As the Legacy of Kain remasters continue, a new game emerges—a 2D action-platformer

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Legacy of Kain: Ascendance - Official Announcement Trailer - YouTube

I first played a Legacy of Kain game when Soul Reaver came out, which at the time was considered a Tomb Raider for goths, only with better controls and some annoying block-pushing puzzles. It was the atmosphere that sold it rather than the genre—so dark and portentous it could shit bats.

"Combat and movement are closely intertwined," lead writer Claribel Guerra says on the Xbox blog, "pushing you to constantly stay in motion as you fight, jump, fly, turn into a swarm of bats, and climb through Nosgoth's dark, crumbling environments. Encounters often flow directly into platforming challenges, creating a rhythm that keeps the pace moving forward."

Three characters will be playable: Kain, Raziel (both as a human knight and as a vampire later in the timeline), and Elaleth, a new character introduced in the recent Kickstarted comic book prequel The Dead Shall Rise.

"Each playable character brings their own combat style and traversal tools," Guerra says, "including aerial movement, gliding, special abilities, and evasive dashes. These mechanics are governed by a stamina-like resource that fuels nearly every action, from attacking to flying, forcing you to manage your momentum carefully."

They've brought back some of the original voice actors, with Simon Templeman returning as Kain, Michael Bell as Raziel, Anna Gunn as Ariel, and Richard Doyle as Moebius.

Legacy of Kain: Ascendance will be available on Steam, GOG, and Epic from March 31. Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered will be available in all the same places from March 3.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.