When I bought this game a year or so ago, I suppose, the guy behind the counter said something along the lines of "You'll enjoy that one." I forget what he said precisely, but my response was "Yeah, I missed out on this one fifteen years ago."
Boy did I. Back in 2002, Eternal Darkness wasn't on my radar at all. The Game Cube it was playable on didn't interest me. But over the many years since, I've picked up more and more info about this fourth-wall-breaking psychological horror title, and I really want to see it first hand - and I don't really care for horror.
Fun Times
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, to give it its full title, gets off to a solid start with a weird intro video depicting all kinds of old-world astrology, I suppose you'd call it, mixed with bits of the occult, some gruesome blood and bugs, some mystical energy related to a celestial syzygy... it's what you'd call 'different', and it's different in such a way as to interest me, rather than put me off.
When we first meet Alex Roivas, she's blowing the heads off skeletal zombies in the murky darkness. Hints of a targeting system are shown, and we're not heroic enough to run and gun, it's one or the other. When our ammo runs out, so do we.
Zombies? Ghosts? We're woken up by a ringing phone, but the news on the other end is as concerning as the content of our dreams.
And here we are, in a mansion reminiscent of Resident Evil or Luigi's Mansion, only Eternal Darkness controls better than both of those games, and looks really rather pretty, especially here in emulation. The lighting probably steals the show, but Alex's movement is fluid and feels rooted in the scene, rather than taking place on top of it, if you get what I mean. Obviously walking into walls and hitting the attack button breaks the illusion a little, but go with it...
The police can't answer why my grandfather has no head anymore, and we've taken it upon ourselves to solve the puzzle of his death, on the assumption that this mansion has all the clues. Alex turns her head to points of interest, and if that doesn't catch your attention, the B-button flashing onto the screen with 'Examine' and 'Inspect' and the like cue you into something remarkable.
Frustrations
Some of it seems alarmingly obvious - slits for swords like those shown, for example - but I get the impression a lot of information is going to be given to use via text messages that are often annoyingly cut off in the wrong places.
Having to accommodate multiple languages is probably the reason for these kinds of issues, especially in Europe, but it's always a little bothersome. If there's a whole other paragraph beyond the one I'm seeing, fine. If there's a single word... grrr...
Wandering around the mansion, through the impressive library, Alex breaks her neck to show interest in a clock.
As much as I want to adjust the clock hands - we all want to change the damn clock hands - I've yet to find a reason to. Besides, what time do I move the hands to? And why would moving some clock hands even do anything anyway? It's not like my grandfather was into some weird occult shit that he needed to hide it all away in a secret room, right?
Huh.
Further Fun Times
And now we're a Roman Centurion, I guess, Pious Augustus, who is hearing voices in the desert before getting teleported somewhere.
I have to say, I knew Eternal Darkness had playable characters other than Alex, but I didn't think they were Roman soldiers. This is, I guess, some playable flashback or backstory or something. Anywhere else, a character reading a book would be a cutscene. Not here.
Pious doesn't have a shotgun, but his sword doesn't need ammunition, so we're making progress on the skeletal zombie-slaying front. I don't know why there are so many around, but they're in the way.
Dealing with them is a case of targeting them with the right shoulder button, where you can pick their head or arms off if you want to fine-tune an attack, and then swinging with the A-button. I don't think there's a dodge button, other than running away.
Running takes place with a press of the left shoulder button and your movement inputs, but sneaking around takes advantage of the analogue input of the stick - push slightly and you sneak, harder and you walk. Shame 'push harder still to run' wasn't an option too.
These guys have a habit of coming back, so when they're down, you can finish them off for good with a press of the B-button, which is sometimes accompanied by a nice cinematic camera angle.
Making our way through this underground chamber, we find a bunch of granite blocks that Pious just casually carries along with him, a bunch more zombies to deal with, and what appears to be a few tutorial-like puzzles to get us up to speed with what Eternal Darkness is going to throw at us.
My suspicions are confirmed very shortly after putting coloured blocks in coloured block-holes...
Statue swiftly seen to, Pious eyes his prize. Red, blue and green artefacts sit at the end of a grey corridor, glowing with magical energy. After eyeing them all up, I choose the last one, because it saves me going through any more dialogue windows. I suspect my decision here has some significance, but Lord knows what.
Blimey, Pious. That artefact has done quite a number on you, eh? Is that your voice I'm hearing, all these thousands of years later?
On the wall behind me is an old page of previously unreadable writing. With our hideous, skin-bound book in hand, we're able to read it and, presumably, learn something about our grandfather's death. You know, the reason we're here and have been for two weeks...
And just like that, a thousand years have gone by, we're in another part of the world entirely, following in the footsteps of a wholly different person. Is all of Eternal Darkness like this? Walking around the mansion was simple, but I was getting into it. Now I'm just sat at a desk reading stories. What for? What's going on?
I forget this woman's name, but she's reading the same book we are, only a thousand years before us before she finds herself trapped in this... whatever this is. She wished for adventure. Well, she got it. Time to find a way out.
In true, archaeological adventure fashion, the corridors of this place are lined with pressure plates that will trigger axes and darts to shoot out of the walls, cutting up trespassers where they stand. Luckily, despite the darkness, they're easy enough to spot and to avoid. The controls are easy to use, and while the camera likes to be somewhat fixed, there are no silly tank controls to work out in your head. You'll go where you want to go. Amen to that.
Here, finally, is one of the most essential and iconic parts of Eternal Darkness - the sanity meter. It's doesn't take a lot of guesswork to learn that not having sanity is terrible, but you're not really made aware of why that's bad.
The sanity effects of Eternal Darkness are perhaps the reason why Eternal Darkness makes the 1001 list. They range from character-specific fears, like bugs skittering over the screen, to fourth-wall-breaking scares that hit you, the player.
While an enemy seeing you drains your sanity meter, finishing them off with swords and blowdarts restores your sanity, so I spent most of this level spook-free. The worst I had was the camera slowly tilting into a Dutch angle, and that's not spooky, so much as a signifier of something not quite being right - which is true: I was going insane.
What really tipped it over wasn't the giant mass of eyeballs and teeth that appears to be a God of some sort, nor the walking talking zombie known as Pious, but running back through the level to stick a pole into a hole to open a door. Avoiding the enemies means they see you, and you don't get any sanity back because you're not killing them.
Alright, so they're not exactly the easiest effects to see, especially in an underground chamber lit only by candles, but they're what Eternal Darkness is all about. Puzzle-solving, sure. Uncovering the mysteries of history, yes, but dealing with physical and mental problems too.
Oh, yeah. We're Alex.
Further Frustrations
I had been playing for close to an hour and hadn't learned much about what was going on. That's not a bad thing - the whole game is a mystery - but it feels like it has been dumped upon me so far.
At the same time, though, these have felt like tutorial levels. The puzzles have been easy to solve, and the mechanics of locking onto targets and of not going insane are things you tell players early on, preferably with real-world examples you can practice on, which Eternal Darkness does.
But what I really wanted to do, after Pious and whoever we were afterwards, was to see what Alex was capable of. Hell, I wanted to find out who Alex even was. All we know is that she's a granddaughter with little faith in the police. That's not a whole lot to go on.
So we're given an immediate puzzle as Alex to test our memory of the problems we've just been solving.
Another page. What - or who - is on this one?
A short cutscene involving Pious, a split personality magic eyeball God, and more names we've got no context to, save for the fact that they're all powerful and influential in some way. So we still know very little about the backstory, let alone the main story. I don't even know if this latest one is even a historical tale. It could be taking place right now for all I know, seeing as Pious seems to age so well.
Final Word
My time with Eternal Darkness was halted there, but despite knowing next to nothing about what was going on, I was captivated. At first, I was a little concerned that it'd be too much like Resident Evil, where I'd have to explore every inch of this mansion, looking for keys and bits of machinery to solve puzzles, but then I find myself diving headfirst into a book made of flesh and taken back a few thousand years into the shoes of my ancestors.
It certainly stands out, doesn't it? I've seen Eternal Darkness, perhaps even watched a playthrough of it, but have thankfully forgotten it all (save for some sanity effects) and can actually enjoy it for the first time, first hand.
It looks like time playing this game will be time well spent. The controls are easy to pick up, the presentation is slick (if we ignore the minor quibble about the text boxes), and while I haven't got the foggiest as to the details of the story yet, and despite not really being a fan of all the Lovecraft stuff, what I've seen is gripping me. I really want to carry on playing.
When we read that a game is this genre or has that gameplay mechanic, we can get an idea of whether we will be likely to play it or not. If Eternal Darkness was only presented as a horror title, I probably would have ignored it, but the first time I heard about the game wasn't that it was a horror title, it was that it was a must-play experience (and I'd heard that before I bought a book about must-play video games).
Because I've always heard External Darkness as 'that awesome game with the weird stuff going on', I've always wanted to see it, regardless of the bits I'm not particularly interested in. I suspect that after playing more, I might even be a convert.
That's what can happen if you play something new and different. Alright, maybe Eternal Darkness wasn't entirely new for me, but the point still stands, and it's one I should adopt more often because there will be titles on this 1001 list that I'll roll my eyes at.
Make sure you don't roll your eyes at this one. And don't go insane playing it, either.
Fun Facts
I usually always forget to mention sound in these blogs, so here are two sound facts: The soundtrack was given away in Nintendo Power magazine, including some extended versions, and the voice cast is a who's who of video game voice acting, with most of the cast of Metal Gear Solid making an appearance in some form.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, developed by Silicon Knights, first released in 2002.
Version played: Game Cube, 2002, via emulation.