Two Sides of the Horror Coin, Part 2:Eternal Darkness:Sanity's Requiem

Imagine a game that combines Resident Evil (prior to RE 5) with the stories of HP Lovecraft. Sounds cool, right? Well, Eternal Darkness:Sanity's Requiem is even better than that. One of the very few M Rated games for the Gamecube, Eternal Darkness:Sanity's Requiem (one of the best videogame titles ever, IMHO), is a horror game that transends space and time to weave an engrossing story. That's not hyperbol; the story extends over thousands of years and takes place all over the world. It begins in the present day (well, the year 2000, but close enough). Alexandra Roivas gets a call that her grandfather has been gruesomely murdered in a locked room (poor guy lost his head) and goes to his estate in Rhode Island in order to help the police find out who, or what, killed him. Exploring the mansion in order to find any clues, she comes upon the Book of Eternal Darkness. Reading it, the book tells the tragic stories of several people who have come in contact with the book and their horrible fates. Some of the pages have been torn from the book, and Alexandra finds them as she explores the mansion. The characters in the stories, all of whom you you control as their tale unfolds, are touched by a supernatural evil. And soon, Alexandra finds that she may be the only one able to stop the coming darkness and the destuction of mankind... I don't want to say much about Eternal Darkness' story, except to say that it is excellent and genuinely terrifying. You will fight gruesome horrors (the RE influence) and steadily lose your mind as you do so (the Lovecraft influence), There is much more, but again, I don't want to give anything away. The sanity meter and what happens as your sanity drains away has been been much hyped about, and it is a cool concept. Basically, the game will screw with your mind; at one point, I thought I had accidentally deleted my saved game and was actually pissed about it, until I realized that, yes, the game was screwing with me. The fact that I actually believed it for a moment is a testament as to just how imgenius this game is. The graphics are unifomaly excellent, and help draw you into the game world. The music, too, is very well done,. Very eerie, as it should be. Throughout the course of the game you will also learn magic spells that will give an edge against the coming evil, and believe me, you will need them. If you like horror games at all, I strongly recommend Eternal Darkness. Hell, if you like good games, you should play this. Just try not to be too scared...you might lose your mind forever. Oh, the horror, the horror....

Two sides of the horror coin part 1:Stubbs the Zombie

It's not easy being a zombie. Just ask Stubbs. All he wants is a little brain juice. It's what keeps him alive. Or undead. Whatever. However, the citizens of Punchbowl don't really care for having thier skulls bitten open. But hey, what's a zombie gotta do to get a drink around here? Stubbs the Zombie:Rebel without a Pulse for the original XBox is a breath of fetid air in a time where every other game has you shoot zombies in the face. They are the villians. In Stubbs, you are the (anti) hero, simply in search of brains and perhaps, a little love. Isn't that what all zombies really want? I really love this game, and not just because it's different. It's very much like a dark comedy; there is plenty of gore, but also some comedy. Stubbs will rip the arm off a random policman and he will exclaim "But that was my favorite arm!" Stubbs is a silent protagonist but the humans around him will say the funniest things. As Stubbs shuffles around Punchbowl (did I mention the game is set in the 50's?) and snacks on humans, they will not take kindly to this and fight back with batons, guns and rocket launchers. However, Stubbs has various methods of fighting back himself. He has a vicious...well, fart attack that will stun anyone around him. He can use his own rotting organs as makeshift grenades. He can tear off his own arm, which is ambulatory, and use it take over humans minds so that they will do things for him (such as shoot guns at others. Stubbs can't see that well since he came back to life.) Finally, Stubbs can take off his own head and use it as a bowling ball, which then explodes. Stubbs arm and head will grow back (zombies can do that, right?) Stubbs "health" will regenerate if he stops taking abuse for a short time. Best of all, all the humans whose brains he has feasted on come back to life as zombies themselves, so that Stubbs can create his own zombie army that will follow him around. Who would'nt want their own zombie army? It's really too bad there aren't any games like this anymore, and in this point in time it's very unlikely there will ever be a sequel. So if you ever find for the original XBox, give it a whirl. You'll find being undead isn't so bad, after all.