Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Nintendo of America

3D Adventure/ Psychological       15 memory blocks       

1 Player                                               Rated M (Ages 17 or older)

     Eternal Darkness:  Sanity's Requiem is one of the most interesting games out there for the Gamecube.  It is Nintendo's first attempt to create Gamecube games for adult audiences.  The story is simple you have to stop the Eternal Darkness from entering the world.  The story spans over 2000 years and you control twelve characters, one at a time.  Each character makes a contribution to the story and they are all normal people chosen to fight evil.   This is not your ordinary  3D adventure because this game plays tricks with your mind.  It interacts with the real world causing you to react in real life.  It is a really fun feature that can cause panic and adds a lot of interactivity to the game.  The "Resident Evil" series from Capcom introduced horror into videogames and Eternal Darkness introduces a whole new category.  

     The graphics are really good.  The characters and backgrounds move smoothly throughout the game.  The game takes place in different times in history and all the backgrounds are very detailed.  A lot of work to make the environments resemble the look of the era in time they represent.  From ancient Rome to the present, all the environments posses elements from those moments in time.  Perhaps the most amazing graphics are the lighting effects that ocurr when you use spells or carry a torch in a dark place.  It is a sight to behold.  The characters animations are also very detailed.  It is fun to watch your character hack, slash, run, get hurt and perform magic.  Just as it is to watch your enemies getting cut into pieces.  There is lots of blood in this game.

     The sound is amazing.  Although there is not that much music.  The sound effects are pretty cool.  The magic words used to cast a spell sound like a very ancient language.  The character voices are much better than in other games.  Thank god this game has such great voice actors because it has lots of movies that tell the story.   You can hear how your character starts talking to himself as he starts losing his sanity.  Overall the sound is among the top for the Gamecube.  A game like this does not need to have too much music.

     The control is easy to learn.  You move your character with the Analog control stick.  The A button is used to attack or to accept stuff from the menus.  The B button is used for actions that depend on where you are standing (examine, finish off enemy, pick up items, etc.)  The X button is used to make your character walk slowly while the L button makes your character run.  The R button in combination with the Analog control stick aims your attacks (R+UP attacks the head, R+LEFT AND RIGHT attack the arms and R+DOWN attack the chest).  The control pad and the Y button can be assigned spells from your inventory for fast spell casting.  The Start button opens up the menu.

    This game is really fun to play.  There is so much stuff included in this game.  First there is the innovative combat system; cut off enemy's head and he won't be able to find you, cut off his arms and he won't be able to attack you.  It adds a lot of strategy and makes fighting enemies fun.  Also, different enemies have different weaknesses and strengths.  Then, there is your sanity meter, which refills once you perform a finishing move on an enemy.  You magic meter fills up by walking around and you can only cast spells when you are standing still.  In order to cast spells you need the Tome of Eternal Darkness and to find scrolls, runes, codices.  A combination of runes gives you certain spells and halfway trough the game you can experiment by mixing different runes together to find more powerful spells.  You have a wide choice of offensive, defensive and other spells in the game.  When your sanity meter drops too low, the fun begins, your character starts having hallucinations.  It is one of the most entertaining additions to this game.  There are lots of hallucinations your character can experience and they are a blast to see.  The puzzles are fairly simple but sometimes you get lost in the game without a clue on what to do.  This was frustrating at first but once I figured it out, I realized that I only needed to use some common sense.  You have around twenty hours of gameplay the first time you play it.  You will feel compelled to finish again because the first time around is like a tutorial of the game.  Each time you play it, the game is similar but has slight differences.  There is so much hidden stuff in this game that you won't find everything the first time around.  

     Eternal Darkness:  Sanity's Requiem is exactly what the Gamecube needs right now.  A game for mature audiences that is fun to play.  Blood, magic, puzzles, crazyness are some of things you will encounter when you play this game.  It is a masterpiece in gameplay and sound.  I would recommend you to get this game as soon as possible if you have a Nintendo Gamecube.  This game rivals many 3D Adventure games on the PC.  If Nintendo of America releases more games like this it will surely win over many mature gamers.