A visually striking piece of crap.
So, at long last I finished the game. Truth be told I never really belonged among the readers of Clive Barker's blood and bile covered books, but I strongly sympathize with the ever so memorable Undying, and so not that long ago I decided to grab this game in a local shop.
Terms like "weird", "sick" or "disgusting" are all huge understatements for this game. Mister Barker apparently juiced himself out as a writer, scriptwriter and even a celebrity over the years so much that he's actually scared to hit the market with something that would not be structured like a British christmas pudding, in other words something that wouldn't be absurdly over combined. In a game full of ancient nastiness even the initially seven-membered Jericho team alone feels like a fist between the eyes. This team consists of "heroes", if that's what you can call a cluster of sectarian weirdos and weirdysess (in order to be genderally tactful) in black latex and with various deviations, phobias and also special abilities. As for the story, it's a mixture of Barker's shallow pecking of what little people generally know about our history and what could be considered fairly yellow of it, of religion and of some wannabe rough "street talk" of our team members, which implies Barker's attempt to pleasure some teenagers with Xboxes under their TVs.
Despite being aware of the fact they are a fellowship of wizards protecting our world from the return of some brown child that wakes even God himself up from his sleep, I had a very hard time getting used to the individuality of Jericho's members. Think about it - there's a lesbian sniper (because a straight sniper would be boring these days, I guess), a cow with katana who's special ability is to cut her own arm face to face with an enemy, or this armoured hulk who's one hand doesn't clap because it got reserved by a fiery demon. But ok, not everyone is so eccentric. The commander, for example, knows nothing and dies immediately. For the rest of the game his only purpose is for you to use him to switch from character to character. The medic role was taken by a "reverend" Rawlings, even though everybody can revive others in the game, but he can do it from a distance.
The fact each and every character along with the weapons disposes of two magic tricks (primary and secondary) saves the otherwise slaughtering gameplay through its monotony. The gameplay is all about having various groups of variously crippled enemies running at you in various levels variously thematically stylized according to various historical eposes. The levels, whether they are visually detailed or severe, are all hardly comparable to the original Unreal in their design. In other words, somebody has overslept an entire decade here, maybe even longer. It's a shame though, because graphically the levels are fascinating, all the while the enemies are gruesome – with the exception of the members of your fantastic six, everything that moves is mutated and sometimes is even marbled with some US.
Unfortunately before you get to any strategy planning as for how to correctly use your team's abilities, you'll be spending an awful lot of time reviving its fallen members and as soon everyone dies, some biblical swarm of flies covers the screen and you're thrown back to the last checkpoint. Unfortunately not even when you get used to things and stuff, it's still impossible to prevent situations like „Abby!" „Jonsiee!!" "Rawlings is down!!" from happening, because the only strategy of 90% of this game's enemies is to run right to you and knock you out. But in order to not generalize, certain creatures do have some balls on chains, the legionaries toss their spears… Yeah well, they always outnumber you and they always spawn at all different spots as far as the limited level design allows. There's sadly very few of enemies that fight you differently (such as some more massive uglies etc.)
Eventually I came to a conclusion the firearms just don't make sense in this game. Especially the sniper rifle held in Abbygeil's little hands with black nails – this rifle, while being effective, felt very overdesigned or overlarge in those usually tight narrow spaces. Here and there I found myself thinking they easily could've made it into a beat em' up game, seeing how you ever so rarely fight anything from some kind of a distance. The ammunition also makes no sense whatsoever – you literally never run out of them because the IT gal always magically refills it for you whenever you start running low on it. Ultimately the only point of ammo in the game is to prevent you from shooting nonstop, 'cause you do have to reload every now and then.
After the introductory and visually disgusting WWII level, the levels get better and better with the way they look, but sadly the design remains just as weak, if not more. Besides, Jericho is terribly chopped with loadings, which have you listening to the sound of typewriting for what seems to be an eternity and and before the bloody line makes it from the left side to the right one, you're apparently expected to get excited by reading the esoteric briefings. In the medieval epos I truly enjoyed the crusade castle with its dungeons and the greatest soother of it would probably be the stone bridge shaking under the endless army marching of which all you see are the vanes, because you're spending your time underneath this very bridge. In the Rome epos I was left speechless while both laying my eyes on the dozens of crucified in the desert, and while passing through the lofty halls full of statues and lazy furniture. Unfortunately throughout the whole game there are piles upon piles of s**t you've got to work yourself through after each and every of these nice places. Plenty of the pretty things have been splashed over with haemoglobin and that causes nothing else but blunting all the creepy effects way before reaching the first half of the game. Too much of anything is NOT for the better. The Sumerian epos was visually on the verge of being a masterpiece and I gotta say it's such a pity this gorgeous level ended up in this game.
+ In the bright moments of the wild action it smells like Painkiller, the graphic designers would deserve company benefits and some chocolate collections for their families at the end of the year for their work...
- But the rest of the developers screwed up the gameplay and mister Barker gave it a finishing blow with the story and especially the playable characters which all feel like coming from some C Canadian horror movies.