go by what's shown on screen. Leaving you to decide if it's real . . . or just an illusion.

Which can have deadly concequences if you aren't right.

You control multiple characters, all in different times and places (Such as a knight, a daughter in her grandfathers haunted mansion, and a soldier who's just about to go to war). And the game even has branching paths and multiple endings.

The game also looks really good! Sporting some really good graphics and animation.

And for once, the camera system is actually good. It smoothly follows you around corners, and changes depending on what you did or are doing.

Such as, if you enter a room where you need to fight enemies, it'll follow behind you until you take them all out, but if you've already defeated the enemies in the room, the camera will swoop up into the ceiling rafts so you can see the entire room.

It's things like this that make Eternal Darkness an already awesome game.

Combined with a rich engrossing story, multiple characters set in completely different times and places, and some outstanding graphics, Eternal Darkness is one game to look out for. It might just overtake the Resident Evil series as the new king of Survival Horror.

(Note: Check out www.siliconknights.com, which you can find on my links page, for more info on this awesome game.)