Eternal Darkness: Santiy’s Requiem
July 12, 2002
I have never been a big fan of the horror genre of games. For the life of me, I cannot stand the Resident Evil controls that made you do your best Mr. Roboto immitation. I tried to get interested in it with Devil May Cry, but I found the battles in that game WAY too repetitive; slash up, shoot enemy till he’s dead, rinse, repeat. And others like Silent Hill and Dino Crisis just never interested me enough to try them.
But it was with great curiosity that I checked out Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. The premise alone was original; you played a total of twelve people throughout various times in history, all tied together in some way. What was even more original was the addition of a sanity meter that, when depleted, would mess with your head and game. And, best of all, an action-oriented control system where if you pushed right on your analog stick, your character moved right! *GASP*
So I popped the disc into my trusty GameCube, turned it and my Wavebird controller on, and was treated to one of the most immersive and consuming gaming experiences I have had in a long, long time.
Let me break down the background a little. Alexandra Roivas is called into a Rhode Island mansion that is owned by her grandfather. The reason she is called is because her grandfather is dead. And oh, by the way, the police can’t find his head.
So Alex moves into the mansion, and the festivities begin. The game revolves around a book called “The Tome of Eternal Darkness.” It acts as a diary of sorts, where Alex reads a chapter and you play the character in the chapter.
Most of the gameplay is your standard hack-and-slash goodness, but tweaked. Each character finds weapons appopriate for their time. A medieval monk can carry a mace and a crossbow, a Roman Soldier will have a sword and an American Colonist will have a family saber and an old-fashioned pistol. Hacking these enemies are easy, and built into the controls is a targeting system that will let you focus on specific body parts of enemies. Yes, you can decapitate your opponents. Huzzah!
You also have a magick system at your disposal. Once your character has the Tome of Eternal Darkness, you have access to magick skills. These are made by a combination of glyphs. The glyph characters are not understood unless you find a codex which interprets the glyph for you. And the spells that you can create are strewn about the levels as needed. With those three elements, you can cast spells as simple as recharging your life meter and as complex as summoning an enemy to fight on your behalf. The magic system is an integral part of the game, and you can’t win without it.
The sanity meter really works against you in each level, because if you are seen by an enemy, your sanity meter goes down a notch. If your sanity meter completely empties, you start losing life slowly. As your sanity meter lowers, your perception of the levels change. I don’t want to spoil it for you, save one hallucination. In rare cases, when the meter is low, your screen will go blank and a Windows “Blue Screen of Death” will show up. Some things brought on by a low sanity meter, like this, will be really funny when you see it and some will make the rooms seem more spooky than they are. But all are designed to make getting through the level harder with the sanity meter low.
So that’s the gameplay… how are the controls? With the Nintendo controller, they’re as intuitive as they can be. Each button has a specific function that does not change, and you can even assign up to five spells on the Y button and each position of the digital pad. The character movement is very intuitive and you won’t have any problems picking the controller up and playing right away.
Graphics are as good as have been seen on the GameCube. Eternal Darkness started out as an N64 game, and you can still see some evidence of that (like some characters’ faces). And the early stages are not particularly noteworthy graphically, but this game rewards you for continued play as the later levels are beautiful. The darkness of each level, combined with various lighting effects, create an atmosphere that conspires to make you one paranoid little bugger.
The sound is, bar none, the best I have ever head in a video game. Surround sound is supported in the game, and when you fire up the stereo, you can definitely tell. More than once, I turned around in my chair when I head footsteps on one of the rear speakers. The music is haunting, yet unobstrusive. And there is so much detail in the sound effects, right down to torches popping occasionally, that I was awed by the sound as much as I was with the rest of the game combined.
This is not necessarily a perfect game, though. When you kill an enemy, they often will fall toward you and completely through you. You do not have control of the camera, so camera angles hinder your ability to fight and explore the area you are in at times. And the fighting can become repetitive unless you make a drinking game out of it.
With those weaknesses, however, I can’t recommend this game enough to anyone who is old enough to handle it. Don’t be mistaken-this is definitely a mature game and is not appropriate for everyone. Parents, be responsible and make sure your child can handle it.
This game has so many overwhelming positives that they completely obliterates the negatives. I’m still not a huge horror genre fan, but Eternal Darkness sucked me in in a way no game has done in years. Run, don’t walk, to pick up Eternal Darkness today.
CVG Report CardEternal Darkness: Santiy's Requiem
Rating: A
Platform: GameCube
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