Like this one, for example. Soul Reaver delights in showing any given locale with arterial gore

You are Raziel, spurned servant of Kain and harvester of souls. Your body was long since destroyed and you must slay vampires to get a decent feed. Some guys have all the luck, eh?
James Price

Soul Reaver is a great game. But then, so are the titles it cribs from. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time are two of the best videogames ever written. Soul Reaver, unashamedly, pays homage to both, applying a veneer of gothic gloom to the mechanics and concepts of Nintendo's two classic adventures.

That isn't a criticism, by the way. You have to applaud Crystal Dynamics for their observational skills and artifice. By plucking ideas from inspired sources, Soul Reaver has become rather more than the moribund third-person adventure it could have been. It's also light years ahead of its popular but basic predecessor, The Legacy of Kain.

Even its lightweight plot has a 'worthy' feel to it. Although its voice acting is more 'voice pretending' (if you get the inflection), the premise behind the whole shebang has the distinction of being novel. After Legacy of Kain - where the eponymous anti-hero refuses to sacrifice his vampiric self to save the world - Kain builds himself an empire. To help him achieve this, he appoints six lieutenants. After years of slurping blood and oppressing dwindling masses, Kain begins to mutate. After each bodily change, his six subordinates also acquire this new attribute.

One day, Raziel - and that's you, folks - has the audacity to sprout wings before Kain does. Mightily annoyed at this breach of protocol, Kain destroys Raziel's wings and sentences him to death. Cast into an ominous-looking pit, his body is torn apart. Yet, amazingly, he survives in the Spectral plane, and becomes a consumer of souls.