In this review, we try and retain our sanity in the GameCube game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. We find out how well this survival horror game plays.
This game was released in 2002.
The story follows Alex who receives a phone call. It is a detective who says that there has been an incident with her grandfather. She says she’ll be heading over. After arriving at her grandfathers mansion in Rhode Island, a detective greets her and asks for a positive identification. The body is found in the library with a sheet over top. She does identify the body, but is furious at the incompetence of the detective and police who say that they have no clues of what happened. So, Alex expresses determination to find clues in the mansion and try and figure out what happened.
The game itself is in the third person much like other survival horror games are played at the time (think Silent Hill games). You have a standard inventory system and are able to equip weapons as you find them. At first, the game generally plays just like a Silent Hill game. You go around the mansion looking for clues and try unlocking various areas of the mansion. Ultimately, your goal ends up locating and reading the book of Eternal Darkness. This actually enables you to read chapters and cast magic.
Once you locate the Book of Eternal Darkness, your next goal is to locate chapters. With the Book of Eternal Darkness in hand, the text of each chapter becomes legible. Each chapter you find starts another level. For every chapter you play, you’ll play a different character every time.
Another standard feature you’ll find is a health bar. As you take damage, your health decreases. Lose all of your health and you die.
A second meter also exists in this game. You’ll find it very early on in the game as well. This is your sanity meter. Most enemies drain this sanity meter. The less you have in your sanity meter, the more insane you become. I never encountered it, but apparently, if you run out of sanity, you’ll experience life threatening complications in your gameplay.
Whenever anyone talks about Eternal Darkness, chances are, they’ll talk about this feature. This is because it is the games main selling point. As your character becomes more insane, you’ll see side effects start popping up. They can really be divided into two different categories: major side effects and minor side effects.
Minor side effects simply show up as you play the game. They don’t necessarily impede your game, but rather, add extra effects on the screen. The most common side effect is a 10 degree tilt of the screen. Others include random pounding on the door sounds, blood dripping from walls or ceilings, and even effects that alter what looks like gameplay. This includes a sudden “mute” message and all sound getting turned off or even an effect that looks like your game got switched off all of a sudden. Some point out that this game breaks the fourth wall by doing this.
Major side effects basically takes the player into a temporary illusion of the level. Really, it ultimately wastes the players time by deliberately trying to confuse the player. It typically happens in a transition from one room to another. That is when abnormal effects start happening. This includes the whole level being flipped upside down and you find yourself walking on the ceiling. Another one is that your character starts sinking through the floor. One effect causes all the doors to be locked, keeping you in that same room. A few even causes your character’s body parts to fall onto the ground. They always end with a white flash and your character grunting “this can’t be happening”. You’ll find that you didn’t leave the previous room yet and the game will permit you to continue.
The effects are generally random, but some seem to be character specific. A few effects are actually programmed into the game to occur at very specific times. This is basically cut scenes of Alex communicating with her dead grandfather. While it ends with your character grunting “this can’t be happening”, these cut-scenes are unavoidable.
One final note about sanity is the fact that your sanity will drop after completing a chapter.
This leads to a third feature not typically found in a survival horror game: a magic system. In this game, it’s spelled “magick”, thus utilizing old English.
Your magic appears as a blue bar and it refills as you move around. This can easily be used to your advantage, though this concept can be utilized only after you get a few chapters into the game.
Initially, you actually have no means to cast magic. The first thing you need to locate is a power circle. The first one is a three point magic system. So, you’ll be able to cast three point magic after. You’ll also find higher point magic system, permitting you to cast more complex spells. Of course, the power circles are only the first step in casting magic.
After that, you’ll need to collect runes. Each rune can be collected either through unlocking something, opening up another item, or defeating certain enemies. There are two kinds of runes: magic types and general runes. The game operates with four different rune types: red, blue, green, and purple. The red, blue, and green rune types have a sort of competing system. Red defeats blue, blue defeats red, and red defeats green. Purple, meanwhile, defeats them all. This helps unlock certain magical blockades and barriers.
Meanwhile, there are specific runes. These runes simply appear as yellow because they have no specific type. When you cast a spell, you need to use a type as the first rune, then these specific runes in a certain combination to cast the spell. Sometimes, it helps to think of these runes as forming the rest of a sentence. Each rune you collect will allow you to use them to cast spells. So, having every rune in the game will go a long way in enabling you to cast every spell in the game.
There is an unfortunate thing about these runes: you don’t understand them. In order to understand them, you need to collect codex stones. These stones unlock the mystery of the rune itself. Once you understand the rune in your inventory, you can get to casting magic.
A final piece of the magic puzzle are spell scrolls. It is possible to unlock a spell just by guessing the rune combinations, but you won’t necessarily understand what the spell does (just witness the effects of the spell after). Spell scrolls explain not only what the spell combination is, but tell you what the spell does. So, you never actually have to guess the spell combination as scrolls will give you most, if not, all spells found in the game.
The spells themselves have different effects. One spell recovers different aspects of your character (green recovers sanity, red recovers health, and blue pretty much cancels itself out by attempting to replenish your magic meter, but the cost of replenishing your meter is equal to what you recover). Additionally, you can cast spells to put enchantments on your weapons, render invisible things visible, and even designate an area a damage zone for enemies (my personal favourite for taking down more difficult enemies). Generally speaking, these spells start off as something nice to have to being absolutely critical as the game progresses.
As a side feature, you can equip your spells into quick case slots. One slot is “Y” while the others are the four directions of your D-pad. It’s a system similar to The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time, really.
One character you get has a special ability to perform an autopsy on near-dead enemies. This enables you to flip through your pause menu to get general information about enemies. It’s a slightly useful feature, but not a feature you’ll find yourself using that much. Really, by the time you obtain this feature, you already have a very good idea of dealing with enemies.
With your different meters, you might think that you have similar meters for each character. In reality, each character you take control have different strengths and weaknesses. Some characters have a very low magic meter. Other characters have a large health meter. Some characters have average sanity tolerance. This is something you find out as you pay close attention to the meters as you take on your difference characters.
In addition to this, you also have your general fighting system. You have two weapons: melee weapons and ranged weapons. What weapons are available depends on the chapter you are on.
Ranged weapons can include a blow gun, crossbow, and even various weapons.
Melee weapons can range from knives, to swords, to even the torch you are holding. If you have nothing at all, you’ll have the particularly weak ability to punch enemies. Obviously, not advised as a main form of attack, but it is available.
When you attack, you can simply blast or slash your way through enemies. Alternatively, there is an aim system that allows you to aim for the torso, arms, or even the head. Some players utilize this to take down enemies more quickly, though mastering this system can be, at times, finicky. I personally just ended up setting a damage done, then standing just out of the reach of enemies and whacking away until they go down (not wasting ammunition in the process), but that’s just me.
With all these methods of attack, there are, of course, enemies. The most common enemies are zombies, but you’ll also encounter other monsters including one that takes over humans and fights you in their bodies. In addition to this are trappers that simply blast rings at you. Get hit by a ring and you’ll be teleported to a special zone that forces you to find an exit via colour coded teleporter. Note that while in these zones, you are not permitted to cast magic. Something to keep in mind about these.
As you venture further into the game, your goals are generally the same: reach the end of the level and get the ending to complete the chapter. Most, if not, all endings are bad because your character typically ends up dying or getting cursed, but you get endings for your characters nevertheless.
As you venture forth, you’ll be able to talk to non-playable characters (NPCs) and solve puzzles. While the levels are small (and even repetitious), you need to explore them if you wish to proceed.
For me, I will agree with a lot of people on one thing: the sanity effects are an interesting and novel concept. While they didn’t really scare me that much, I can easily imagine some players feeling legitimately afraid of this game because of these effects. For me, this adds a nice artistic effect to the overall experience – not just from a graphical perspective, but also from a design perspective as well. It works quite well in giving players an interesting and novel flavour to the overall game.
Of course, an interesting feature can only carry a game so far. It also depends on having a good game foundation to help prop this feature up. For me, this is where the game begins to fall apart.
Probably the biggest problem I have with this game is the bizarre hit box system. While there isn’t a problem collecting items, it’s as if developers decided that this liberal hit box system should apply to everything. This includes combat. So, when you use melee weapons, if your back is against a wall, every swing you make on an enemy will result in you hitting the wall behind you and not doing any kind of damage. This sounds like a minor annoyance until you realize that a large chunk of the game involves very cramped quarters and narrow passageways. As a result, you are picking and choosing weapons based on the ability to swing them rather than what would be the most useful weapon.
If you think melee weapons are badly flawed, you’ll be surprised to know that ranged weapons can get to the point of being outright useless at times. If you had a choice between a long sword and a rifle for fighting enemies, what would you immediately go for? The rifle. It has distance and does more damage for most games. In this game, however, you are way better off with the sword under most circumstances. Why is this? Weapons, for the most part, don’t do that much damage. Certainly more than bare fists, but not by a whole lot after.
Of course, the biggest drawback for ranged weapons is that it’s sluggish to use most of them. At best, you are able to get off one shot before needing to re-position. Additionally, forget reloading most weapons. This generally takes a long time when you are in the midst of a battle. So, if you are facing a tough opponent, count on possibly getting through your ammunition before switching to a melee weapon to finish off your enemies.
The only real exceptions to the rules are some pistol’s and the shotgun. Pistol’s allow you to get off multiple shots in a reasonable fashion (excluding the near worthless musket). Meanwhile, the shotgun has reasonable power and you can theoretically get off two shots in a reasonable amount of time before needing to re-position. The problem, of course, is that these weapons are generally not used that much in the game. So, you use them when you find the opportunity to use them, then watch those good weapons get whisked away along with the ending of that chapter.
If that weren’t bad enough, spellcasting is just as bad for the most part. The more powerful the spell, the more time it takes to cast. So, you need to find a safe area to cast them (be it in a quiet room or in an area that will take some time for the enemy to get to). Each rune is said one at a time and cast before the actual spell is cast. If at any time you move outside the small zone you are casting, or your get hit, the spell is not only cancelled, but your magic meter has that magic used as if you cast it. So, in tight situations, you are constantly wrestling with opportunities to cast spells.
Having said that, there is another limitation this game has that actually works in your favour: how rooms are loaded. If you are faced with a tough crowd of opponents, always have a door accessible. This is because if you run low on health, you can always backtrack into the other room. If you are out of magic, just walk around in a circle for a while to recover your magic meter enough to cast your recover spells. After that, buff yourself up and then head back in for another round. The damage you inflicted on enemies will stay the same, so you can just finish the job on your next round.
Generally speaking, you are in a general war with the limitations of the game. Instead of playing to the strengths of your character, you are playing to the weaknesses in the designs wherever you can.
Another problem with this game is how it constantly recycles different levels. From what I can tell, you actually only have 4 levels: the mansion, the cathedral, the Indian style dungeon, and the jungle ruins. While this game boasts of 12 chapters, after a while, you find yourself revisiting the same levels repeatedly. In a number of cases, you are even stuck with solving the exact same puzzles on top of it all. While the intended effect is that you are visiting these locations in different time periods, the game comes off as rushed for having to re-use so many elements in the game.
One final criticism I’d like to mention is the magic system. At first, this seems like an interesting and progressive system where you are combining runes to form spells and utilizing different flavours of spells to suit the situation. However, as you get deeper into the game, it’s like the developers didn’t know where to take the magic system next after. So, when you have a 5 point or a 6 point circle, all you need to do is re-form the same spells and spam “power” in every other remaining open slot. You really get the impression that developers simply ran out of ideas after the initial set and just left the rest depending on how much “power” you are adding to them. It almost gives the impression of developmental laziness, really.
Generally speaking, this is one of those games that boasts of a rather interesting feature, then expects to coast on through with that one interesting feature. While the sanity system does a great job at selling the game and offering a rather unique gaming experience, once you move past the sanity system, the game becomes a cheaply thrown together game that seemed to be developed in haste. The melee combat hit system is a clunky mess, the ranged weapons are borderline useless, and magic casting is annoying. With recycled levels and parts of the spell system being unimaginative, it’s hard to really offer much praise for this game. A good concept placed on top of a pretty bad game.
Graphically speaking, this game actually works pretty well. The effects of the gradual insanity work quite well. The models are decent and the environments are pretty decent. Some of the effects look like leftovers from the N64 era, but they still hold to a pretty reasonable degree. Probably my only criticism is the fact that some areas can seem pretty monotonous in the colour department. The models may be decent, but everything else looks quite well done for the most part. Really, only the best games released in the same year can boast of being superior like Burnout 2 – Point of Impact and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. A solid effort all around.
Audio is pretty decent in this game. As odd as it sounds for a game like this, the more upbeat music actually sounds pretty good. The ambient style darker undertones are also decent as well. Sound effects work nicely like with the growl you hear when the purple enchanted melee weapons strikes an enemy or the folly thrown in to add to the effects of insanity. Voice acting is also well done. So, a solid effort all around.
Overall, this is one of those games that tries to skate by on an interesting feature. In the end, it really shows. With a clunky melee combat system and borderline useless ranged weapon system, this game shows that the foundation that it puts underneath that interesting sanity feature is crumbling. Levels and even puzzles get recycled and the bad endings for all the different characters gets pretty stale after a while (much like what happened with Twisted Metal III). The flawed magic system is also a problem with this game with unimaginative advanced spells and how long it takes to cast each spell. While gameplay is heavily flawed, both the audio and video of this game works quite well. In the end, this game is very mediocre and overhyped.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Died fighting the guardian in the War to End All Wars chapter.
General gameplay: 13/25
Replay value: 6/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 58%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
