Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

"Resident Evil should be worried"

Eternal Darkness is a new and original franchise started on the Nintendo Gamecube and is hoping to topple Resident Evil off its mighty throne as best Survival Horror game on the market. Well, you may or may not be pleased to learn that Eternal Darkness walks in with a massive grenade launcher and blasts the Resident Evil throne into a thousand pieces before urinating on the smouldering remains and building its own brand new throne out of the skulls of Resi fanboys. With every console generation there are "those games" that you just have to play, you know, Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Mario 64 etc. Well, I would very much like to add Eternal Darkness to that list. If you have a Gamecube then you should definitely buy this game, you will not be disappointed.

The game begins with female protagonist Alex Roivas receiving a phone call to tell her that her Grandfather has died in his Rhode Island mansion, and naturally she flies out immediately to discover the cause of his death. I would like to take the time now to praise developer Silicon Knights for not endowing Alex Roivas with massive physics-defying breasts and incredibly tight hot pants, it makes a refreshing change. Anyway, upon arrival she finds the police less than helpful in solving her Grandfather's grisly death and vows to search the mansion for clues herself in order to piece together exactly what happened.

Now you find yourself thrust into a mansion, very similarly to Resident Evil if we must continue making inevitable comparisons and at first you may be forgiven for thinking "Meh, more of the same." But Eternal Darkness has a little stroke of genius up its sleeve, and that comes when you find the Tome of Eternal Darkness in your Grandfather's study, who, you will notice, has a bizarre and perhaps unhealthy obsession/fetish with the occult. So it comes as little surprise to find an evil book bound with human flesh in his study, where you would most expect to find tea and biscuits if he was your typical Grandfather. Anyway, in typical horror tradition, Alex reads from the book and the game will quickly merge into the chapter she is reading and enable you to play through the chapter. This is a brilliant idea, there are several chapters in the game and you get to play as many different characters ranging from the villainous Pious Augustus, a Roman Centurion to Alex's ancestors the Doctor Maximillian Roivas. The game will revisit various locations, you can expect to see the same cathedral three times, and as it is one of the games creepiest locations with the darkest secrets, this is a brilliant addition and one you are going to love, especially when you find the reanimated corpse of a character you previously played as...

Playing survival horror in many different periods of history is very novel and original idea and it keeps the game new and refreshing when you can go from swinging a sword to blasting zombies apart with a shotgun in the next chapter. In between chapters you get to play as Alex as she further investigates the mansion searching for clues that lead to more chapters that help uncover the incredibly dark and sinister reason for her Grandfather's ghastly murder. You will soon realise that the old fart has crossed the path of "The Ancients" some huge evil bastards that wouldn't mind destroying humanity. Nevertheless, these interludes between chapters make for a nice break and a chance to save your game and have a rest from the incredibly intense chapter sequences.

So what makes this game innovative and something other than a Resident Evil clone that happens to have segments taking place in different eras? Well, it is the Sanity, or rather Insanity meter. Each character you play as has a varying degree of sanity in a green meter to the left of the screen. Upon being spotted by enemies, your sanity begins to drain little by little, this can be recovered by delivering finishing blows. As it drains, the game starts doing some things that can really mess with your head.

For example, I was strolling down a corridor and all of a sudden Maximillian Roivas' head exploded. "WHAT THE HELL?!" I shouted in surprise only to have the game blackout with cries of "THIS... CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" ringing in my ears before placing me back at the start of the room, with my head back on. Another time the game told me my controller was unplugged, leaving me frantically unplugging and plugging the controller back in before realising it was an ingenius insanity effect. The game will also lower the volume and if the volume control on your TV looks the same as the one that pops up in game, prepare to be VERY unnerved!

I cannot explain just how marvellously brilliant the insanity effects are. If you have not been subject to message board geeks spoiling them for you, you will find them genuinely unnerving and more frightening than any other horror game you have played before. It gives the game its edge over other titles of the same genre, there are many effects to see and I am not sure if I have even seen them all yet, despite multiple playthroughs. Perhaps the most fightening and atmospheric insanity effects are not the major ones, but the subtle whispers and voices you will hear as well as the footsteps creaking in the rooms above. This game genuinely scared me in places, and that hasn't happened in a long time.

The insanity effects don't hamper the gameplay, it isn't like losing health or anything, you just might occasionally enter a room to find yourself walking on the ceiling or with no head before reverting from the start. This doesn't get annoying either as at most you will just find the walls bleeding or the character muttering to him or herself, it takes a significant chunk of your sanity meter to go missing before you start having the serious insanity effects. But you welcome and enjoy those moments because they add to the experience so much.

The game itself actually plays very similarly to many other titles in the same genre, yes, we're pretty much talking about Resident Evil yet again, but that is inevitable in any survival horror review. The thing is, this game manages to have easy controls, it isn't like an FPS but in third person where you always press up to move forwards no matter what direction your in. The controls make Eternal Darkness new user friendly and there is no time spent having to get accustomed to the controls. This game isn't based around combat, it is about atmosphere and tension, and this is evident in many combat situations which feel quite clunky and sluggish. Basically, you can stop and target any body part of a zombie or other creature and then slash at it with a sword or shoot at it. Most of the time you need merely go for the head to kill a standard zombie and then finish it, and there are few complaints here, but it gets very difficult to attack a monster such as a Horror; a huge demon with multiple heads.

The combat can get rather sluggish and difficult in such encounters and you will find yourself wishing either for a ranged weapon, which are largely infrequent and dependant upon the era of the chapter you're playing, or just a faster more Devil May Cry-esque fighting system. Yeah, I know, leaping around with a sword and slashing all enemies to ribbons wouldn't suit the slow paced and atmospheric nature of the game, but slightly a slightly faster and easier method of combat would be appreciated. It is a small complaint however when you realise that being a combat based game is not what it is trying to achieve. The main monsters in the game, the zombies also present very little challenge and it will be more of a chore than a nerve racking experience as you confidently slash them limb from limb and it is the tragically infrequent interjections of tougher monsters that spice the experience up.

Unlike many other games of the genre, Eternal Darkness allows you to use Magic, or rather "Magick" to make it sound more arcane and dark. This isn't like in an RPG where you get spells such as "Fire" or "Lightning" you have to acquire various Runes and piece them together in the correct combinations on Magical Circles to learn spells that can attack your enemies, heal yourself or summon monsters and Alex will retain this knowledge when you travel back to her era.

As mentioned previously, the huge appeal of the game comes from the sheer variety you experience in the different chapters. Some characters are strong, athletic and fast and possess a considerable arsenal of weaponry, whereas others are overweight, having enjoyed an uneventful life of creature comforts before being plunged headfirst into humanities battle against the ancients. No chapter is the same, and you will find yourself enjoying some more than others, and obviously some are far better than others, but the level of variety is exciting and each chapter is short enough not to bog you down before you move on to the next one. The story and the contributions each character makes to it is really compelling and makes you want to continue onwards to read the next chapter, and the fate of some of the characters is very nasty and will play on your mind. Particularly when revisiting a location that, in a previous chapter housed a terrifying monster that wasn't dealt with...

Graphically the game cannot be heaped in praise, it was originally designed for the N64 and while the graphics are no where near N64 quality, they are not exactly what you would expect from the Gamecube either. The graphics are serviceable however but there are some ropey textures and some jaggy edges along with instances of "blockiness." The lighting effects however are simply excellent and very atmospheric, particularly the comforting shafts of evening sunlight as you spend your first night in the Roivas Mansion. The animation of the characters is generally of a high standard and the voice acting and lyp-syncing as simply excellent and there can be no complaints made against it whatsoever.

The style of the game is wonderful, there are so many excellent and unnerving touches such as a bust that moves its head and looks at you as you walk past and the many sinister paintings throughout the mansion all help to make you feel distinctly unsettled and keep you sitting firmly on the edge of your seat. Just try not to fall off when you examine the bath. The game is quite clearly influenced by the Cthulhu mythos of H.P Lovecraft, many of the ancients possessing unpronouncable names such as Chattur'gha and Ulyaoth, and the fact that they are huge God like beings intent on destroying humanity is also a clear influence from Mr. Lovecraft. The games dark atmosphere never falters or wavers and there are no moments of relief, right from the start you are treated to a rather frightening recital of an Edgar Allan Poe poem, I love the style and feel of this game. It really is excellent and truely original.

This game is a hard game for me to review really, since one of the most appealing aspects of reviewing is the chance to vent your ire and get all the annoying issues you have with a game off your chest and then publish your self-gratifying rant on the internet. But there really is so little to rant about this game that that ever so appealing aspect of reviewing is completely lost here. Never mind though, this game is definitely one game you simply must experience, especially if you begin to tire of the Resident Evil series and that fact that it has forsaken all notion of Survival Horror. There remains one final question; what the hell are you doing Silicon Knights? Hurry up and make Eternal Darkness 2!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/09

Game Release: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (EU, 11/01/02)