Although it didn’t do too well commercially, Clive Barker’s Undying was one of the best horror games ever made – and with it, Barker proved he was capable of creating great pieces of horror in any medium.
If Jericho didn’t have Clive Barker’s name attached to it, it might have been overshadowed by bigger releases such as Orange Box and Crysis. But that would have been unfortunate, since Jericho is a great game. It does what Undying did, and adds elements of its own to move the genre a step (however small) in the right evolutionary direction.
The game is based on Jericho – a squad of seven ‘gifted’ individuals who have been trained in both traditional and occult warfare. When the squad is sent to investigate paranormal activity of epic proportions in the middle-eastern city of Al-Khali, they stumble across an ancient evil called the Firstborn that’s trying to make its way back into the real world and wreak havoc.
During their mission (which now is to stop the Firstborn) they enter the prison where the Firstborn is held captive – the Pyxis. They discover that every time the creature tried to escape, a team of seven individuals like themselves were sent to stop it and in doing so, a layer of time and matter would be encapsulated around the Pyxis, imprisoning the brave warriors that saved humanity.
In effect, the Pyxis has accumulated many layers, century after century, and the Jericho squad has to go through each layer of this twisted domain to get to – and destroy – the Firstborn.
At the beginning of the mission, however, their leader Capt. Devin Ross gets killed. Thanks to the twisted nature of the Pyxis, the spirit of Ross stays with the team, allowing him to possess and control any one of the teammates. His occult power of healing gets distributed amongst his squad, allowing them to heal one another if they’re severely injured. You play the role of Ross and through him you can control your squad and hone each of their abilities.
__PAGEBREAK__
Now having control of six different squad members with six unique occult abilities sounded a bit daunting to me at first. A few minutes into the game, and I was really impressed by how easy and accessible the squad system is – just press the spacebar to bring up a menu that lets you select a squad mate, and Ross’ spirit dives right into him.
In really intense situations which call for more precise and quicker switching, you can even point your crosshair on a teammate and press spacebar to switch to him directly.
The ease at which you can switch between teammates, coupled with the selection of six diverse occult abilities that they hone, offers a variety of ways to handle any situation. While each squad member is more than capable of handling a few enemies alone, during tough boss fights and battles against the odds you’ll have to make them use their abilities to complement each other to succeed.
For instance, squad member Billie Church is a blood-mage that can cast a Bloodward to disable all enemies in the vicinity; couple this with Frank Delgado’s minigun and you can mow down a room full of twisted freaks effortlessly.
Not only does the squad work extremely well when you control its members individually, even the AI performs splendidly. In fact, the AI can hold its own against a sizable force of monsters for a while; but you’ll have to intervene eventually to save them. The friendly AI is an extremely crucial element in any squad-based game, and developer Mercury Steam has done an amazing job with it in Jericho.
What makes Jericho feel even more like a real squad is the way every member has an individual personality, and just as in any team, members end up disagreeing and even fighting with one another every now and then. When they encounter all the bile, blood and excrement-spewing bosses of the game, however, they forget their differences and work as one.
__PAGEBREAK__
That’s right, Clive Barker has conjured up a plethora of some pretty grotesque-looking bosses in the game, each one more twisted than the other. What I love about it is that each boss has a unique way of being taken down, so you’ll have to use your brains along with most of your squad’s special abilities cleverly to get through the game.
For instance, I encountered one creature that had a devastating melee attack and was impervious to damage (or so it seemed initially). After a while I noticed a thin slit on his back - the only way to kill him was to shoot at it, which would make him turn around, then select a squad member behind him to do the same. It took a while, but once he was dead it felt like I’d actually achieved something.
Besides the gameplay, Jericho delivers on the visuals front too – in fact, I’d go as far as to say that the game looks better than Gears of War at times. From the extremely well done organic texturing, to the slightly overused motion blur works, everything comes together perfectly to enhance the atmosphere of the game.
Even the sound is near perfect, making those headshot deliveries even more gratifying – hearing that slushy crunch and seeing gobs of your targets’ head scatter never felt more satisfying!
While not downright scary, Clive Barker’s Jericho is an incredible first-person shooter that tells an interesting story and plays extremely well. The single player campaign is about 15 hours long, which is quite decent in my book.
If only the game had a multiplayer mode, I’d recommend it to every PC gamer out there. As it stands, the game is a very good buy for any first-person shooter fan.