Video Games and HT
Why Video Games Should Leverage Surround Sound Receivers
Monday August 07, 2006 | Permalink
Was playing Eternal Darkness last night on the Gamecube. I'm behind the times on this one so bare with me. Nintendo's Gamecube doesn't support 5.1 digital surround sound, so games are relegated to Dolby Pro Logic at best.
Eternal Darkness is one of those games that screams for true digital surround sound. Unlike other games where you have a health metre or a strength metre, Eternal Darkness features a sanity metre. If a zombie or monster spots you, you lose a few points off your sanity metre. If you lose too much sanity, then weird things start to happen.
Your character starts seeing blood drip from the walls, the camera angle starts to tilt to the side a bit, and you start to hear voices and other spooky things. When it gets really bad, you see things that seem to appear in your actual living room. Your TV looks like it suddenly shut off, or you get a fake error message onscreen reporting that your controller is unplugged.
Of course this happens while you're in the middle of a battle so your first reaction is to jump at the remote or fumble to the console to plug your controller back in. After a few seconds, the problem corrects itself and you realize you were just watching what appeared to be a hallucination. Its all very cool.
The surround sound is really effective here and would be even scarier if the game had distinct surround channels to play with.
If you have a Gamecube, this is without a doubt the game you have to pickup.
The creator of Eternal Darkness is Silicon Knights. They signed up with Microsoft last year to produce games for the XBox 360. I'm disappointed I'll have to get a new console to play its sequel.
Eternal Darkness is one of those games that screams for true digital surround sound. Unlike other games where you have a health metre or a strength metre, Eternal Darkness features a sanity metre. If a zombie or monster spots you, you lose a few points off your sanity metre. If you lose too much sanity, then weird things start to happen.
Your character starts seeing blood drip from the walls, the camera angle starts to tilt to the side a bit, and you start to hear voices and other spooky things. When it gets really bad, you see things that seem to appear in your actual living room. Your TV looks like it suddenly shut off, or you get a fake error message onscreen reporting that your controller is unplugged.
Of course this happens while you're in the middle of a battle so your first reaction is to jump at the remote or fumble to the console to plug your controller back in. After a few seconds, the problem corrects itself and you realize you were just watching what appeared to be a hallucination. Its all very cool.
The surround sound is really effective here and would be even scarier if the game had distinct surround channels to play with.
If you have a Gamecube, this is without a doubt the game you have to pickup.
The creator of Eternal Darkness is Silicon Knights. They signed up with Microsoft last year to produce games for the XBox 360. I'm disappointed I'll have to get a new console to play its sequel.
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