noangels's Full Review: Eternal Darkness: Sanitys Requiem for GameCube
I enjoy being festive. Every September, as fall approaches, I start planning for the holidays ahead. My husband and I recently moved the more creepy titles on our Netflix queue up to the top. We have been planning apple and pumpkin-picking trips. I baked my first apple pie last Sunday. We've been happily watching the newest episodes of Ghost Hunters and Supernatural.
My festive mood also extends to my gaming. I start spending more time in the Fall/Halloween-themed zone, Croatoa, on City of Heroes. I also pick up whatever horror-based games I can get my hands on. Last year, around this time, I started playing Resident Evil 4. This year, my husband recommended Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which has proven to be very fitting as Halloween approaches! Story
As always, I'll describe the plot only in its most basic sense to avoid any spoilers. The story's main character, Alexandra Roivas, begins an investigation after her Grandfather's murder. Her search through her Grandfather's Rhode Island mansion turns up the mysterious "Tome of Darkness," which details the events leading up to his death. During each chapter, you play a different character in this dark history. The storyline is creepy and suspenseful. It makes the game absolutely engrossing; like watching a good movie. I found myself very excited to return to the game each night.
Game Play
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a psychological horror-based adventure game. As I mentioned, you play a character named Alex as she investigates the death of her Grandfather. A great deal of time is spent exploring, with some devoted to solving puzzles. The puzzles are reasonably difficult. Some are very easy, while a few took some time to solve. There was a decent variety among them as well. Some puzzles involve finding the proper spell while others require the player to interact with objects to unlock doors. To find each chapter of the Tome, Alex must solve a puzzle that will lead her to the pages she needs. Clues for solving these puzzles are often revealed during the cut scenes, so it's easy for observant players to solve them. When I did find myself having difficulty with a puzzle, it was usually because I hadn't considered all possibilities. Much of the game deals with the three dark deities, each of whom is represented by a color. These colors appear often, including in spells, so I sometimes would forget to try every combination.
The most innovative and immersive aspect of this game is the treatment of the playable characters' sanity. Encountering monsters and other paranormal events decreases your character's sanity, marked by a green meter on the left side of the screen. As your sanity decreases, strange things begin to happen. Blood may drip down the walls and you may hear voices. The less sane the character gets, the more crazy things get. At one point, I walked into a bathroom and it flashed to a dead body in the bath tub. It took me by surprise and I actually screamed aloud. Without ruining all of the game's surprises, it can get so bad that the game even starts messing with the player!
Each new character comes with its own inventory, containing weapons and other helpful items depending on the character's background. The inventory doesn't require any management. It is very easy to use items and equip weapons. Fighting options are plentiful in this game, including melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic attacks. The game is flexible in that most enemies can be defeated however the player prefers, with any of the three fighting options or combination of them. This also involves a bit of strategizing to determine the most effective way to defeat various enemies, especially bosses.
I chose to fight primarily with melee and magic. The fighting interface is well designed, but clipping can interfere with melee fighting. I often found myself in tight corners, unable to hit the enemies because my ax was hitting the adjacent stone columns. Another annoyance with the melee system is that the game uses the same button for inspecting objects as it does for finishing moves. It's really annoying when you're trying to kill a zombie and you switch to a panoramic view of a wall painting. Magic is very easy to use, with diverse and interesting spells that you discover through your readings of the Tome. You can also discover spells on your own once you find the proper components. Magic can be annoying at times too. Occasionally it was buggy and the spells didn't cast when I initiated them. Mana can be a major irritation as well. The more powerful spells can be a mana-drain and it can only be regenerated by moving around. It would have been far more convenient for this to regenerate over time. My last game save before the final battle was after more than twenty-two hours of playing. I'd say about 2 hours of that time was spent running around in circles within a damage field, waiting for my mana to recharge enough to attack.
Despite these frustrations, I still preferred magic and melee over ranged fighting. Though ample ammunition was provided, I had a hard time shooting accurately. I'm not sure if the game was imprecise or if I wasn't able to acclimate to the controls. My husband played through the game using ranged weapons and he said it was difficult, but he attributed that to his sparing use of magic.
The enemies in the game range from zombies to lobster-like trappers to giant "horror" monsters. Some are very easy to defeat, while a few can be quite tricky. The boss battles are hit or miss. Some were quite easy, while others were very difficult to figure out. Others just took too long. Even though I was using the necessary spells, one boss took me more than forty minutes to defeat... I had to hit him so many times and running around to recover my mana was incredibly annoying.
The camera angles in the game are spotty. I'd say the majority of the time the camera does a decent job of positioning itself for a third-person-perspective game. Sometimes the angles are awkward, which adds to the game's creep factor. Occasionally the angles were just absurd. At times, the character is obstructed by objects or the camera is zoomed out so far that I was controlling a tiny toon.
The game's final chapter was very satisfying from a story standpoint, but a bit anticlimactic from a game play perspective. It wasn't all that difficult. I didn't mind too much, since I was so engrossed in the story, but it is something I noticed. Overall, I would say the game was a lot of fun to play. It has great re-playability because early in the game, you make a decision that determines which deity you will fight throughout the game. All of the game's enemies follow the alignment and have powers based on it, so choosing another alignment gives you a whole different game experience.
This game is rated M for mature. The horror-based nature of the game and the gory images are consistent with that rating. I wouldn't recommend it for children under twelve, but I think parents of teens could use their discretion. I'd expect this game to be considered in a similar manner to how parents consider horror movies.
Controls
The GameCube controller happens to be my favorite controller, so I was very comfortable playing this game. The controls are very intuitive. In the beginning of the game, you're thrown into a room full of zombies with only a shotgun, yet I was immediately able to start defeating the baddies. If you've played The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker or Resident Evil 4, you'll recognize the control scheme; target with the button on the top right and attack with the A-button. Inventory, maps, and spells can be managed from the start-button. The other buttons are for custom assignment of spells. I found the whole setup to be very effective.
Graphics and Audio
The graphics are decent for a GameCube game. It seems that the developers paid a great deal of attention to detail. The textures are very realistic. The environments are very elaborate, with interesting lighting and appropriate decoration. There were a few small graphical glitches, like jagged edges when panning the camera and various white anomalies. I wouldn't say the graphics look realistic, but they look like a good cartoon.
The cut scenes aren't rendered by the in-game engine, but they don't look more realistic. They do look different, though, with a slightly fuzzy look. It gives the cut scene a surreal feel, which may also be intended to extend to the audio. The cut scene audio is much lower in volume than the rest of the audio. I had to raise the volume quite high to hear the dialogue.
Much of the audio is bass-heavy, especially the spell casting. I found myself toggling the volume up and down constantly because the audio was so misbalanced. The details of the audio are impressive, with the surround sound effectively being used to add to the "insanity" effect. The whispers and footsteps were a nice touch. Price
My husband purchased Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for$40 a number of years ago. Today you can pick up a used copy for $18. This is a Nintendo GameCube game, but I played it on the Nintendo Wii with the help of a GameCube controller.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.