Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem: Who needs sanity in the dark?
NemesisEvil
80% score
What originally started as a Nintendo 64 project and scrapped due to the system's passing, has finally manifested itself back onto the Nintendo Gamecube. Eternal Darkness, like other "horror" genre games focuses on scaring the hell out of you, only with the help of an innovative Sanity meter. Every time your spotted by an enemy, you lose a little bit of sanity. The more sanity you lose, the crazier the things that happen to you. The game also encourages you to fight, rather than play it safe and conserve ammo a la Resident Evil. The Magick system is something refreshing for the genre. The ability to combine magical runes and make your own magic spells is fun and intriguing. You can enhance your weapons, cast a shield, or call upon monsters to help you in the heat of battle. Graphically the game is unimpressive and too cartoonish. The Character design is bland and nothing special. The graphic engine however can render multiple lighting effects to suit your graphical needs. Most of the levels get repetitive and boring especially once you come back later in the game and revisit such places. The game no doubt, does offer some frightening areas to explore however. The Game controls sluggishly. It feels like a workout trying to move your character from time to time. The game does feature full analog support in which many people favor to Resident Evil's control scheme. The game does have a few of the cheap scares, but the real eeriness is in the spooky sound effects and chilling music. Eternal Darkness's ambient sound adds fittingly to the mood and style of the game. And for this type of game, sound is key. There's not much replay to it, but don�t get me wrong its definitely worth a play, even if it's only once.. It's an above average game and can hold it's own in a genre occupied by Resident evil's and Silent Hill's. It also proves Nintendo can provide for the Mature rated audience and does have a bit of a dark side to its little purple box.
