Clive Barker's Jericho is one amazing game
The storyline is simple yet complex. God created this thing called the "Firstborn." It was basically God's failure attempt on creating human beings. So he banished into the Abyss. However, the Firstborn was very powerful even God couldn't stop it from breaking into the moral world. The Firstborn would later on create these passages of time linked to Al Khali. These layers would entrap pieces of history within its walls including the ancient Sumerians to World War II. It's up to the Jericho squad team to solve this problem and chase Leech, who was one of the members of Department of Occult Warfare, from opening the breach for the Firstborn.
Jericho is a squad first-person shooter that uses run and gun elements with realism. It does not play like Duke Nukem 3D where running and gunning is very useful. You have to take cover in certain situations. Despite of having a very simple idea to play the game, it offers a couple of interesting features. You have supernatural abilities and every characters (7 at max) magic are all useful depending the situation. Not only that, there are special roles that your characters have because in the later stages of the game, you can switch characters. One squad member is a heavy gunner which he has the most life out of all the team, but move slow and there's one character where she's like a scout mixed with ninja elements making her the fastest moving member and exceedingly lethal at close range. All members of the Jericho team have different weapons too ranging from assault rifles to a minigun. The game has about 10-12 different type of enemies, but most of the time you're going to fight these two enemies and one of them can be a pain to fight for some players. When I first played the game, it was somewhat hard and unforgiving for the first two act, but it seems like the game gets a little bit easier as you progress deeper into the game. Words like chaotic and intense are perfect for describing Jericho's fire fights. it's not a large scale battle like 40 soldiers against 40 soldiers. It's more like 6-7 soldiers against 5-6 soldiers, but the game really makes you feel like you're in a very dangerous warzone and enemies can also kill your squad pretty fast. These enemies are very relentless. Most of the time, they're not afraid to die and they will get up close and personal if they have to. Your team AI isn't the best, but you have the option to control them and this could prevent them from not being too stupid. There is a couple of boss fights too and it's very fair in terms of difficulty. Clive Barker's Jericho was labeled as a horror shooter before it came out. Well, it's not that scary, but it is very dark, creepy, and grotesque. So don't expect this game to be scary like F.E.A..R. or Silent Hill. The campaign ranges around 6-8 hours long.
I personally love the graphics. They look good even today. The character models looks nice, guns too, blood, etc. Most of the environment looks beautiful. Textures are above average at best. In some areas, it looks kind of bad if you get up close. Overall, the graphics are worth mentioning for this game.
The sound effect is a mixed-bag. The guns sound kind of unrealistic and weak, but then again the weapons are not too overpowered so it fits it somewhat. The spells are the same too. For the voice acting, it's great and I mean the voice actors seemed like they really enjoyed their characters. A couple of demons talk in this game and they sound very creepy and scary.
I love this game and it has a lot of replay value since every characters are so different from each other and the game was presented and executed very well. It's really my type of game and the action department is one of the best I've seen in a first-person shooter. Hopefully in the future, there will be a sequel.