Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was created by Silicon Knights for the
Nintendo Gamecube. Originally planned for release on the
Nintendo 64, it was again and again delayed for over 6 months. It was finally released on June 24, 2002. It is basically a
Survival Horror game, but it supercedes all other horror games in many, many respects. It may more appropriately be described as a
psychological thriller.
The most important difference between Eternal Darkness and the poster child of survival horror games, Resident Evil, is the Sanity system. When your character sees an enemy, (it’s usually a creepy zombie or other scary stuff) his or her Sanity Meter will drop. If it drops too low, you will start to see strange things. The most common ones are the walls bleeding and the camera skewing. The severity of the effect depends on how much of your sanity is left. Some of the worst effects will make you think you, the player, are going crazy. You will see things that have nothing to do with your character going crazy, and more to do with you going crazy, like game errors or perception problems. Sometimes you just sit there trying to figure out what is going on, until your character pulls himself together and you realize he was hallucinating.
Another important difference is that this game features several things common in most games but rather rare in Survival Horror games. These things include decent controls, decent voice acting, and no forced attempts at humor that are only humorous because they are so bad.
The plot, without spoiling too much, goes as such. You are Alex Roivas, a college girl who has returned to her grandfather’s mansion to investigate her grandfather’s gruesome death. She discovers the Tome of Eternal Darkness (not to be confused with the Necronomicon) in a secret compartment in the house. Inside she reads of the “Ancients”, creatures predating man that have been restrained while humanity flourished. They have been behind some of the worst moments in mankind’s history. They now wish to return. As Alex reads the stories of the chosen few that are destined to fight the darkness, you play as these characters. Wielding a vast assortment of weapons, over the course of two millennia, you slowly unravel the plot and desperately try to stop the insidious magick of the Ancients and their evil minions.
Much like The Matrix did for movies, it can be assumed that Eternal Darkness will have many impersonations in the video game world. The ingenuity of the sanity effects and the quality of this work will set it apart from its peers for years to come.