Clive Barker's Jericho

A few years back, a great game hit PCs that blended first-person action with some truly chilling horror elements. Clive Barker’s Undying was a smash with the critics, but unfortunately didn’t sell too terribly well. Regardless of that game’s success (or lack thereof), master of horror Clive Barker is getting back into video games with his latest game. Clive Barker’s Jericho doesn’t do things the same way as Undying, foregoing the Half-Life styled storytelling for a more accessible, console-oriented action-driven experience. However, that’s not to say that Jericho doesn’t have some truly frightening moments, since it most definitely does. The end result is a noticeably more of a mainstream experience, but a very solid shooter nonetheless.

Jericho puts you in control of the leader of an elite group of supernatural commandos known as Jericho squad. Each member of the covert group has their own unique abilities within the realm of the supernatural, including a pyromancer, a Blood mage, and a telekinetic sniper capable of guiding his rounds in mid-air. They are investigating a hidden city and searching for a man who went searching for the Firstborn, a particularly nasty being created by God before humanity. Once in the city, they take on a ton of nasties from all time periods in order to defeat the lingering evil once and for all.

In Jericho, you begin as the leader of the squad, but events transpire, and you end up controlling all of the squad members at roughly the same time. You’ll be switching control between all of the members of Jericho on the fly, taking advantage of their unique weapons and special abilities. Using your team members, you’ll be able to summon health and ammo or use the aforementioned pyromancer or telekinetic sniping skills.

Aside from special abilities, you’ll need to switch between your squadmates in order to change your weapons. They have the standard arsenal that you’d expect, from miniguns and SMGs to sniper rifles. The teammate switching mechanic requires you to change on the fly for different weapon/ability combos, and is an interesting and unique approach to the shooter genre.

Whichever characters you’re not controlling will be picked up by the game’s AI. Instead of placidly standing around while you do all the work, the AI will actually doing a fine job of helping out, proactively killing enemies an healing teammates as well as taking rudimentary squad commands.

However, Jericho isn’t without some problems. While there are some legitimately frightening moments and situations, the game lacks the overall visceral sense of dread as the game’s predecessor, or even other games in the horror genre like Resident Evil 4 or Silent Hill for that matter. Whereas those games would offer more of a psychological terror, Jericho is much more of a dark and overtly creepy action game, and loses a bit in that.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good, benefiting from Clive Barker’s twisted influence. The enemies are some of the creepiest you’ll find in a game this year. The game makes liberal use of bloom lighting, as all of the character models seem to have sheen about them. The whole experience is also extremely dark, and it can be extremely hard to see where you’re going throughout most of the game. The levels seem to rely extremely heavily on the flashlight, but still stay very dark and hard to see.

The sound is great, with a chilling score that fits well within the game’s overall mood and fantastic ambient noise that, depending on whether or not you have the right kind of 5.1 surround sound system, will come from every direction to scare the crap out of you.

Clive Barker’s Jericho is a good shooter with some truly frightening situations and enemies, as you’d expect from the mind of Clive Barker. However, the game’s mechanics are somewhat mainstream when compared to its more frightening and well-designed predecessor, Undying. Still, Jericho offers up some very unique mechanics to the FPS genre, and should be a worthy purchase for gamers looking for some true chills this Halloween.

Gameplay: 8.0
With creepy enemies and a variety of weapons and abilities at your disposal, Jericho can be a frightening game at times. The character-switching mechanics are a great touch and keep things flowing nicely in a firefight. The boss battles can be pretty intense, and the game’s sense of atmosphere is great. There are a few sore spots, however, as the overall experience can feel a little repetitive and shallow at times, and the context-sensitive events feel a bit juxtaposed.

Graphics: 8.5
The game looks pretty good, benefiting from the Mercury's own engine and Clive Barker’s frightening art style. There are some great character models and chilling environments throughout, even though they can be way too dark at times.

Sound: 8.5
The game’s score does a great job of setting the disturbing mood, and the ambient noise can be very harrowing.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 8.0
While the storyline isn’t quite as polished as other franchises from the mind of Clive Barker (like Undying for example) and seems to have been geared towards a more mainstream audience, the game itself has a great sense of atmosphere and some terrifying moments.

Overall: 8.0
Clive Barker’s Jericho doesn’t provide the same degree of deep and engaging gameplay as Undying, opting instead for a more accessible, mainstream adventure that can be frightening at best, and repetitive at worst. Still, the game has no shortage of action and intensity.