Eternam

Maker:
Infogrames
Year:
1992
Systems:
PC (DOS) / PC (VGA)
Genres:
Adventure / Action
Tags:
Cartoon & Comic / Humour / Science Fiction
Languages:
French / English / German
Median Rating:
4/5

Archived Thoughts

Thoughts by Mr Creosote (12 Mar 2001) – PC (DOS)

Planet Eternam, year 2815. You’ve been looking forward to this holiday for a very long time now. This huge fun park is famous for bringing past times alive as if it was real! And it’s expensive enough. You’ve decided this should be the holiday of your lifetime. And it will be! Only in a slightly different way than you planned maybe…

The plot resembles the sci-fi classic Westworld (starring Yul Brynner) a lot. The idea of a fake world populated by androids the same. But Eternam is no thriller. Instead it’s a zany mixture of zynism, slapstick and satire. The characters, the settings and especially what’s happening is absolutely crazy! This mixture of visual humour and subtle wordplay may not be everyone’s taste. But I love it!

The game engine is the same Infogrames used for all their Adventures (e.g. Shadow of the Comet) then. That means it’s completely keyboard-controlled. You control the protagonist Don Jonz with the cursor keys. For the actions (take, use, talk, look) you can either use shortcuts or call the menu. That works nice. Only one small problem: to find items lying around, you have to get them into your ‘line-of-sight’. Then a description will appear. But sometimes it’s really annoying to find the right spot to stand…

But some sequences take place in another ‘mode’. Traveling from place to place is done in 3D! In a nice polygon landscape you follow paths most of the time. You can also talk to other people passing by. But the main point of these sequences is staying alive! Strange flying creatures attack you and if you don’t move along, they’ll soon suck all your blood out of your body…

In the main game you can also die sometimes. And sometimes even without the slightest chance to know before you stumbled into the deadly situation. Not very fair! And sometimes you even find yourself in unsolvable situations because you did something wrong an hour before. So saving quite often is a must! That’s a great downpoint!

The unfair game design unfortunately prevents Eternam from being a true classic. But if you like chaos-humour and you aren’t repelled by some flaws, you’ll certainly spend some nice hours with it!

Box

PC (DOS)

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Screenshots

PC (DOS)

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