Mature (17+)

Soul Reaver brushes with perfection but falls short. It's got the visual and aural punch that sets it apart from other games right off the top and Soul Reaver is just an outstanding realization of its creators' imaginations.

Is there life after death? Well, according to fiction and pop-culture, there most certainly is. For as long as we've known, tales of the undead have permeated through our society in the forms of Nosferatu, Dracula, and Tom Cruise.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood, Animated Violence 

Game Description: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver tells the story of Raziel, one of the undead lieutenants of the vampire lord Kain. Jealous of Raziel's newly evolved wings, Kain tears them apart and casts his former champion into the netherworld. But a powerful entity that dwells in the netherworld has restored Raziel to a semblance of life and has set him on a path of vengeance. After this tantalizing movie introduction, you take control of Raziel in the spectral realm, where your new existence is explained to you. From there you enter the physical plane, ready to begin your quest for power and revenge. Raziel's combat moves are extremely brutal, as you'd expect from a vampire who has returned from the dead. When he finds a spear, Raziel gleefully stabs and slashes before he impales his foe, lifts it off the ground, and feasts on its soul.

According to ESRB, this game contains:  Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence, Strong Language

When I found out Chi was going to review this game, I laughed. Movie licenses have had a history of failing miserably when ported over to video games and with the exception of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64, I had little reason to believe this trend was going to change.

Game Description: Aliens vs. Predator offers 40 levels of terrifying futuristic environments in which you choose to be a Colonial Marine, a Predator, or an Alien. It's "survival of the fittest" for your species, as you make your way through responsive game screens that adjust to your actions. Your environments range from planetscapes to colonial bases, where one wrong move could turn you from hunter to prey.

Only in this day and age could a game of such amalgamated ideas like Aliens Versus Predator (AvP) exist. But did the game take its creative direction from the six movies featuring the two sci-fi antagonists, or was it the never-developed screenplay for the vapor film (of the same name) that never materialized? What about the series of Dark Horse comics? Then again, wasn't there already an AvP game for the underachieving Atari Jaguar system?

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence, Strong Language

The so-called mature premise of Kingpin revolves around a fallen gangster who is now out for revenge and domination over the underworld. No heroic macho lead character or buxom heroine here, just a thug out to do no good. While politically incorrect, it's certainly conceptually interesting and has a similar appeal to films like GoodFellas and Pulp Fiction, which also revolve around bad people doing bad things.