Survival horror game for the N64. Very basic plot about a young woman that comes to her grandfathers mansion to find out why he disappeared. It turns into a journy through the mansion's history from the POV of about 8 different characters throughout time as they try to prevent one of three Chuthluesqe Old Gods from entering our realm. The gameplay was decent, the graphics weren't anything special, but the story was great. It had some decent replayability since the enemies take on different qualities depending on which of the three Old Gods is trying to manifest.
The game has a sanity meter and when it it gets low crazy things start happening. One time my friend noticed a fly walking in the corner of the screen and when I went to shoo it away we started to hear buzzing and the whole screen filled with flies. Another time I was zoning into a new room and the game reset to the title screen! Both times the game screen returned to where we were after 5-10 seconds and the character shouted "This....can't.....be......happening!" It was a totally memorable experience that makes this my favorite survival horror game of all time.
OP - FUCK. YES. I loved the hell out of Eternal Darkness.
Dandai - I'm not as big of a survival horror junkie, but the nods to Lovecraft, horror-mystery elements and the settings still put it as one of my favorite games of all time, console or PC. I'll confess I haven't played it recently so I'm not sure how it's aged, but I don't think you'd be disappointed.
The multi-characters century-spanning story was an amazing idea that for some reason was almost never imitated. The sanity thing was a good idea too, but I felt the execution was a bit lacking. The thing is that there is a visible sanity gauge so when it's low you know that every three or four room you enter you will have some sanity related event. Kinda kills the surprise factor. Also, the game's mechanism to regain sanity forced you to execute monsters, monster that respawned so when you are trying to solve puzzles and search for clues around you have to fight and fight again to maintain some sanity. You would think that at the fifth time the character enters the same room where it is possible to run past the same three monsters, fear would turn into routine... Anyway... I also remember voicing this complain in the past and someone rebutting it, but I don't remember what the rebuttal was. And even if I got frustrated with the game and did not complete it, I think it's definitely worth playing as it remains, to my knowledge, without heir in its storytelling structure.
This is also one of my favorite games of all time and I think the previous descriptions don't give it justice. For someone that hasn't played it yet what's been written above somewhat spoils it because it can be quite the experience. It was a Gamecube game and not N64 which might impact some people's desire to play it. Gamecube games can also play on the Wii no problem if you can find an older copy. Or emulators would probably be the best choice.
As said it's a Lovecraftian Old God story that has the player in control of several different characters that span centuries. As the game goes on the stories of all the characters interweave. It plays similar to the classic Resident Evil games in both combat and exploration/puzzle solving. Because the graphics are dated now it might not have the same effect but it was one of the scariest games I've ever played. Definitely a must to play at night in a dark room. Atmosphere was absolutely perfect. I never had gameplay issues with the sanity meter or retracing too many steps as Szlia said. The sanity mechanic was exceptional for its time. Compared to modern day games the implementation of sanity might feel a little dated but it was what made the experience what it was. I'll put the sanity stuff in spoilers because it wasn't a hugely popular game and knowing all about sanity before playing it could completely ruin the game. If you're remotely interested try it out and see for yourself without spoiling it. If you don't care read away.
Sanity is a stat resource that accompanies your health bar. As it decreases crazy shit starts happening. If you're at max sanity everything looks and plays normally. As sanity starts dropping the screen might slowly become off kilter and everything you see starts becoming insane. Shadows start moving, walls start bleeding, statue busts in a mansion start rotating their heads and following your movement, creepy apparitions appearing etc. When you are severely depleted of sanity the really crazy, psychological, 4th wall breaking stuff starts happening. Really experience-ruining examples follow:
Sometimes a fly might appear to be on your screen and make you get off the couch swat it only to realize the game's just fucking with you. The effect only really works in the dark but caught me.
Sometimes as mentioned above it'll show a glitched out screen and make some strange hardware breaking noises then reset the game to the title screen making you think it was a glitch and you lost all your saved progress.
One of my favorites was when you zone into a new area and there's a few zombies around your character and it's flashing the "Controller has been unplugged from Port 1" or whatever the actual message was if you actually unplugged the controller. But as it's saying that the zombies just start closing in on your character and rip him apart. One of my good friends completely flipped his shit and dashed to the console thinking his character was about to die.
There's plenty of different ways it does these kinds of things. Some are scripted to always happen once in the story and others are random. The random ones happen rarely enough that they don't often repeat but you will probably see some repeats in a single playthrough which somewhat diminishes it and as you start expecting them you start to realize when something crazy is happening.
Great story, interesting plot devices/twists, great atmosphere, pretty creepy/scary moments. Just a solid adventure Resident Evil style gameplay with a cool twist. Now I'm going to need to replay it and can't wait for a sequel.
How the fuck did I fuck that up? When I typed N64 my mind weasclearly picturing that little blue cube since the game we always took out to pop ED in was Super Smash Bros Melee.
After some google-fu it appears there is no blue GameCube, only indigo ones (the official name for their shade of purple). The crazy thing though is that if you GIS GameCube you will see that half of them are blue, but that's probably a colorimetry/white balance issue.
$50 for the 12 episodes with them saying you get 2 episodes free. So they are going to charge $5 per episode. Seems pretty silly to set your price that high for initial funding. I loved the shit out of Eternal Darkness, but I can't see myself backing for more than the $5 for the pilot episode to make sure it isn't some kind of flop.
