32 years of brilliant video game box art – #14 (2001) Soul Reaver 2

Another year, another countdown, another birthday. And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art. Join me, won’t you?

Soul Reaver 2 (2001) – By the time you’d made it through the first Soul Reaver, if you were anything like me, you’d come to know what devourer of souls Raziel was all about, and perhaps even more importantly what he was capable of. And where the PAL box art for the first game did nothing to convince me of just how great of a character he was, what with his skinny rotted torso and rather scant appendages, its Playstation 2 sequel perfectly captured both the look and feel of the former Vampire. Rather than drawing the attention to what he’s lacking, it cleverly accentuates his more striking and powerful features like his enormous clawed-hands and his intense glowing eyes, to create the image of an all-powerful being capable of revenge and retribution on the grandest scale. It may read like a lover-letter -and in some ways it is – but it’s almost as if the box to the game’s sequel is Crystal Dynamics acknowledging that they fully understand the power behind the character they’d created and built in the first game. It’s as if it’s they’re saying, “Raziel is no longer the tragic hero”, but rather the “all-powerful saviour”. And if you’ve played through its sequel, Defiance, you’ll know just how accurate that is.

SoulReaver2Box