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Cthulhu Continues Gaming Heritage From Dark Corners
Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with the creators of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, as the long-in-development survival horror PC FPS, based on the Chaosium RPG, in turn based on HP Lovecraft's 'weird fiction' writings, discusses its setting ("The majority of the action takes place in the sea port of Innsmouth, the setting for the famous Lovecraft story 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'"), and uniquely Lovecraftian gameplay traits: ("The concept of Jack's mental health and its slow degradation is one of the core concepts in Dark Corners of the Earth. This loss in sanity will risk the development of specific mental conditions; these include shaking, blurred vision, hallucinations, dizziness, and panic.") As for its previous videogame heritage, Lovecraftian influences seem particularly noticeable in id's Quake series - but if in doubt, you can always Cthuugle for it.
Or, you can play the game that FIRST implemented "sanity effects" (AFAIK, anyway), the action/adventure/RPG hybrid Eternal Darkness for Gamecube.
Each time you get into an enemy encounter, your sanity level goes down. With only a little bit of your sanity gone, you'll start to hear voices. As your sanity dwindles, your perspective will tilt, your character will start mumbling to himself, and you'll see insects crawling on the screen. At fully bonkers, the game will try to trick you out of your gourd, making you think you enter a room and do something in it, only to find yourself back at the entrance, making your appear to die after taking a restorative potion, having your limbs fall off during a battle, and even a few "real world" plays, such as telling you your controller has lost connection with the console, and making the game go to a solid black with "VIDEO" in green letters at the top of the screen.
Slap onto that the fact that it has an involving story, the presentation is very moody and atmospheric, the voice acting is actually quite good, AND the gameplay is tight, and you have quite the winner on your hands.
"Each time you smile, it'll only last awhile. Life may be scary, but it's only temporary."
or you could go even FURTHER back to Metal Gear Solid, and the fight with Psycho Mantis who does some nifty tricks like the ones described here. On a side note, when Mantis blackens out the screen it says HIDEO in the corner. (Hideo Kojima's shameless self-promotion strikes again.) While the rest of the game does not feature these insanity tricks, I think this is definitely where the ED crew got some of their ideas.
Long enough for Old Man Murray to have done a story on it, even...
It's great to see the sanity element actually injected into a video game, but there is no other inspiration for it than the original Call of Cthulhu role playing game. (For the kids, that's the one with the dead trees, writing utensils, and funny dice.*)
*Optional equipment including tables, chairs, caffeine-laden beverages, greasy potato chips, soap, girls....