Eternal Darkness was released on Nintendo's Gamecube console in 2002. Developed by Silicon Knights, it was originally planned for the Nintendo 64. It's a sprawling horror epic where time, sanity and even character are not immutable.

The game starts in fairly familiar survival horror territory: you are guiding a lone woman through an apparently deserted mansion in the dead of night. From this cliched starting point sprawls a third person action / horror adventure that span's multiple timeline's and some twelve different playable characters. There are nod's to some famous horror writer's along the way, perhaps most notably that good old racist agoraphobe H.P. Lovecraft.

Notably, Silicon Knights went beyond the horror 'gross out' and added a far scarier 'sanity meter' to proceedings. Without going into to much detail if your character is repeatedly exposed to too much horror he or she will begin to lose their sanity. This can have interesting effects. For example, when I first played the game (in 2002) I repeatedly got a message telling me that my memory card was faulty. The picture began to degrade, and the furniture of all of the rooms that my character entered was stuck to the ceiling. It took me far to long to realise that it was all 'fake' and was an intentional part of the game.

While the above effect diminishes with repeated games it's a great way of wrong-footing you as you play, leaving you with the feeling that literally anything can happen. I first played the game inside a conservatory as a thunder storm raged outside and it was extremely effective!

The game can be picked up for as little as £7 or £8 today and it's well worth it. Just play it with the lights on.