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By Contributing Writer Rob Pecknold Rating: Awesome Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an amazing game largely because from the moment you plop the game in your PlayStation for the first time to the moment you turn it off after the startling ending, you ARE Raziel. You live in his world; you become him. You're not playing a game anymore, you're living a legend. Soul Reaver is one of the most immersive games I've ever played, and it's also one of my favorite games of all time. The story is told in a similar way to Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, in which the game you are playing is a flashback of the actual events. When you enter a new area that progresses the story, you might hear Raziel say something like "I had no idea what I would find in the Tomb of Serafan, but the answer was surprising to say the least." This is good because it adds to the cinematic qualities of the title, but bad because it detaches you from the character a bit. It seems like instead of living his legacy you’re recalling his legacy. Also, there's only one ending, so it doesn't really matter if you complete all the glyph quests or find all the secrets. You begin the game in the spectral realm, a dark, twisted place where only the souls of dead vampires roam. From here, you must find your way into the material world (which mirrors the Spectral Realm), and begin your quest for redemption. When in the material realm, you can shift to the spectral realm at any time. Switching between realms brings out one of the most amazing special effects in the history of the PlayStation. If you're in an area with, say, a lot of columns or cliffs, in real-time you'll see those columns bend and twist in every direction and the cliffs will twist or move higher and lower into the sky. It's in this shifting between the spectral and material realms that brilliant puzzles emerge. Can't get to the other side of the moat in the material realm? Just switch to spectral, and a more than likely situation would be that a nearby column will bend or twist to within jumping distance. That is the most basic of the possible puzzles, but you get my drift. This level of interaction has never been seen before in an adventure of this sort, and I applaud Crystal Dynamics for taking that risk. It could have easily backfired had the puzzles that required plane-shifting become too monotonous, but they are fresh every time a new one comes along. The rest of the game's puzzles could have been packaged in a totally new game called Legacy of Tombs: Soul Raider. Remember in pre-school when you had to do those little block puzzles where you had to fit the right shape in the right hole? Little did we know at the time that the skills learned in this activity would come in handy in a video game years later! Besides plane-shifting and the same old Tomb Raider style block-pushing, there are also a few puzzles in the game that will make you feel like the maintenance crew of the game world by putting air pipes back together and things like that. Over the course of the game, Raziel gains abilities from devouring souls. These range from the cool (climbing walls and swimming) to the incredible (firing force projectiles and passing through solid objects). Like the plane-shifting special effects, the effect for firing a force projectile is an amazing sight to behold. As many things as there are to like in Soul Reaver, there are also some flaws. First off, in those same block puzzles I talked about earlier, there is quite a bit of clipping. It's only distracting because the rest of the game has almost no clipping. Also, the control when you have to throw a dazed enemy into a fire or onto spikes is slow and difficult. I've been hurt many times because I either couldn’t reach the fire in time or because I accidentally threw the vampire in the opposite direction due to the control. The last major flaw I noticed about this game was the fact that there are no load times. Though I may sound crazy when I say this, let me explain. Instead of what we think of a load time (with a special loading screen and a cute little graphic on it), there are insanely long tunnels you have to go through in Soul Reaver while the game loads the next area. Walking through a boring tunnel with the same boring textures on the wall is just as bad as an actual loading screen. The graphics in Soul Reaver are some of the best yet on the PlayStation. Places like the Nopraptor's Keep or the Pillars are just jaw-droppingly amazing, making you want to bear the loading tunnels to see what's next. The special effects are also amazing, as well as the animation on Raziel and the bosses. Special credit has to be given to GlyphX Incorporated for their work on the computer-generated intro. It has to be one of the most detailed and beautiful computer-generated scenes that I’ve ever seen, surpassing everything in Final Fantasy 7 and most other games as well. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver offers gamers lots of action, drama, and most importantly, fun. Sure, it's a year late. Sure, there are still loading times. But when a game is as involving and fun as Soul Reaver, those things just don't matter. Send your thoughts on this review to rob@mastergamer.com
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