Time-Travelin' Monster Busters

Since the early 2000’s, the world of genre games have been dominated by franchises with big names and illustrious pedigrees. It can be difficult to find a relatively unknown game amid the large advertisements for games like Halo, Resident Evil, or Call Of Duty 10: We Stopped Giving a F*@K After The Last Six Games. Not to say these franchises are bad in there own right, it’s just that they have a tendency to steal all of the attention from lesser-known games of merit. Games like Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Developed by Silicon Knights, published by Nintendo in 2002 and written by Denis Dyack and Ken McCulloch, this game was one of the few serious Survival Horror Games published for the Gamecube. It was Produced by Denis Dyack and Shigeru Miyamoto, the latter of which is Nintendo’s Think-Tank for games like Mario, Zelda, Pikmin.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem might at first appear to be a Resident Evil clone, but it is much more than that. Instead of simply throwing as many horror movie rip-offs as possible into a secluded mansion, it spans over 2000 years and is plot-driven by the characters of each era. The main character is Alexandra Roivas, Buffy look-a-like and grand-daughter to a renowned psychologist who was just found gruesomely murdered in his Rhode Island mansion. Deciding to stay in her newly-inherited house, Alex begins to see ghosts and other strange occurrences, which lead her to find her grandfather’s secret collection of occult lore. Among the myriad artefacts is a book bound and embossed with human flesh and bone. Called ‘The Tome of Eternal Darkness’, Alex discovers that her grandfather was guarding several artefacts from an evil undead wizard intent on bringing his Eldritch God back into the human’s universe.

Alex finds pages of her grandfather’s journal describing the deeds of other people besmirched by the presence of the Ancients. Upon reading them, the player takes control of the specific character. The timeline spans from 26 BC to 2000 AD, with characters ranging from royal Cambodian strippers to English war reporters to Canadian firefighters. Each one has their own story that interconnects with the other as time progresses, though very rarely do they have happy endings.

The main antagonists of the game are the ‘Ancients’, pseudo-Lovecraftian abominations that seek to conquer the universe. Pious Augustus, the Roman character, selects one in the first level to worship, setting in motion events leading up the game’s climax. The three of them allow for magic to be used in the game, and have a rock-paper-scissors relationship between each other. This is used for several puzzles and in combat, where a green magic-infused gun will do more damage against a hulking red monster than a normal gun.

            The gameplay is reminiscent of Resident Evil’s tank controls, however the characters can attack while moving. While this may speed things along, it does little to solve the combat problems Resident Evil faced. It is nearly impossible to shoot something without using the ‘aim’ button, which can only be used when the character is standing still. Melee combat is made useful though, as you can slash and run away.

            To further distance the game from Resident Evil, it implements a sanity system. Looking at monsters and just being in certain areas will drain it, and things get loopy as the bar depletes. Blood will begin to drip from the walls (in pre-planned areas, and the graphical limitations don’t help) and your character will begin to hallucinate. A completely depleted Sanity Meter will cause the character to take damage and eventually die, but sanity is easy to replenish: just depacitate some undead bitch and deliver a coup-de-grace before it vanishes.

            The hallucinations are as varied as they are creative. Once, I entered a hallway with no sanity and found my limbs popping off. When my armless-headless-and-hopping-on-one-foot-ed body reached the end, a flash shown and I was back in the previous room, whole in body. Sometimes the Gamecube itself will appear to break, causing unprepared and humorless gamers to murder their televisions.

            The magic system is based around runes, and players will quickly thank whoever or whatever they worship that there is a hot-key system in effect. Spells range from enchanting weapons to protective barriers to magical attacks and healing. They are set up according to the color-coded ‘Ancient Rune’ that dictates what the spell will affect. For example, red heals stamina, green heals sanity and blue heals nothing, as you wouldn’t waste magic to replenish magic. The three colors also beat each other in the aforementioned rock-paper-scissors thing, which mostly will be used to murder monsters more efficiently.

            The game has many weapons, accurately taken from the time the level takes place in. They range from blowguns to sabers to elephant guns. Some are more useful than others, while they can all be infused with magic for enhanced damage. An odd thing for a Lovecraft-inspired game is that there is no Tommygun, but not everything can be perfect.

The main problem with this game is that it is not very scary at points. The early 2000’s graphics make it look more cartoonish than it should be, and sometimes the sanity system is just silly (‘TO BE CONTINUED IN ETERNAL DARKNESS 2 COMING SOON’). Even the cathedral levels—the darkest and most atmospheric in the game—seem too well lit at times. At least the ‘jump-scares’ are few and far-between. Also, each level is reused about 3 times. While this was obviously meant to keep the player in familiar surroundings and they are spaced evenly apart, it can get a little repetitive at times—especially in the Cambodian Temple level.

            The main scares of the game are largely blunders on the player’s behalf, such as running into a room without readying an enchanted weapon, or walking onto a gore-covered platform half-knowing it is a crushing trap.

            Another gripe one may have is that there are about 6-7 types of monsters, with little variation between them. The most one can hope for is a color-change, which I thought they did away with when we upgraded from 2D sprites.

            Overall, Eternal Darkness is a blast to play. The story is very solid and engaging, and the levels are about as atmospheric as 2002 graphics would let them be (though Timesplitters 2 still has them beat). And while combat may seem more like a chore than a game, the creative sanity effects and comprehensive magic system more than make up for it.