Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

It's always a good sign when a game opens with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe.

While Eternal Darkness may not deliver the gruesome and graphic chills of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, it holds its own with multiple, tightly meshed story lines, deep spell-casting elements, and a reality-bending sanity system.

The Lurking Fear
You start the game as a young woman investigating her grandfather's grisly death by unknown forces. While exploring your ancestral mansion, you discover the Tome of Eternal Darkness, an arcane book that spins the tales of a variety of characters, such as a Franciscan monk, a 12th Century Cambodian slave girl, and a World War I journalist. You play all of these characters and experience their descent into despairing territory, while each story contributes to an encompassing, time-spanning, and thoroughly engaging narrative.

As you progress through the game, you collect runes which, when combined, enable you to learn magical spells that can be used to power up weapons, create force fields, and summon supernatural creatures. There are different spell strengths and alignments, and figuring out which ones to use for specific enemies, puzzles, or obstacles gives Eternal Darkness a strategic depth lacking in other genre offerings. The combat system is great, and Silicon Knights has implemented a wicked targeting system that enables you to lop off specific body parts of your enemies.

In the Mouth of Madness
Eternal Darkness?s biggest draw is its sanity system, and it?s worth the hype. Each character has a sanity meter, which diminishes whenever an enemy spots you. When it reaches a certain point, you?ll experience freaky auditory and visual hallucinations. While the Sifu won?t spoil any surprises by describing them, trust him when he says they are punishingly cool and add such a surreal element to the game that you?ll find yourself purposefully driving your character insane just to see the phantasmagoria Silicon Knights have whipped up.

Eternal Darkness sports slick visuals?the architecture, character models, and textures are all superb, as are the real-time lighting and particle effects. Enemies, ranging from insectoid gods and walking corpses to amorphous, effluvia-oozing demons, burst from the most fevered dreams of H.P. Lovecraft. The moving camera pulls off dramatic pans and angles without obscuring or confusing the gameplay with abrupt perspective switches, augmenting the intuitive controls. Better than average voice-acting accompanies a rich musical score, which vacillates between thunderously bombastic and ominously droning, depending on the dramatic needs of the scenario.

A Descent Into the Maelstrom
If you?re hankering for a rich story and solid gameplay with a hallucinogenic twist, then Eternal Darkness will not disappoint as even survival/horror vets will find enough unique elements in it worth flipping for.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment