Price: £44.99 Players: 1 In Blood Omen 2, the action takes place inbetween Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, so it serves as both a prequel and a sequel, so in a way it could be seen as the 'Scorpion King' of computer games, but it has a plot akin to another cinema film out at the same time, Blade II. Kain awakens to find his body having been revived and restored by a vampire called Umah, after being left for dead from a battle Kain can't remember. You, as Kain, have been brought to Meridian, the capital of Nosgoth, in order to help these vampires, going under the name of the resistance force of Cabal, deal with the evil Sarafan. Your ultimate goal is to kill the Sarafan Lord, since, like a pack of dominoes, take out the key one and the rest will collapse. For those new to the franchise, like myself, what this means is a third-person action/adventure in which you must work through the levels kicking bottom and taking out the trash. Kick your opponents from here into next week, suck their blood to boost your strength, or throttle them and chuck them across the room. Take your pick.

Graphically and sonically, it's on a par with one of my all-time favourite PC games, Thief II: The Metal Age. The creepy dungeons, the low lighting effects, gorgeous rippling water effects, the dripping sound FX from leaky pipes, the clank as you walk along metal grates, the smell of fresh cut grass, the smack of leather on willow... Erm.. forget the last two things as they were quotes from a sample of The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld album, but then also is the soundtrack early on in the game as an endlessly repeating few beats is incredibly reminiscent of what I heard on another track from that album. If you're a fan, you'll know which one I'm talking about when you hear it.

On the downside, while it looks and sounds superb, the gameplay is what's lacking. It's so samey all the way through: creep up on people, sometimes collecting and administering special effects such as mist (a form of semi-invisibility) beat up an opponent with all the grace and poise of a computerised wrestling game. The predictability leads to early tedium and it's clear this is one for dedicated fans only. If I could have made changes, I'd have gone for a first-person view and more emphasis on stealth and, in turn, atmosphere. On the plus side, though, it's quite a violent excursion with a 15-certificate, although the BBFC cert only applies because some video footage has been scanned in along the way for FMV sequences and the like. The actual game characters, which partake in all the violence, are all polygons. That said, it's quite fun to pick someone up off the street, throttle them in the air with one hand, and beat their knackers with a gruesome-looking spiky club held in your other. But then, if I wanted to inflict massive amounts of pain I'd put Grand Theft Auto 3 on and drive along the pavement for a few minutes.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.