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....