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The midsummer weekend I ended up spending at my buddy’s place, playing GameCube games. I started out by wasting the Friday playing Resident Evil 4 which, in contrast to Eternal Darkness, pretty much sucked. A retarded story, the same old zombies, the same old dilemma (”oh no I don’t have any ammo…”). The only new part about it was the President’s daughter who followed you around. I accidentally stabbed her to death once, as I was trying to stab open a barrel (those barrels have stuff in ‘em, dude!)…
Then I went over to Eternal Darkness and ended up staying until I finished the game (with lots of hints from Kenneth). It’s a game based in the Lovecraft world, with the Ancients and all that. The main character is the granddaughter of an old lad who lived in an ancient mansion, who had been found dead as the game begins. Alex, the granddaughter, decides after two weeks that she’ll get to the bottom of it on her own, since the cops seem clueless, so she decides to explore the mansion and doing so, she finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness. As she reads on, the story unfolds, and you take on the roles of various people in various ages, starting with Pious Augustus in ancient Rome. Each character you play finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness, and thus “finds out” about all the things that happened up until that point. By doing so, each character gains the abilities that you have gained so far.
No game set in the Lovecraft world is complete without the aspect of insanity, and they really pulled that off awesomely in this game. You have “the usual” health and mana, and you also have sanity which “drops” as you encounter monsters or see/do things that affect the human mind. In the case of Alex, she gets more and more insane as she reads the Tome and the game story progresses. Luckily, you eventually get the ability to “recover” sanity using a magic spell.
As I played that game, I recalled hearing the Skotos people for Lovecraft Country talk about how Nintendo wanted to patent a game aspect for insanity. I’m pretty sure this is the game they were talking about, and as always when I hear things like that, I marvel at the stupidity of software patents. If it wasn’t for that, I’d definitely recommend this game to the Lovecraft guys, as it’s a huge source for inspiration, and made me want to jump in and start playing Lovecraft, for possibly the first time in my life (I’ve not been a fan, but I’m becoming one after this :P).
Then again, I’m sadly outdated in terms of the latest-and-greatest in game design, having been a linux user for a decade, and more or less abandoned hope on games entirely. This game is 3-4 years old I think, but to me it was a really cool experience. But if you haven’t tried this one out and if you have a GameCube OR a Wii with a GameCube controller (they’re compatible), I suggest you do!
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