Clive Barker's Jericho

"Loads Of Blood And Bullets."

From the twisted mind of Horror-Legend, Clive Barker, comes his newest gaming creation, 'Clive Barker's Jericho'. A Horror game with supernatural themes and of course, buckets of blood and gore. His last gaming effort was in 2001 with the well-received but underplayed, 'Clive Barker's Undying'. Well, with Halloween not too far off, this would be the perfect time to pick up a Horror game and get scared, however, that all wouldn't matter if the game wasn't any good, now would it? So, does Clive Barker's latest have enough scares and good gameplay to make a purchase? Or should it be cast back in the bowels of whatever wretched beast it spawned from? Read on to find out.

Starting off with the story, which is really good and keeps you interested up until the very end, we are introduced to the Jericho squad. Packed with seven members, all of which have their own unique special abilities. They are an elite squad whose purpose is to fight off threats dealing with the supernatural and so forth. They are called upon to investigate a strange happening in a remote desert of the Middle East, where a powerful being known as, The Firstborn is awaiting their arrival. The Firstborn was God's first attempt at creating a being in his own image, the entity, neither male or female, dark nor light was considered disturbing by his creator. So, God left it unfinished and had banished The Firstborn to the Abyss, where the prophecy states that it will try and break into our world seven times. Upon the seventh attempt, which will be it's last, The Firstborn will either find freedom or destruction, the time has come and now only the Jericho squad is able to stop it. Clive Barker, who is a well-known writer and director, penning such books as 'The Books Of Blood' and directing the infamous, 'Hellraiser', has crafted a great tale around this gruesome game.

So, the story is well-done, how does the game play? In the crowded world of First-Person Shooter's, 'Jericho' doesn't offer a bunch of new things, aside from a unique way to switch between your team-mates, the gameplay is your standard aim and shoot them to pieces affair. It's done quite well though, resembling 'Doom 3' and 'Quake 4' with it's tight corridors, dark areas and non-stop shooting. Going back to the team-mate switching, as the psychic leader of the squad, you are able to jump inside the heads of your team-mates and control them and their powers. While only being able to control one member at a time, the rest of the squad is left up to the AI, which surprisingly can hold their own against the hideous enemies and help you out. While in control of your selected person, you are also able to provide simple orders to the rest of the squad using the Directional Pad. Each one of the characters are equipped with their own weapons and powers, they wield weaponry ranging from machine-guns and swords to sniper-rifles and gatling-guns, their powers however are the star of the show. One ability that I really liked was from the character, Abigail Black, who is able to use her mind to drive bullets when fired and guide them through multiple enemies, allowing for easy head-shots, resulting in a nice and bloody explosion. The game itself isn't that difficult, considering you are with your squad for the majority of the time and you can easily heal them if they get incapacitated and if you get hurt, you need only switch to another character to continue fighting. The only real time it seems to become difficult are the sections where you can only play as one character, fighting off hordes of enemies without anyone there to heal you in case you get over-powered. As far as using tactics to overcome the enemy, sadly you cannot, as these guys just run at you with full-force and start slashing you to bits, meaning cover and popping out to fire are not going to happen. I was hoping for some tactical-action, considering you are with a squad, this is only a minor gripe though. Another feature that the game includes are those context-sensitive button presses that are becoming more popular thanks to, 'God Of War'. I enjoy mini-games like these, so this feature was a welcome addition that offered some breaks in-between all the shooting, you have to be quick with these though, blink and you're likely to miss a button and fail. The game is single-player only and gives us no multi-player or co-op, which takes away from replay value and the final score, the campaign is good, but short and once it's done, it's done, having multi-player would have definitely increased it's overall play-time.

The graphics are nothing short of incredible, the character models and gore and detailed extremely well. Heads explode in a wonderfully gruesome fashion, limbs are splattered mostly everywhere, and a certain enemy, acting like a member of The Flood from, 'Halo', bursts to pieces when you kill them, with bones and meat littering the place. One battle even involved an enemy opening his stomach to spew-out blood at you and the detail to his insides was amazing. The environments are good, but there's not much happening in them, aside from some mutilated bodies strung around and guts all over the place, there's nothing particularly interesting about them. There's no sense of spookiness in the areas at all and the environments cannot be destroyed, which is a letdown. Fire and water effects are neat, but the explosions are so-so, draw distance is terrible, in fact, the area was very foggy until I got closer to the object and then I could finally see everything. Sound effects are a mixed bag, gunfire sounds are not that bad, some of the voice acting is good, some of it is downright awful, but the music is done really well, the atmosphere should have been made creepier to suite the music.

Controls were fine, they can be adjusted slightly, but the default is okay. They are as follows, the Triangle button toggles your flashlight, the Circle button performs your melee attacks, X is used to heal characters and to do certain actions. The Square button reloads your weapon while R1 is your primary power, R2 fires your primary weapon. L1 is your secondary power and L2 is your secondary fire, the Directional-Pad allows for squad commands, L3 moves your character and allows them to crouch and finally R3 is used to aim/zoom.

Overall, 'Clive Barker's Jericho' is not a bad game at all, it's an action-packed, intense but short, Horror experience that should cater to those looking to simply blast things apart. But for those looking for something more complex and tactical, look elsewhere, this is straight up non-stop shooting. It's not scary, but it's certainly gory, I suggest a rental considering the lack of replay value (The only unlockables are concept art), but a purchase if you are a big fan of Clive Barker or the Horror genre, like myself.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/29/07

Game Release: Clive Barker's Jericho (US, 10/23/07)