Dracula who? Raziel and Kain all the way!

Crystal Dynamics, the company that began with platformers like Gex and Croc, always said that their most popular title, Soul Reaver, was much shorter than they planned it to be. The story the creators had thought of was way too expansive for a single game, so they decided to move the cut content to a sequel. Soul Reaver, quite a hit on the Playstation, was based on the Legacy of Kain games, for instance Blood Omen. In Soul Reaver you were Raziel, a Seraphim knight corrupted by the vampiric touch of Kain, who himself was human too, once. Anyway, in Soul Reaver Raziel wanted revenge on Kain, but at the same time, Raziel had to struggle with his new form, which was both blessing and curse. Soul Reaver was a 3rd person action title with a remarkably well plot and great depth, gameplay-wise too. This positive strategy is being continued in the sequel: Soul Reaver 2. Once again you are Raziel, and you continue your quest to crush your archnemesis.
Most striking evolution, of course, are the graphics. These are one of the best I’ve ever seen. Not only your surroundings are stunning, but especially character animation is quite gorgeous. Texturing and polygon count is great, but it were the faces that struck to me the most. Not only lipsynching is implemented, but much more. Frowning of eyebrows, independant animation of teeth, tongue, lips and eyelids,… The faces have a high amount of autonomously animated areas which make not only conversations (which are, considering the genre, relatively plentiful) but emotions as well very convincing. I hear you say : “Damn those Geforce 3 bastards are lucky, us laymen will see dead textures”, but I can immediately belay that notion: I tested the game on a plain old Geforce 2 MX. So fancy nFinite engines and vertex shaders aren’t necessary to fully enjoy Soul Reaver 2’s graphics. Another cool thing of Soul Reaver 2’s graphics is the fact that the engine can perform morphing: when Raziel went in “Spectral Mode” (a sort of outer dimension, a plane in which only vampires can reside) in Soul Reaver 1, the textures would just darken, but in Soul Reaver 2, things change more drastically. Structures bend in the most freakish bends and the environment will really become twisted and bizarre. In Soul Reaver 2, I saw the interior of a large gothic church actually morph like this, in real-time. The effect is simply mind-boggling.
The gameplay itself is largely the same. It still harbours the pretty-straightforward action approach, with the same awkward controls: the camera is independantly controlled from your movements (so it isn’t stuck in a set corner behind the character). Luckily there is a lock function, which will keep the cameramovement self-righting and your actions focussed on 1 enemy.
The thing that made Soul Reaver interesting was that next to the solid gameplay the story and atmosphere were absolutely smashing. Soul Reaver 2 seems to keep these good features, and it should be relieving to know that the excellent voice-cast has been kept.

Soul Reaver 2 is out in stores everywhere.


Links

> Soul Reaver 2 Review

> Official Soul Reaver Site