5 Reasons: Eternity's Child

Hey, you see that can of worms over there? The one the rest of Destructoid has left alone to rot in its own soil? Yeah I'm gonna prise that thing wide open again.

After last week you may have dismissed the WiiWare version of Eternity's Child. It might be due to Luc Bernard's passionate/asshole defence of his game or it might purely be due to the game not being fun to play if you bought it off Steam or just played the demo. However I think that dispite all this the WiiWare version still has the potential to be a fun game. Sit back, get some Irn-Bru and let me explain why for this week's 5 Reasons.

1) A Different Developer

Its an odd one to start with, but Luc Bernard is not part of the development team working on the WiiWare version. Alter8 have already distanced themselves from Bernard and what he's said about the problems with the Steam version. They are dedicated game developers who do know how to develop with a controller, this is going to fix a lot of problems with the controls.

2) Delay

The WiiWare version is not finished yet, that is one of the biggest things it has going for it. The developers can therefore look at the main complaints from the demo (bad controls, enemies taking 20,000 hits to kill) and fix them in the final version. At least they could make it so that your bullets don't bounce off enemies bullets.

3) The Wiimote and Nunchuk

The game I'm most comparing Eternity's Child to in terms of WiiWare is Lost Winds. Lost Winds uses the Wiimote in the same way that the mouse would be used in any PC version of that game. Lost Winds would work because of the lack of jump button in that game whereas EC's use of jump would work so much better on the Wii because you have all buttons in your hand and the mouse as well. EC's controls just seem so much more suited to the Wii thn the PC.

4) It Will Still Look Awesome

Jerky, 4 frame animation doesn't bother me. If it did I would never have finished Professor Layton. Luc's art is still going to look awesome, maybe even more awesome on a big TV and if the gameplay is improved as I've said above perhaps we'll see that animation as more of a niggly fault rather than the last stake to drive into the game's heart. Hell, won't it look a little double standardish to fault EC for that when we're celebrating Megaman 9 for it?

5) [ABSENT]

This week's 5th reason did exist until Silver Sphere made some 'changes' and fucked up my article. I'll leave it up to you to try and figure out what it was.

So there, 5 reasons why hope should be held out for Eternity's Child on the Wii. I hope we're not all so jaded that we're going to let an asshole designer ruin our enjoyment of a game that still has the potential to be fun. Also maybe its me being a sucker for a beautiful art style or just the fact that I'm insanely fond of Luc but I really want this to be a game worth playing.

>NJ