Very underrated, even by me (second opinion).
User Rating: 9.5 | Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem GC
Second opinion of eternal darkness puts it much higher up my favourite games list than I first imagined it to be. This game is scary. Not oh look that's gross ok carry on scary. Oh My God I just **** myself scary. The first time you enter the bathroom you just have to look in the bath. It's impulse. I nearly had a heart attack. Perhaps the most notable part of the game are the incredible sanity effects. At a small loss, the room tilts slightly, statue heads follow you, blood drips down the wall, and in the back of your mind you hear the terrified sobs of a woman crying. These noises surround you until you either refill your sanity gauge or die. At half loss, your character may explode if you attempt to restore health without first restoring sanity. At a greater still loss, the game starts to play with you. One of the best ones was when the screen flashed as I went up against a horror and said : available from next year Eternal Darkness 2. I stared for a few seconds, then jumped as it started again. It's hard to tell when your game's messed up or just messing with you. The visuals, as I said before, are detailed, mostly non-linear, although a few of the backgrounds have been pre-rendered. In particular places you can tell the scenery has been built from scratch, and that in itself makes the game much more realistic. It's fun to explore a room, looking at the portraits on the wall and the evil paintings that create an eerie atmosphere as you try to ignore them. These paintings will be affected by the sanity loss, usually with blood dripping through them or hand marks appearing at the corners. Fires crackle in the grates, although you didn't light them. And as the main character's (Alexandra Roivas) grandfather is dead, it makes you wonder who lit them. Finally, in one particular level, set during WW1, the flashes and bangs light up your screen and actually shake the camera as the controller rumbles in your hand. There are a variety of characters to play as (about ten i think), and although you begin the game as Alex (a girl by the way), over the course of the game you will control a French Messenger, Anthony, an architect, Roberto, and a couple of Alex's ancestors (Maximillian and Edward (grandfather) Roivas), as well as several others, all who claim the tome of eternal darkness, a book which charters the darker course of the human race and allows you to cast spells, for themselves and succumb to the horrors within it. On the subject of spells, the game incorporates a runic system, requiring you to collect Runic symbols and their codecs in order to perform twelve different spells. These spells range from shield to magickal attack, to summon creatures. Their are four alignments, Chattur'gha, red, Xel'lotath, green, Uly'aoth, blue, and Mantorok, purple, the strongest attack of them all. You will need to work out which colour defeats which in order to destroy the various bosses that come up against you. Three circles of power are accesible, 3 point, 5 point, and 7 point, and each time you find a new one you have to rediscover your spells in order to use them with that circle. This may sound time-wasting, but it only takes a matter of seconds. There are around fifteen runes to collect, each with its own meaning, so if you're cunning you can discover the spells before you get the scrolls indicating how to use them. Finally, as the game draws to a close and the credits roll, you are given the choice of starting again. When you first play the game you would have chosen an essence as Pious Augustus, the roman general. The second time round you will have to pick one of the other two, complete the game, and unlock chapter jump. If you complete it a third time...well I won't spoil it. (Note-the three essences red, green, and blue correspond to difficulty. Green is easy, blue is 'hard', and red is 'hero/legend/really difficult/etc). Eternal Darkness is a creepy, scary game, and satisfying to play. It incorporates the use of the runic system well and is a joy to command and complete. Play it and see what the hype is about. 
