Video Game Tribute #11: Soul Reaver

Two words. Soul. Reaver. Every time I hear those words I get tingles. I remember playing Soul Reaver for the first time on my Dreamcast and being blown away. The visuals were amazing, the story was original, the music was atmospheric and the gameplay was simple yet involved.

I imagine a lot of people don't know much about this game... well, gamers do, but this isn't really a gamer blog, so I doubt the majority of people reading this (i.e. all 10 of em') know what I'm talking about... and have probably already lost interest... I'm a little bored myself. The basic plot of the game has to do with Vampires (which is hot right now, so maybe I just upped my numbers) elder gods, time travel, um... swords? Well, it won't make much sense if I explain it... it's the second game in a series titled "Legacy of Kain" and it follows a vampire named Raziel who was sentenced to death for out-evolving his master by growing wings... after being thrown into a vortex of some kind, he wakes up practically decomposed as a Wraith who has to devour souls to live... from here you go on a quest to kill your master and all of your Vampire brethren... the plot actually becomes incredibly complicated as you go through the series, but this game is pretty much about revenge...

The main character, Raziel, is what drew me to this game... he's just a bad looking dude. So when I started playing the game, I came to realize just how awesome an anti-hero he really was. He kills vampires, taunts them, then swallows there souls! Yeah, Mario never did anything that awesome... What I found interesting though is that despite how cool the action was, there was a huge emphasis on puzzles... more specifically, moving blocks. Like, Raziel has all the bad-man power in the world... and he's walking around pushing and pulling large blocks to solve puzzles. If you ask me, Ancient Egypt could have used someone like him to build the pyramids... He seems to excel in that area more than he does killing things. I think by the time you finish playing this game you will have pushed enough blocks to build the Pyramids of Giza about 3 times over... now that's efficiency you can't buy! We seriously need to consider a half-decayed vampiric soul-eater army to get this economy back on its feet! Hard work for dirst cheap, you just... I don't know... pay them with souls? We got enough of those floating around... like, in China.

I'd like to see those Twilight Vampires build a pyramid,
~ Mark