Welcome to The Ten Reasons, where I discuss ten reasons why I like or dislike a game. This month, all you’ll get are reasons why I like a game, as I finish my discussion of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube. Feel free to read last month’s discussion of the game, if you haven’t already.
Reasons Why I Like Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Or: I’m having a wonderful time, but I’d rather be whistling in the dark.
1. Maximillian Roivas
One of the game’s characters is Maximillian Roivas, a late 1700s colonist. As you can see, he’s one of those old, fat rich guys who wore powdered wigs. Not your typical videogame hero, by any means.
Now, a lot of people disagree with me, but I think it’s good that they had Max as a character. Sure, he’s fat and slow, but I think it adds a level of realism to the game. In the Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider games, the hero constantly performs Olympian athletic feats without ever needing to stop. In Eternal Darkness, the fat guy can’t run more than twenty feet before he has to stop to catch his breath. Which one is more realistic?
That question wasn’t rhetorical, by the way. The answer is Eternal Darkness. Way to go.
2. Max Goes Crazy
Cut to 1:47 for the good stuff.
Speaking of Maximillian Roivas, at the end of his chapter, he gets locked in an asylum and goes completely insane. He then delivers one of the greatest videogame monologues I’ve ever heard. Major, major props to Max’s voice actor for his performance on this monologue.
Man, the next time someone upsets me, I’m going to yell, “May the rats eat your eyes!” at them. It will totally freak them out.
3. Great Lines
That is a horrible thing for your grandfather to say to you, isn’t it?
Speaking of “May the rats eat your eyes!”, this game has some other really good lines. I happen to go for the quasi-philosophical stuff, and I’d like to share them with you. Perhaps you may want to take a moment and reflect on them…or just skip ahead to the next reason. No biggie.
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Evil is a perspective which no longer concerns me, Luther.
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Nothing short of a miracle will keep him alive…and there haven’t been one of those in a long time.
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Dreams. Modern psychology offers only unproven theories. Some see them as the meaningless tossing and turning of a brain settling into a restful sleep. Others see them as laden with symbols of our unconscious desires. To still others, dreams represent the upwelling of the archetypes, normally hidden deep within the recesses of the human collective unconscious. Of one thing I am certain: after a brush with the Ancients, our dreams metamorphosize into nightmares….
4. Bathtub Scene
Speaking of nightmares (why am I including transitions for everything this month?), some people think the best scene of the game is the bathtub scene. If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, watch the movie above. In case you need convincing, it involves a woman naked in a bathtub….
Did you watch the movie yet? Good. I won’t talk about it here, in order to avoid ruining the surprise, but you can see that it’s on the same level of awesomeness as the Max’s crazed monologue scene.
5. Alex is Badass
Alex does not take any crap from policemen.
Speaking of Alex, she’s one of my favorite characters in the game. Not only is she pretty good-looking, but she’s also a total badass. Call me dominatrix-whipped if you will, but I like women with an extremely high level of self confidence. Probably because I’m not too confident myself.
Wait, what the hell? Since when do I spill secrets in this column? Next thing you know, I’ll start talking about how, the first time I kissed a girl, I missed her mouth and ended up grazing her eyeball. Holy cow, that was embarrassing. I mean, she says it’s OK, and she swears that I kissed her cheek, not her eye, but I know she’s lying. It’s really nice of her to lie to try to avoid hurting my feelings, though, isn’t it? Christine’s a nice girl. Which is why I wanted to kiss her in the first place.
6. Ellia
Speaking of kissing girls, one of the characters in this game is Ellia, an ancient Cambodian courtesan, although they call her a “dancing girl” to avoid controversy. For those of you who don’t know, in ancient times, they had women called courtesans. They were pretty much the only women who were educated and allowed to act freely in the same way men were. They also had regular sex with aristocrats in exchange for expensive gifts, which is why the aristocrats liked them so much and granted them so much freedom—besides the fact that they were the only women who could hold intelligent conversations. Glorified prostitutes, or the most liberated women of their time? Scholars disagree.
Anyway, Ellia is a courtesan, which carries a lot of potential problems with it. But to Silicon Knights’ credit, they completely avoid all of the problems, and just present Ellia as a kinda smart/cool half-naked girl who lived a long time ago. Good for them for taking the high road with this character. It’s a shame, though, that only two of the playable characters in this game are female. It would have been interesting to see what they could have done with other female characters.
7. Mantorok
Speaking of characters that I wouldn’t mind seeing more of, I wouldn’t mind seeing more creatures along the lines of Mantorok. Mantorok is a cool-looking, big ol’ nasty beast. He’s purple and has about twenty gaping mouths, along with twenty giant eyeballs. That picture doesn’t give an accurate depiction of how awesomely nasty he looks.
There are three god-monsters in this game that are supposed to be on a par with Mantorok, but they’re not. One’s a giant jellyfish, one is a crab, and the third is a green four-handed weird thing. None of them are terrifying beasts like Mantorok, which is why he pwns them all in the special ending of the game. In conclusion, Mantorok pwns. Go Mantorok!
8. Trapper Dimension
Speaking of things that pwn, in this game, you can get sent to another dimension. Woo-eee-oooo! Spooky! You get trapped in this dimension FOREVER, unless you can escape!
Which, of course, you do in about a minute, but it’s still a cool little place. I’d hate to be trapped there for all eternity, but taking a break from reality and just chilling in the Trapper Dimension every now and then is nice.
9. Chakrams
Speaking of things that are nice, I’m not sure you can see it in the picture, but in this game, you get to use chakrams as a weapon! I’m not sure what chakrams are, but they’re cool-looking weapons—they look sort of like circular boomerangs. Of course, they don’t come back to you after you throw them, but weapon-boomerangs don’t come back to you after you throw them, either. I read that in the Animorphs book where Cassie randomly goes to Australia, so it must be true!
10. Michael Has Tons of Weapons
Speaking of weapons, on the second-to-last level of the game, you play as a character named Michael—awesome name, by the way—who has a ridiculously large amount of weapons. He’s got an axe, two handguns, a machine gun, and grenades.
It’s funny that Michael is armed to the teeth, because there’s really no reason for it. He’s just a firefighter. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think firefighters need to use grenades all that much. Although that could make for some interesting scenarios….
Woman: The orphanage is on fire! Somebody help us!
Michael: Have no fear! I’m a fireman!
Woman: Oh, thank God! Please save the orphans!
Michael: I have to put that fire out first. Grenade time!
(Michael pulls out a grenade.)
Woman: What are you doing? Save the children!
Michael: Fire in the hole!
(Michael throws the grenade at the burning house. The grenade explodes and the house crumbles to the ground.)
Michael: (doing a victory dance) All right! The fire’s gone! Who’s the man? Who’s the man? I’m the man! All right! Uh huh!
Woman: All the orphans are dead! You evil monster!
Michael: Evil is a perspective which no longer concerns me, Woman.
Woman: May the rats eat your eyes!
That’s it for this month! I have no idea why I used transitions for every item this month. That’s kind of weird. See you next time, folks!
I really enjoyed your article! Well done! It was funny, informative and great fun to read! My regret is that I missed out not playing this game when I had my GC, mark my words, I’ll find a way! Keep writing my friend x
I’m way late to the party here, but I was looking for screens of one of my favorite games and stumbled onto this cool article. Two things I wanted to needlessly point out: Maximillian’s last name is Roivas, and the reason Michael is “armed to the teeth” is because he’s a firefighter in the Gulf War, and when his helicopter crashes, he lands near the corpses of a bunch of soldiers. Yoink, thanks for the machine gun!
Weird–I definitely wrote “Roivas”. Looks like spellcheck thought it knew better than me. We’ll have to fix that!
Doesn’t Michael only loot weapons from the corpse of ONE soldier, though? Either way, I found it amusing that Michael has way more weapons then needed. After a lot of levels with limited or useless weapons (such as Peter’s camera flash weapon), it was an interesting change of pace to see a level with tons of powerful weapons.