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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 Preview
Stephen Leyton
00/12/0000
Crystal Dynamics look set to suprise us all over once again.
Eidos and Crystal Dynamics are preparing to steal the show with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2, and if itās as half as good as the first one weāll be very impressed indeed.
Every time we see Soul Reaver 2 it always manages to impress us, the Soul Reaver team really are putting a tremendous amount of effort with this one, it also seams like theyāre not being rushed to complete it like with the first game which hit the PlayStation. According to Executive Producer Andrew Bennett, an early design principle was put into place before development began, which is that all of the team members must keep the game running at 60 frames per second at any point during development. If and when a section of the game dips below 60 fps, a certain set of code would show up on the screen, which would then tell the relevant programmer to redo whatever work caused that particular drop.
Crystal Dynamics have used the same full streaming system, which was used in the previous game whereby once you load your game up for the first time, there is no more loading thereafter. At least three rooms/locations are loaded into memory at any one time. For examples Raziel can enter a room or corridor, or even run into a total new location without any loading time what so ever. Raziel can even switch between the Material to the Ethereal Worlds, without any loading time at all.
As soon as you see this game you can easily notice the graphical increase over the first in the series. Raziel now comprises of 3000 polygons, compared to the 300 which he was made up of in the PlayStation version. He comes complete with moving eyes, facial expressions and the tiniest bits of detail, which make this game shine ahead of the rest. The backgrounds in every level boast 10 times the textures that the PlayStation version had, they look truly stunning.
The combat system is more unique and deeper this time, the enemies are more intelligent, and placed more efficiently, making it near impossible to just avoid them, which you could in the first game. When Raziel approaches a set of enemies, the player must locate and destroy the leader of the back, because now they travel in large numbers. It you take out the aggressive leader first it will effect how the other enemies attack you; you may weaken their defenses by taking out their leader and in some cases they may even run away. Raziel now has even more fighting moves; some of them resemble those seen in a fighting game. Raziel can deliver high and low hits, of which the enemies react with location specific movement. Raziel can strafe and duck attacks, when the enemies are targeting him. As before Soul Reaver comes complete with some very special finishing moves, the latest one we saw was when Raziel went in for the full-on attack. He grabbed the enemy with his hands and ripped the body in two, chucking the parts either side of him. Iāve got to admit we were mightily impressed.
This is one game I can't wait to get my dirty hands on, hopefully our guys will try this one out at E3. So we will let you know then what we think.
