As I'm sure you all know, Eternal Darkness was confirmed as a GameCube title during Nintendo's pre-E3 2001 press conference video. What we saw was a very short video of real-time game cinema, zooming around a Roman Centurion's detailed face and body.

The next day ED was playable on the show floor. The demo available is almost exactly the same as the one shown on N64 during E3 2000...right down to the insanity effect where the female character's body parts start falling off.

First off, the game looks very nice. SK was pointing out a lot of ray-tracing (not real-time), bump-mapping, rolling volumetric fog, and head-tracking. Though the old version had everything rendered in real-time, it still used static camera angles in most places. That has now been changed; the camera generally sits up in the ceiling of a hall or room and follows you around as you navigate that area. There are still camera switches around sharp corners and through doors though, so now the game has sort of a combo of static Resident Evil and normal third-person camera styles.

Control has gone largely unchanged. The joystick moves your character relative to the camera, and there are no problems with losing control as the camera pans and shifts around. The A-button attacks with your weapon, the B-button performs context-sensitive actions like opening doors and dealing the final blow to fallen enemies, and Start still brings up your subscreen. The L-trigger makes you run (no click function that I could discern), while R is used to target. Unlike the N64 demo from last year, targeting different parts of a monster involves a highlight effect, so it's very easy to tell if you're shooting at a zombie's head as opposed to his left arm.

The demo can pretty much be summed up from the info in our huge ED preview, so I won't regurgitate it for you. There is obviously a LOT more to this game than SK is showing, and I think this E3 demo was mainly intended to show off some graphical effects and introduce the game to passers-by. My only gripe is the animation: right now it's jerky and has some bugs to be worked out.

It looks like Eternal Darkness will be a great launch title for GameCube. It's still the same game I fell in love with last year, now with much better graphics and some other additions that we're not being told about. I can't wait to experience the full game!