KYYYAAAAAA! Its the Halloween Countdown, Day 27

So there was a party today. It was pretty cool. Food and fun. At 6 sharp, my friend climbed up on the roof and we hung out with the chilly October air, then decided that rolling off the roof was a bad idea and found a ladder. Besides an epic Cranium battle to the death, a resounding game of Zombies, and a Mario Kart RACE OF FUCKING WIN, we decided that a lil survival horror game was in order. After some Smash Bros and Halo, I hooked the Wii back up and popped in Eternal Darkness, mentioned in an earlier post. For those who missed it: Eternal Darkness is a game from Silicon Knights (who made the first Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen), a game that's soaked in Lovecraftian goodness of good, evil, and EVIL MAGIC with a K. Its never the good kind of magick, since that kind always happens on the east coast (here, its Rhode Island, but it takes place in other times and locales like Cambodia).

This game is also the best game for fucking with its gamer. It doesn't just throw sound effects and cheap scares around with monsters and cut-scenes. No, this is not your father's survival horror. Besides an innovative (if unweildy at times) battle system that allows you to choose which parts of the creature you're attacking, the game also has something called insanity effects. The creatures of ED are a lot like some of the creatures and places in Lovecraftian stories: they cause insanity in mere humans like ourselves. In ED, you must not only not die in combating creatures from beyond, but also finish them off. If you do not (or refuse to, like some hardcore gamers), your sanity drops until the game decides to make your go insane. Like tilting and jostling the camera for instance. Or having a fly crawl across your screen. Or making it look like you die, but instead faking you out and resetting your position by a minute.

With my bf's request, I decided to choose the green rune (one of the first levels has you play as a roman centurion, where you choose which dark god to serve that dictates a specific ending and path the game will take; there are 3 initial paths, and to see the true ending, you must play through all three and then a fourth time to get it). According to the information I recieved, having the green one has the better insanity effects.

With around 30+ ppl watching, I delve into the first "real" chaper (the first one where the effects would be enabled) and start by kicking ass. By avoiding to do the finishing moves, I accelerated my inasanity effects, which started with a tilting camera angle, my character hallucinating, and whispering voices. It was awsome. Evenutally, every noise we heard, even if it wasn't in the game, we said was an insanity effect. I almost got someone to believe my door slamming was an effect (until someone spoiled it for me T_T). XD

My hightlight of the night was me fighting a horde of monsters, then walking into a room, only to have a literal BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH show up. Some sort of compuer error splashes onto the screen with the usual garble of computer speak and the "press any key to continue" at the bottom, only to flash back to the game, with my character muttering that she's "ok". I didn't curse as much as when we were playing MK, and someone bullet bashed me outta 3rd to 8th. Another effect had me die a horrible death because my controller stopped working. XD Fun fun stuff. I kept healing, hoping my head woould explode, but, alas, that did not occur. I had to stop at the end of that chapter, but I can't wait til I get back to it. ^^ I love Insanity Effects. I'll prolly run late with these last few entires as I scramble for article posting goodness, but all in all, this October's been pretty great.

*I'm Ok, Lunies...I'm--BANG*