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You too will come to know fear, as I have. |
I was pleasantly surprised to read that GameSpot Live's motorcycle-riding, taiko-drumming Tyler Winegarner recently finished a game he played through extremely slowly because he enjoyed it so much. Mainly because I recently did the same thing with Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for the GameCube, a game I picked up last year but continued to put down at every possible opportunity to prolong the experience. Simply put, the game is good enough to justify buying a GameCube console for. Or at least, most of it is.
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One of the most influential horror authors of our time. Photo courtesy of hplovecraft.com. |
Eternal Darkness' story draws inspiration from classic horror tales from authors like Howard Philips Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (including some rather obvious references to Lovecraft's incredibly influential short story The Rats in the Walls). Its gameplay draws inspiration from third-person survival horror series like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, but thankfully, you can actually move and turn more quickly than a battleship. Unlike the recent survival horror games, it eschews the gritty, realistic, and predominantly gray-and-brown environments that are becoming increasingly popular (and increasingly indistinct) in games such as Resident Evil 0 and Silent Hill 3--instead, it has a vibrant color palette that helps bring the various eras in which the game takes place to life. And whether or not you find the game's sanity effects (which kick in whenever your characters begin to lose their minds) to be clever, you'll appreciate Eternal Darkness' fantastic sound, especially its voice-over and ambient effects.
But you may not be as appreciative of its ending, which seemed like a bit of a letdown. I'm not going to spoil it, but let's just say that a final crisis arises that could have been a great setup for a cliffhanger, but instead, that too gets quickly and easily resolved. Maybe the ending was so disappointing only because the rest of the game was so fantastic, but once I was done with it, I thought back on other great horror-themed games, and the most recent one I could recall playing and really enjoying was Clive Barker's Undying. While that game had its own flaws (like too many locked doors and a whole lot of backtracking), it was very atmospheric, it had excellent sound, and it was great until the end, which was also something of a letdown. But other than these two games, we haven't seen too many good horror-themed games recently, but hopefully that will change. Once this insane year is behind us, we'll be able to look forward to at least three very intriguing horror-themed games for PCs and consoles.
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This zombie probably isn't a certified lumberjack. |
The most obvious of these is id Software's Doom 3, which by all indications looks amazing. I was one of the fortunate few who tried out the game's multiplayer at the recent QuakeCon 2003 event in Dallas, Texas, and the game's use of lighting, shadows, and physics seemed impressive even at a non-antialiased resolution of 640x480. Developer id Software has stated that despite the fact that its previous game, Quake III Arena, had focused on multiplayer deathmatch, this time around, the team is focusing its efforts on creating a highly atmospheric, genuinely scary single-player game.
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A classic tale of horror come to life? |
I'm also looking forward to British studio Headfirst's upcoming PC and Xbox game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which apparently draws inspiration from Lovecraft's short story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The game will apparently use sanity effects, like Eternal Darkness, but your character's sanity won't be represented onscreen by an arbitrary meter--as you begin to lose your grip on reality, your view of the world in the game will distort, and you'll begin to hear voices and experience impaired vision. Though I missed seeing the game myself at this year's E3, I'm very much looking forward to seeing it when I get the chance.
The third and final horror game I'm currently looking forward to is so far off, it doesn't even have a name. The developer, Funcom, is simply referring to it as "NBT" (or "next big thing,"), a massively multiplayer horror-themed game. I saw very, very little of the game at this year's E3, but what I did see looked quite good, and an online horror game sounds like an intriguing prospect, regardless.
In the meantime, those of you who haven't already played Eternal Darkness have your work cut out for you.
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