I’m not a fan of survival horror games. I’ve just never really been able to play them. So, when I give my best story nod to i Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem you should know that I don’t do so lightly. It helps that I’m a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft and while Eternal Darkness doesn’t use the Mythos proper the world and metaphysical elements are strikingly similar. Denis Dyack and the crew at Silicon Knights managed to weave together a compelling mystery that stretches across several time periods into a single cohesive and engrossing narrative of cosmic horror. The twelve playable characters spanning over 2000 years of human history serve as the vector for an intricate plot that always ties back to the present day (2000, at the time) in a surprisingly effortless approach that despite the breadth of the action is never overwhelming.
This is problem one of the best games of the last generations and deserves more recognition and maybe a new game set in the same world. I’d love to see what type of horrors Silicon Knights can conjure up with today’s hardware.
