Lost Soul ... or just lost?

 Recently I've finished Soul Reaver for the PS One™, part one that is, and I must say it really was some experience. The motivation was me waking up one morning with an incredible lust for this retro-cultural two-piece saga. It was not the first time I was hit by nostalgica-lust; a few weeks ago I felt the urge to replay Jak & Daxter, and also Beyond Good & Evil. Additionally I listened to the soundtracks ANUBIS: Zone Of The Enders and Shadow Of The Colossus: Roar Of The Earth which also made me reach for the discs. So I did gather them and actually created my nostalgia stack ... now I laugh at the people who suggested to sell the good ol' PS2™ ... [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

Of course I've had in mind that ancient masterpieces like Soul Reaver weren't made to be exhibited on a TV set as big as mine so I wasn't all too suprised with huge video artifacts and oversized polygon models but there were certain other things that I haven't had in mind and that made this experience so special. For instance I completely forgot that the default controller for this oldschool console was indeed pre-Dualshock (and pre-Nintendo-Trident most obviously) meaning that the (now somewhat self-evident) analogue sticks came later. Thus, all camera control the player had just had to be realized via the shoulder buttons L2/R2. Being able to push both buttons at once to create a first-person-perspective-mode therefore was quite big at the time.

Another thing I've observated about programming videogames in the "old age" was how often I completely lost track of where I had to go. I absolutely got lost, several times. There were so many times I didn't know which of two paths to go and when I did know which one of the two it was, I was already inmidst of a boss battle or something similar. There was this tutorial dude/force that seemed to accompany Raziel and give his comment every now and then, especially after earning a new ability, but it was either a rough hint to the next dungeon (which was good) or a story-related comment. Nothing in-dungeon, no short-range-ish advice. By the time I fought against Kain for the last time I hadn't activated half of all the portals. And besides the portals, I vaguely remember having had the ability to forge your Soul Reaver blade with a new color/element. And I'm sure it was already featured in this first part because I ran into an oddly isolated fireplace that had this very purpose. There was also this temple where I didn't know what to do so I left again, and all these glowing icons on the floor where I didn't know what to do either - long story short, I missed a lot of goodies, when I replayed the game this time around. I mean, I actually wanted to skip some optional stuff but I don't think that I really chose this option the way I played the game and got lost that often.

Anyway, when I look now at games like and trailers of Killzone 2 I think it's really sad that the graphics were pushed so hard over the last couple of years. I mean it's nice to look at but if you compare it with what might have be achieved instead - better AI, better gameplay mechanics, better sound, better camera AI - that would have really altered the experience we have right now.

I still wait for the game where you fight one single boss in a huge epic battle and eeeeevery single experience is totally different. Because the boss - the game - actually learns. Real artificial intelligence and not some pre-decided causes, animated pre-renderedly using pre-performed motion capturing and pre-recorded sound effects, that are falsely called "AI". I mean it could even borrow this online database aspect of spore. Well .... a boy can dream, right? ;^)

Next up, Soul Reaver 2.
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