There were much better games for the PlayStation than Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, but perhaps none I remember more vividly or more fondly. From the opening cinematic on, this game owned my life. Oh, yes, that cinematic, to my mind the best one of the 32-bit era, by a wide margin:

Dear lord. Ok, so, between Amy Henning’s fantastic direction, Kurt Harland’s grandiose and menacing score and the art style and character design (Raziel’s gaping maw!), this game just set my twelve year old imagination on fire. I’ve returned to it, and its sequel, a few times since 1999, and of course, it has aged. That said, this game is more “cinematic” than a lot of the AAA titles of this generation, and the reason why is mood. It has a hypnotic atmosphere, close to what Frictional wrote about yesterday in describing their “scene” method, and that’s why the game is so hard to forget.

It’s still a fascinating and harrowing game, and it’s out on Steam, today, for all the PC gamers who haven’t been able to play it this generation.