So I have been going back and replaying some older games, well older games for me at lest. I stumbled apon a copy of Soul Reaver for the PS1 hidden away in a cupboard corner gathering a fine layer of dust.

It had been a fair number of years since I had played it, however it is by far one of the best games I have played this year. One of the great things is that it actually challenges you intellectually. The puzzles in the game are great, especially once you take into account the ability to shift into a different dimension which warps the terrain as well as prevents you from interacting with the world, so you can run across a platform that would normally fall away under your wait in the real world.

Admittedly the block pushing puzzles did get a bit old but they were normally far apart and different enough to keep you from getting board and the block puzzles are normally complemented by other problems, like trying to get the bock up a wall by using a complex system of pullies.

The combat with enemies is rather redundant and are really more of a annoyance than a real threat, and it can be tricky to kill them sometimes if you don’t have a weapon handy (they are vampires and don’t truly die unless you impale, burn, or push them into water or sunlight. The boss battles are also dull, it ends up being to this step X number of times and you win, like setting giant insect eggs on fire and throwing them at the boss.

But despite these flaws in the combat system Soul Reaver is a great game, that is immensely enjoyable.