Hidden Gem: Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (GameCube)
Published by: Nintendo
Developed by: Silicon Knights
By Diana Poulsen
“I tried… I tried to tell them, but… they wouldn’t listen to me… Damn them! Damn their eyes! They didn’t believe me. Strange creatures… the world in peril from unseen foes. The death! The DARKNESS!” – Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem is another great game lost in the underrated Nintendo Gamecube, probably because it was one of the earliest titles released for the system. The game begins with abstract mathematicians Alex Roivas (read her last name backwards) who has come to her Grandfather’s home in Rhode Island after receiving a call from the police. She is needed to identify a body: her grandfather’s. Alex is unsatisfied with the police’s investigation into the murder and decides to solve the mystery herself. This leads her to the Tome of Eternal Darkness, which tells the story of several generations of people trying to save the world from Ancients. Each story is a chapter in the game that the player experiences themselves, always returning back to Alex after the “story” is done. The narrative is fabulously written and voice acted, and it often feels like something right out of an H.P Lovecraft novel.
Throughout the game you’ll play as the different people who got suckered into trying to stop the Ancients from destroying the world. Your characters know just as little as you do, and as they learn things, so do you. One of the coolest concepts is that you revisit areas of the game several times as hundreds of years pass, and these areas change with development. You’ll visit a church when it’s first constructed in the middle ages, then later as a Monk during the Spanish inquisition, and finally as a WWI soldier and reporter when the cathedral is transformed into a makeshift hospital. The game even features alternate paths, as the big baddie you’ll be fighting against is decided by what object you pick when playing the character Pious Augustus, who begins the nightmare. There are three different ‘villains’ (Xel’lotath, Ulyaoth, Chattur’gha) in total, so you can play the game at least three times and each time will take about 12- 8 hours to complete.
Ah, but of course I am forgetting the kicker. Eternal Darkness is the only game that messes with the gamer. Your character has a sanity meter, and when the meter drops your character goes insane and strange things begin to happen in the game that affect both the player and the avatar. For example, the game will simulate audio visual errors and will ‘delete’ your game when you are saving it, and you’ll at times even unexpectedly die. Your character will eventually snap out of it and scream “This can’t be really HAPPENING!!” Some of the insanity effects are pretty cool and others are down right creepy, which is why I love this game so much!
Sadly, despite critical success, this game did not do very well on the market, which is a shame because it’s easily one of the best games on the GameCube, and one of the best and most original video games ever. If you see it in the used section snatch it up, it’s totally worth it. Leave the lights on when you play though. Trust me.
Curious? Check out the trailer.
