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Why I Love the Horror Game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Review and Let's Play)

NathanSifuGamingApr 13, 2018, 2:21:31 AM

What would you say is your favorite survival horror game? Outlast? Amnesia? Silent hill? Perhaps one of the resident evil games? There is one in particular that stands out for me, a game that long predates the Slender man reaction videos, released exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube of all systems. Let me tell you why Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was one of my favorite games of all time.

The game was developed by Silicon Knights, the same company who did the "Twin Snakes" GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid. Eternal Darkness is probably best described as a Lovecraftian horror (H.P. Lovecraft) or cosmic horror, dealing with all powerful cosmic ancients, and wielding powerful magick (yes the "ck" is on purpose). So what time period does this game set in? Well, it actually spans all the way from 27 BC to the early 2000's, which allows for players to wield a wide range of ancient and modern weapons, combined with magick spells. The game starts off with the main protagonist Alexandria Roivas waking up at 3:33am by a police phone call, informing her of an "Accident" with her grandfather, long story short you're now faced with the task of searching your grandfather's mansion for clues of his murder. Searching for clues comes in the form of locating pages to an ancient book, each page that you find is a stage, in which you play as an entirely different character from another time period! If you want to get the full ending of the game, it will require at least 3 playthroughs, which is fine as it has great replay value. I won't get much deeper into the amazing story to avoid spoilers, and I'll instead shift my focus to the gameplay.

The game is in 3rd person, and you use swords and guns to fight zombies and other types of monsters, look for keys and items to help you progress, and you solve puzzles. Sounds like pretty run-of-the-mill kind of stuff right? Well there's a few elements that make this a complete game changer! You have a health meter, a magick meter, and a SANITY meter. When you face down your enemies, the trauma of seeing a monster lowers your sanity, if it reaches too low your character will begin to hallucinate, and if your sanity meter reaches it will start to affect your health. The hallucinations come in all forms, some will just play mild tricks on the player like making your character slowly shrink, turn the room upside-down, or fill the room with all kinds of ammo and special items, only to snap out of the hallucination realizing that it "isn't really happening". This is the tame stuff however, the lower sanity will bring out the more horrifying hallucinations, anything from your limbs falling off, seeing terrifying imagery, hearing deeply unnerving audio with crying women and babies, and even fourth wall breaking effects that mess with the player directly! Some of the fourth wall breaks I find to me the most intriguing, as they can make you think bugs are crawling across your screen, trick you into thinking your TV has turned off, or your controller has unplugged, or that your save files have been deleted. In total there are approximately 1000 different sanity effects, and I'm sure even I haven't seen them all yet.

So is this game actually scary? At times yes, but I'd say that it's best at making the player feel the tension and anxiety, and it does this without abusing jumpscares (although there are a couple of really good ones in there). I think the tension is best brought on by the stellar sound design of the game, there were parts where the audio would have me convinced that somebody was banging on my door, or some kind of creature was breathing right in my ear, that one especially scared the hell out of me despite the fact I've played through the game numerous times. And while I (and many others) enjoy playing a mostly low sanity playthrough, I try not to keep it too low, I still find it really difficult to hear the cries of women and babies, at one point it even sounds like the women is being cruelly whipped, it makes my heart pound!

If you have the chance to play this game, either through an actual GameCube, or an emulator I'd highly recommend this very unique title, everybody should play it. If you don't have the ability to play it, I would at least invite you to join me on my #letsplay of #eternaldarkness. You can watch it through the youtube playlist down below, or you can watch it through the series of #BitChute links below.

I thank you for reading this, and I hope you'll accept my invitation, without further ado here is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem!

#BitchuteGaming🕹 #GabGaming #VidmeLegacy #MindsGaming #GamerTube #Gaming #HorrorGaming #Horror

#youtube

Youtube Playlist

@BitChute

1) https://www.bitchute.com/video/4R0pRnVSwE93

2) https://www.bitchute.com/video/333gtgWmAfTi

3) https://www.bitchute.com/video/fvQzKXmr7arR

4) https://www.bitchute.com/video/rwysyWUuxOxs

5) https://www.bitchute.com/video/6ZesNMBXfXAV

6) https://www.bitchute.com/video/DyV6ccbR2l4x

7) https://www.bitchute.com/video/lo78H7WPXljM