Mzo

Oh Silicon Knights! You were pretty good there for a while, with your Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Rectum! Then you ruined Metal Gear and started off the Too Human trilohahahahaha I cannot even finish that. Basically what I am trying to say is

NOW YOU ARE AWFUL

But back then you weren't! With the magic of my magical pile of magic shame and the magic of my magically continuously decaying gray matter I can travel to the distant past and experience this magical game again for the first time ever.

The first thing I noticed was that I could run this shit in progressive scan and weird, slightly wall-eyed widescreen mode on my Wii!? Way to future-proof your ass, that is awesome! The next thing I noticed was that this game is still RAD.

The well-written story and great pacing grabs on to your junk and doesn't let go, leading to the whole "one more chapter!" bullshit game you like to play with yourself and then it's 2 in the morning and fuck you have work tomorrow, although technically that means you have work later on today but only pricks point shit like that out. You are forced to align yourself with a Lovecraftian Old God type early on which will have repercussions throughout your game, including the dominant color in the RBG rock-paper-scissors spell system and the attributes of the bulk of the undead you will be fighting. To get the full story you'd need to use the magic of New Game Plus and chain all three game types one after the other. Actually, the whole plot with the Roivas family and their mansion is pretty Lovecraftian, they might as well be the Delapores living in Exham Priory with Nigger-man running around.

The combat is simplistic but fun, plus I really enjoyed how this game handles zombies: they're slow and stupid. Even your fattest, slowest character (Max and Roberto I am looking at you) can waddle up to one and lop off its head, making the zombie dramatically less effective at eating your brains. The range of weapons available from character to character is neat, but to be honest the blades are damned effective against everything, and a thing that cuts on one dude is pretty much the same as the thing that cuts on another. Still! Fun!

And how can I not mention what was basically the whole thing with this game, the sanity meter. As creatures lock on to you, the stress from their green-eyed ogling will cause you to slowly go insane and then, there really is no better way to say this, the game will fuck with you. Not with your little dude on the screen, but it will fuck with you, the player. And even though as far as this game is concerned I am a man from the future, it still managed to catch me off guard once or twice. Touché, Silicon Knights. You made Too Human so I still win.

If blue = good, red = bad, and green = dogshit awful, then:

Ulyaoth

- Good story told in bite-size chapters that really keep it moving along nicely.
- Fun combat system somewhat similar to Resident Evil, except here you don't move like a tank and feel like you can easily deal with zombies no matter what weapon you're using.
- Interesting spell system even if most spells are dumb and useless, but you will use the good ones like all the time.
- Story and game changes just a bit every time you choose a different alignment.
- HUGE gimmick with the whole sanity meter but damn, I liked it.

Chattur'gha

- No auto saving whatsoever, even between chapters. You MUST press start, go through the menus and then save REGULARLY or you will be FUCKED. I am really bad at doing this, which means I had to replay entire chapters at times. I am 100% sure that losing a lot of progress due to not saving is why I never beat this back in the day.
- Different characters have different attributes, and some just suck at the whole adventuring thing. I wish (in the most heterosexual way) that they could all be young, strong, Persian men.
- Giving your characters a hidden stamina bar so they get tired from running too long and have to take breathers? Isn't that FUN?
- AND magic regens by running around. Good combination, especially with the
- MASSIVE BACKTRACKING in some stages.

Xel'lotath

- Those fucking trap-laden hallways in the jungle temple areas can seriously go straight to hell. They ARE hell. You know what's worse? This, combined with the
- MERCILESS BACKTRACKING AUGH.
- The money I gave them when I bought this new at retail helped to fund Too Human.

Everyone should have their heads fucked with by Eternal Darkness at least once.