Halloween's Serenade It's Halloween time again, so the ghouls and ghosts and other horribly difficult games come out of the graveyards or Capcom or whatever; and that means it's time for all good little internet nerds to reflect on moderately Halloween-related video games and media. I don't review breakfast cereals, so I can't do a lengthy diatribe on Boo Berry; similarly, I only mention movies when I'm really surprised or impressed, so I can't slap up four weeks of reviews of horrible horror movies (Uncle Sam: lots of dead bodies, not at all Halloween-related aside from the horror, and Shaft), so I'm left with the one medium I most often dabble in, video games, and seeing what they have to offer for the Halloween crowd. There are a lot of Halloweeny games out there, and Capcom can be blamed for a lot of them. Ghouls and Ghosts, Ghosts and Goblins, Ghost to Glory, Darkwing Duck, Demon's Crest, Resident Evil, Street Fighter II: Darkstalkers Edition: basically, Capcom seems to like its spooky games. And who can forget Konami's Castlevania series, a group of often excellent games that feature a bestiary that appears to be what happens when the monster mash pukes all over itself? But no, for a truly Halloween experience, one must choose a game that does not just contain 17,000 versions of Death, but some genuine scares. That's what Halloween is all about, its not about watching Ernest Scared Stupid eleven times straight, it's about being frightened, your adrenaline spiking when some jerk in a wolf costume jumps out of the bushes, or when some neighborhood kids smear your car with dog pooh and you're late for work because you refuse to drive a vehicle that smells like a steer and buffalo are starting to find your car attractive and damn you kids get off my lawn! Yes, the game I chose to most exemplify Halloween is one of the most neglected games in this generation of systems, a game I picked up for twelve bucks within a year of its release, a game that features a big, fat, crazy guy with a flintlock. Yes, folks, let's have a big round of applause for our first guest, she's taken a lot of time out of her schedule of not being sold to be here, here comes... Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem Do you like how I gave that big build-up to the supposedly surprising choice, even though it's the title of this article, so it'd be nearly impossible to have not guessed it? Actually, you know what, screw it, maybe I'll do a review of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time. It's a 2-D side-scrolling adventure game where you play as Captain Benjamin Sisko aboard the federation space station Deep Space Nine. What's not scary about that!? There's a shape shifter! Oh, fine, back to Eternal Darkness. The first major thing of note about Eternal Darkness is that it is a Nintendo game. This means the heroine of the story, Alexandra Roivas (red rum savior), is in the same boat as Link, Mario, Kirby, and the entire cast of Pokemon. This marks a dramatic change from the traditional Nintendo character, as Alexandra thinks nothing of stabbing blood red zombies to redeath, whereas Link... thinks nothing... of... stabbing... Well it's different! It's a much darker world in general for a Nintendo game, what with main characters dropping like flies and killing innocent people and what have you. And the world of ED is of particular note, because it is pretty much not an original creation. You could say Hyrule has its basis somewhere in Middle Earth, or that the Mushroom Kingdom or Pop Star are the direct result of Shigeru Miyamoto fever dreams, but the (close to reality) world of Eternal Darkness is most heavily influenced by the Cthulhu Mythologies. You may have heard of said mythologies from various sources on the web, random art or Penny Arcade, for instance, but if you're completely scratching your head when I mention Ancient Gods and multi-tentacled beasts that the mind cannot comprehend, I'd recommend picking up H.P. Lovecraft's famous works of terror. Though I wouldn't recommend running the old dog's works through MS Word's spell checker, it might lead to... unforeseen consequences. I could preach on the Cthulhu Mythologies from here until doomsday, (that's when Cthulhu will say hi, by the by) but what's really important about any game that involves zombie slaying is... well, pretty much just the zombie slaying. Zombie slaying is the number one element a video game should contain. I can name five games, right off the bat, that would have been better with zombie slaying, (Super Mario Bros., Karaoke Revolution, Tetris, Katamari Damacy, Primal Rage) while my favorite games inevitably involve zombie slaying (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man: Anniversary Collection, Final Fantasy Adventure). I can think of very few games that simultaneously involve zombie destruction and major suckage. Friday the 13th had zombies and a fatty throwing rocks, so that doesn't count. Second to the zombie killing ability of your main character is gameplay, or the ease with which you may slay zombies. And, being a fine Nintendo game, Alexandria and her spiritual ancestors play perfectly. There are actually 12 playable characters in this game, though it's mostly a trick of the eye, as the main reason you control different characters is to travel through time, and say, explore a monastery during the Spanish Inquisition as an actual monk, as opposed to a 21st century gal. But whether you're wielding a gladius, flintlock, tulwar, or grenade launcher, it's all the same easy control scheme. R locks onto a part of your enemy's body, and B swings or shoots that weapon at said body part. The end. You'll be hacking the legions of the undead to ribbons in no time. Actually, quite literally leaving enemies in pieces is the name of the game, as most zombies continue to shamble towards you even after losing key body parts, such as the usually necessary head. There's also a separate button to "finish" an enemy, a move very vital to your health, but with it being a separate button, you don't have to worry about accidentally performing an animation likely to get you killed in a zombie pile-on situation. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, released well after this game, had a similar feature, but used an attack button for finishing its undead hoards, and while this has no bearing on Eternal Darkness at all, I'm just saying it because I'm obviously not bitter about the 30,000 times Prince was killed by some giant with an axe because the damn moron was half-way across the room with a desperate need to not attack the imminent threat but plunge his blades into a very dead body as he himself quickly joined the corpse in death. Nope, not bitter at all about which game gets a sequel... The game isn't all about zombie killing, though. There's a lot of adventure elements here, such as learning and using magic that rarely comes in handy (yes, it solves that one puzzle in the "dungeon" it's found, and then it solves that one finale puzzle in the final dungeon, but that's about it), picking up random objects and then placing them in random places so as to open a door that is apparently triggered by the exact weight of the only moveable thing in the room, and gaining new and better weapons from random NPCs that just happen to be hanging around zombie-crowded caverns. Can always tell the adventure games by the existence of that "examine" button. But there is definitely one element to this game, and the major element that sticks this game into the "scary as hell" category that earns it its Halloween review, and that's the Insanity Meter. Most games have a health bar and some sort of weapon/magic bar, but this game, as of the second level, gives you a full color read out on just how nuts your main character is going. As your lil' warrior drops insanity points, things slowly start to go haywire for both the player and the playee. I literally jumped the first time I, in desperate need of health, cast a life-up spell, and was then horrified to watch my hero's head explode. Nothing worse for a player than losing all of your progress to a rouge spell. It was all a trick, of course, as my zombie killer was actually okay, but it was the first of many effects that are meant to drive the poor player batty, or at least cause major annoyances. Afraid of having your memory card erased, thus destroying all progress you've made in the game? ED will simulate a "save error/delete" in order to con the player, and will even go as far as simulating the infamous MS blue screen of death. That'll drive you nuts... And, please, don't get me started on the suicide body in the bathroom. I can tell you about that now, and it's not going to make a bit of difference. You've been warned. The major downside of the insanity meter is, unfortunately, the insanity meter. As the insanity effects are the major selling point to this game, it's nigh impossible to go into this one not expecting some sort of craziness to happen, and when you've got a little meter telling you when your sanity is dipping into the in- category, well, you might just start expecting some weirdness. There were a few times I, in my own playing of the game, entered a room, and found myself soundly swarmed by enemies I could not defeat, or, for some reason, my pixilated avatar was shrinking. Did I freak out at these obviously mad occurrences? Not for a second, because I could plainly see my insane-o meter was in the red. And did I experience many insanity effects on my first play-through? Again, not really, because being low on sanity is dangerous to your health (hey, just like in real life), so the minute the green meter hit the mid point, I found a way to refuel, and fast. It was only on later play-throughs, when I was less afraid of being killed by what's around that next turn, that I actually enjoyed and allowed the gimmick of this game to take shape. Basically, the only thing working against this really neat feature is that it's constantly screaming "Hey, here I am! Expect the unexpected! Be afraid! Wooo," and you should know from carnival haunted houses that that somehow doesn't ever work. Forgiving that one flaw, I could go on for another sixteen pages about the joys of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The excellent voice acting, well told, two millennia old story, its nods to all sorts of mythology, the fatty with a flintlock; it's all pretty damn awesome. If you have a Gamecube, do yourself a favor and pick this bad boy up, slap it in your ‘cube, and have a good, scary time. And kill some damn, dirty zombies. Final Rating: 90% of one damn scary looking llama. BRAAAAAAINS! Also, Game'in. But a lot of brains!

All non-copyrighted material is copyright 2005 Robert Pollack. Reproduction of most anything without Robert's express permission in whole or in part is prohibited by law. Ain't that a kick in the pants?