The result is a beautifully anti-aliased game. We were allowed skip around from environment to environment, sampling crypts, snowy mountain peaks, sewers, and some good ol fashioned creepy basements residing under a local town watering hole. The attention to detail is simply stunning. What s more when I managed to hack away at a skeleton, sending the lifeless hunk of bones back to the grave, they literally broke apart differently every time. Depending of physics, and where you strike the animated pile of bones, they ll shatter differently, and they bounce and cascade to the ground completely dependent of environmental physics.
Lighting is also dynamic, and presents itself in nearly every situation possible.
Spell effects, weapons power-ups, ambient light, shadows, and more all depend on where major light sources play in the level, and then respond accordingly. If there s one thing that the PS2 can do well, and with very, very little hit on the hardware, it s particle effects, and until now, we haven t seen anything that really uses this to show off. Again, that was until now. Particles are used so overzealously, you d think the artists were addicted to them. Massive explosions of blues and greens abound, and are used with reckless abandon, splaying their rich colors all over the walls, enemies, and surrounding objects.