Showing posts with label PSX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PSX. Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Retro Game Review | Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999)

A long, long time ago I wrote an article about my favourite retro games to play around the holidays and one of the games I featured was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Why? Honestly, there’s no good reason other than the fact that I first played it around Christmas of 1999. I didn’t look for it under the tree or pine over it in gaming magazines that year or anything. I just went to the rental store for something to play on a random December weekend, snagged a copy of Soul Reaver for the PlayStation because the graphics looked cool, and that’s it!

Many years later I would finally pickup a copy of my very own, but for the PC, and since then I install it during my Christmas break and at least play a few hours, if only to try and relive those memories for a little while.

It occurred to me that I had never really reviewed or talked about the game except to say that I liked playing it by Christmas light every few years, so I thought that might be a fun article to post!

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is the sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, which released on the Sony PlayStation in 1996 and on the PC the following year. It was developed by Silicon Knights, who also did Eternal Darkness on the GameCube, and published by Crystal Dynamics, most notable for developing Tomb Raider.

Blood Omen was a top-down action RPG, which featured the titlular character Kain, a nobleman who has been killed and turned into a vampire. The story follows Kain as he seeks revenge for his affliction by destroying the nine pillars of Nosgoth – the fictional world the Legacy of Kain games are set in – only to find himself reveling in his new vampiric evolution.

The game was popular enough, mostly because of its adult theme and violence, all of which garnered it a sequel. Crystal Dynamics began development of “Legacy of Kain 2” immediately after the release of Blood Omen, but legal woes with Silicon Knights caused delays in the release and forced Crystal Dynamics to remove certain features and elements from the game. Ultimately, they broke through the legal issues and were able to publish Soul Reaver in the summer of ’99.

Despite having some of the game elements disabled, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a fully-featured title set many years after the events of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. SPOILER ALERT! Kain, after defeating eight of the nine pillars’ guardians, came to the realization that he was the ninth guardian. In order to restore Nosgoth, Kain had to sacrifice himself, but would not. Instead Nosgoth began a slow decline into ruin, while Kain and his vampire brood continued to flourish and evolve. One of his most trusted lieutenants is Raziel, the main character of Soul Reaver.

In an amazing opening cutscene you get some of this backgroud story and witness Kain’s jealousy and aggression when Raziel evolves and grows wings – a gift Kain himself has not yet been given. In a fit of rage, Kain destroys Raziel’s wings and throws him into a swirling vortex to toil in agony for all eternity.

1500 years later, the Elder God of Nosgoth resurrects Raziel as a Wraith – a creature of the “spirit realm”, which can devour the souls of the dead. He gives Raziel the choice to hunt down and kill Kain, both out of vengeance and to restore the pillars of Nosgoth, ending the world’s decay. Thus, he names Raziel his Soul Reaver – which is a reference to the name of Kain’s sword – and sets him loose on the dying lands with his new purpose.

Sounds incredible, right! Well, it is. The story of the Legacy of Kain games is absolutely top tier. The gameplay would also become a very important part of what the series would become and that starts here, with Soul Reaver.

Unlike Blood Omen, which was top-down, Soul Reaver is in full 3D. It’s an action game with puzzle aspects. You can move Raziel through the 3D environment of both the spirit realm and Nosgoth, which adds extra depth to all the environments of the game as they can typically be navigated in both dimensions.

At its core, the game is really a Metroidvania. I can sense a lot of “gamers” just picked up their torches and took to the comment section to ream me out!

Metroidvania is a portmanteau of the titles Metroid and Castlevania, both known for their non-linear action adventure titles, where the player is placed in an “open world” of sorts – not just moving left to right through stages – but traversing back and forth through a sustained environment, unlocking new areas by getting new abilities or finding keys.

At first Raziel can really only shift between realms and devour souls, but soon gains abilities like phasing through gates that block his path or climbing certain walls. This allows him to find his way through the dying Nosgoth to hunt and kill Kain.

After encountering Kain for the first time, Raziel gains his main weapon – the soul reaver itself. Kain attempts to use his century old blade to kill Raziel again, but instead the weapon is destroyed and its essence becomes merged with Raziel as an ethereal extension of his arm. As the game progresses, you can gain new abilities to help in battling the vampire hordes that languish in the world, as well as upgrade the soul reaver.

The gameplay can honestly be a little repetitive and the environments, although mastered in beautiful 3D for their time, can feel a little too alike. That’s kind of typical for games of its time, but what makes Soul Reaver shine is pretty much everything else.

The voice acting and music are too good not to mention. If you’ve played video games, you know that the voice acting can be really abysmal, but that is not the case here. Many sites and magazines will list the Legacy of Kain series as the top 50 best voice acted games and it’s a worthy kudo.

The music is also a standout. It has a very industrial feel to it, which seems off considering the fantasy aspects of the game, but it totally works. Each area of Nosgoth has a unique theme, but the music will naturally change to suit the current situation. In a battle, the music will be more epic and exciting, while it will be more muted and subdued as the player explores each region.

The story is just so engrossing. Soul Reaver builds on the already great world created in Blood Omen, but really takes everything to the next level. And, if you can believe it, things get even better in its direct sequel, Soul Reaver 2, which actually incorporates time travel!

All-in-all, Soul Reaver is an absolutely amazing game and a real triumph of its time. Yes, it can be a little repetitive, but all of the seamlessly integrated story elements and cutscenes will absolutely grab you and keep you motivated to continue on.

I’ve been playing the game on PC for many years. I can’t recall exactly how the PlayStation version looked – and I’m sure it’s serviceable – but I have to say that PC is probably the way to go, if you can. It was also released on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, which I hear is the best console version by far. I have to say that the game still looks amazing on PC at its highest resolutions on my 720p TV.

It took a little finagling to get a new controller to work for it, but the time was worth it. The game supports Direct Input, which was the standard in the late-90s, but these days most controllers us XInput. A quick internet search allowed me to find a tool that will map a controller to Direct Input for you easily. I actually plugged in one of my PlayStation Classic controllers, which use USB, and it really helps to simulate those nostalgic vibes!

For me, there’s something special about replaying Soul Reaver with nothing but soft Christmas lights to brighten my darkened room, but as I’m sure no one else shares that attachment, trust me – you can enjoy Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver any time of the year. So go ahead and do that! It’s actually on sale as I write this for $1.09 CDN on GOG.com (Windows PC version) and runs for $5.99 as a PSOne Classic on the Sony PlayStation 3 or PSP systems (NOTE: PSOne Classics can only be purchased from a PS3 console), so you really have nothing to lose!

Is there anything tradition, movie, or game that you like to enjoy during the holidays, but it has nothing to do with the season? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Merry Christmas,
R

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Syphon Filter (1999) | Sony PlayStation | Game Review



By 1999, the year Syphon Filter was released on the Sony PlayStation, gaming was dominated by several trends. The first had actually evolved from a trend into the new standard for the vast majority of games going forward: 3D graphics and gameplay in partially 3D to fully 3D environments. 

The resounding success of Super Mario 64 in 1996 and many of the Nintendo 64 games that followed convinced publishers that 3D was not only the future of video games, it was the present. The PlayStation and Sega Saturn’s hardware weren’t as proficient as the 64’s when it came to 3D graphics but the pressure was on to produce 3D games. Both systems did go on to have some very good 3D games while 2D was seen as passé and games in that style dropped off significantly.

The other trend relevant to Syphon Filter was that of the stealth action genre. While 1997’s Goldeneye – the N64’s massively successful movie-based first person shooter – offered plenty of action and moments where the player must take on waves of enemies as is customary for the genre, the spy aspect did squeeze in a little sneaking around. It was to the player’s benefit to take out enemies quickly and quietly before the alarm was raised bringing reinforcements. The use of silencers was key as was good accuracy; often you only had one chance to silently take out an enemy and if you missed the heat would be on.



The following year saw the release of the game most responsible for the rise of stealth: Metal Gear Solid. Bringing in the elements that made its 8-bit predecessors in the series, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, unique, as well as adding in some new ones to the 32-bit realm, Metal Gear Solid was a masterpiece of, in its own words “Tactical Espionage Action”. The game’s entire premise was that of infiltration and in most places, a strategy of avoiding enemies rather than engaging them was key. Not only was it still quite different from other games of the time, it was a lot of fun. As much as gamers had enjoyed titles with a “guns blazing” approach – blasting all enemies like a space marine – this sneaky alternative proved to be extremely enjoyable. Successfully passing through areas undetected forced the player to be more thoughtful and creative. The game was a success as big if not bigger than Goldeneye so a wave of imitators was inevitable. 

Metal Gear Solid: Often imitated, never duplicated.

Which brings us back to Syphon Filter. Possibly you forgot that’s what this article is about. You are forgiven.

Developed by the little-known Eidetic, whose only game to that point was one of the absolute worst of the aforementioned wave of fully 3D games, Bubsy 3D, Syphon Filter is no Metal Gear Solid clone, but it’s definitely strongly influenced by the Konami title. The player finds himself in control of a covert agent Gabriel Logan engaged in a series of missions. The agency is tracking terrorist Erich Rhoemer, who has acquired a deadly biological weapon called Syphon Filter (which, yes, is similar to Metal Gear Solid’s FOXDIE) and has just launched an attack on Washington, DC. Just like Goldeneye and most spy movies, Logan’s quest brings him to a variety of locations throughout the world. The story is fairly standard and it’s not necessary to relate it here. Logan himself is a fairly bland character and his voice actor makes him sound approximately seventy years old.

The gameplay takes place in third person with Logan going through 3D environments and the player can rotate the camera as needed. While the camera isn’t perfect and you can sometimes end up with some inconvenient angles, it’s usually not enough to truly hamper you. It’s not a platformer requiring precise jumps like Super Mario 64 after all.

That isn’t to say precision isn’t required, though. Aiming certain weapons shifts the perspective to first person and it can be tricky if you’re under pressure from enemies. While the game favours a stealthy approach, Gabe is still going to see plenty of combat as enemies sometimes come at him in waves. But the real challenge lies in entering new rooms or areas where enemies have already taken up firing positions. Cover isn’t always available and even when it is, it’s tenuous.

I haven’t watched videos of people playing Syphon Filter so I only really know how I chose to play it. My main strategy involves almost constant movement once I’m in a gun battle. This frantic style of play enables you to dodge bullets but makes aiming difficult and weapons do run out of ammo. So in some of the later levels it can take several attempts to figure out the best way to navigate a prolonged battle. A few years later, I’d apply a similar strategy to the Max Payne games but it was easier there because of that game’s feature of being able to slow down time.

While Syphon Filter falls well short of the standard set by Metal Gear Solid in terms of gameplay, story, voice acting and music, it still does add a few neat wrinkles of its own. For instance, in taking advantage of the game’s decent lighting effects, some areas are dark enough to require you to use a flashlight. In certain instances this can be a calculated risk as light can alert nearby enemies when you’re trying to sneak past them.


Syphon Filter was well received and spawned two sequels in quick succession. I’m fairly certain I’ve played both; I know for sure I did play Syphon Filter 2 but can’t really remember much about it beyond it playing exactly like the original game. Beyond that trilogy there came several more I never played: Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain in 2004, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror in 2006 and Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow in 2007. The latter three were all for the PlayStation 2 and were mostly lost in the shuffle during those years. But playing once more through the original has made me curious about them.

Syphon Filter may have been the byproduct of trends but it’s still a solid game that’s fairly fun to play and takes some skill to complete. I was even driven to frustration at some parts but I wouldn’t call the difficulty cheap or unforgiving. One just has to make the proper adjustments. In the end, Gabriel Logan never joined the upper echelon of classic video game characters but he sits somewhere comfortably in the middle as the protagonist of a pretty good series. That’s more than can be said for many others.

cole d'arc

Cole d'arc is a writer based out of Halifax, NS. He is a practiced blogeteer and professional lister at Five-O-Rama, is the man behind Cole Talks Comics on YouTube, and talks about movies and video games live from the Movie Discussion Pocket Dimension and The Final Dungeon

Friday, October 30, 2015

Resident Evil (1996) - Sony PlayStation

The original "long box" art
I first played Resident Evil not long after it had been released even though I had no idea what the game was about. My friend Cole (now contributor here on Retro-Def!) and I rented it back when he first got his PlayStation and I cannot recall for the life of me why we picked that game. If you have seen the cover art for it, it is infamously bad - something Capcom is known for - but we did and I'm so glad, because Resident Evil has become one of my favourite games and gaming franchises of all time.

It was developed by Capcom in Japan as Biohazard and directed by Shinji Mikami, who to this point had only done a handful of licensed titles, such as Goof Troop, Aladdin, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Mikami has said that in making Resident Evil he was attempting to make a game like Sweet Home, which was a Japanese only title released for the Famicom. As a horror movie buff, Mikami has also stated that he was dissatisfied with 1979's Zombie, directed by Lucio Fulci, and wanted to make a game with none of the failings of that film. Couple that with being heavily influenced by George A. Romero and his films, it is not shocking that he delivered a horror game featuring... the undead!

Resident Evil follows an elite specialized police force known as STARS (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) who are investigating some weird murders that have taken place in the small community of Raccoon City. When communication with the STARS Bravo Team is lost, the Alpha Team is sent into the Raccoon City countryside, where the ground team is chased into an old mansion by a pack of monstrous dogs, ultimately losing contact with their helicopter.

That is how the player finds them self in The Mansion, the main location for the rest of the game. You can play as two characters, Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, each of which has their own storyline and some minor changes in gameplay.

Barry and Jill taking on the undead!
The character models are all in isometric 3D and the player traverses The Mansion in what have become known as "tank controls". It can take a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it is pretty easy to use. Essentially you aim the character in the direction you want them to go using the left and right directional buttons and then move them forward or backward by using up and down. At the time Sony had not yet released the DualShock controller, which featured analog controls, but after that controller became available the game was re-released as Resident Evil: Director's Cut, which featured and Arrange Mode and DualShock controls. Honestly, though, they change nothing and I find it easier to use the d-pad.

The main crux of the gameplay is surviving, which is why these games have become known as Survival Horror, along with Mikami being dubbed as the Godfather of the subgenre. You have very few items at your disposal and you can only carry a handful with you at any time. You slowly work your way around The Mansion, unlocking different rooms, searching for useful items, and fighting your way through zombies, giant spiders, and all sorts of crazy monsters. You can store items in special lock boxes that you will find strewn about The Mansion and you can save your progress on typewriters, as long as you've got some ink ribbons tucked away. You will find several different weapons, but remember that ammo is scarce and must be used sparingly!

It is this scarcity of ammo and healing items that drives the tension and scares of Resident Evil. You never know what you will face around the next bend, nor what items you should have on you. The game features beats not unlike the ones you would experience in a horror movie. The music will sometimes drop in a room to keep you off guard for the next scare or you will be clicking away in a room looking for an item and a zombie will jump out of nowhere and attack.

Barry and Jill in the Resident Evil REmake
Resident Evil is the very definition of a slow burn. You will find yourself running circles around The Mansion and additional areas trying to find that one door you didn't unlock yet or that item you forgot to grab. It is not an action title, like the series has become. To truly enjoy it you have to let yourself get immersed in the setting and the story and take your time. When you do hit an action sequence, it is less about how many bullets you can pump into your opponent as it is just trying to make it out alive.

The writing can be a little hokey and that is one thing that has always intrigued me about the game. The actual story itself is fantastic. It has grown to be something much, much larger than I'm sure Mikami and his team ever anticipated. The only person I know that can actually really wrap his head around the story in its entirety is Cole. That said, the writing and dialogue in this game is infamously silly at times. There are incredible lines like, "You were almost a Jill sandwich!" and "... you, the master of unlocking..."

I used to think this was just due to translation, but when you think about the influences of the game - campy horror films from the 60s and 70s - one starts to wonder if Mikami didn't do this on purpose to pay homage to directors like Fulci and Romero. The game even opens with a B-movie introduction that certainly hearkens back to horror films of that era.

The Resident Evil series has gone on to be one of the most influential video game franchises of all time and is closing in on its 20th anniversary next year. The original game was actually remade for the GameCube in 2002, which was itself re-released and remastered on a number of modern consoles. There has even been a successful film franchise based on the property which is seeing its sixth title in 2017.

Mikami's newest title, The Evil Within
I am not a huge fan of how the series has found itself in the action genre, but there are still compelling titles coming out under the Resident Evil umbrella (see what I did there?) and I am certain that there will still be great games to play in the future.

Shinji Mikami no longer has anything to do with the series. He has gone on to make new Survival Horror games, his most recent title being The Evil Within, which has garnered pretty high marks both critically and commercially. He is still out there trying to scare anyone that dares to boot up one of his titles.

It all started with this campy little horror title on Sony's newest little fledgling system back in 1996 and although there have been many remakes and sequels I still think the original Resident Evil is relevant and anyone who likes to play video games should give it at least one play through.

Happy Halloween!
R