Claustrophobic environments are creepy, but the confined space and boring design hinders potential enjoyment in gameplay
Contains: Strong Bloody Violence, Horror and Gruesome Images
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clive Barker's Jericho is a supernatural horror-themed first person shooter, with author Clive Barker providing the premise of the storyline, which follows the Jericho Squad preventing paranormal and psychic phenomenon from seizing the world for its own hellish purposes.
--------------------------------------------
STORY - 3/5
--------------------------------------------
Clive Barker's visual portrayal of fantasy and horror fiction is displayed in this paranormal story, which focuses on a secret organisation called the Department of Occult Warfare sending in a group of elite soldiers, trained in dealing with supernatural occurrences, to send God's first creation - The Firstborn, back to the dark and treacherous abyss in which it's been caged for length of time itself.
The premise for this is slightly confusing, but thats Clive Barker for you, his imagination is so unique, it often runs wild with all sorts of dark and fantastical thoughts, leaving you in a confused state, aswell as a mesmerized one. The premise for Jericho, is that in legend, God created a sexless creature that was a singular being neither male nor female, dark nor light, both beautiful and terrible to behold. But disturbed by his creation, he banished it to the underworld, to be forever captive in time, forsaken, forgotten and unloved. But this ghastly creation was too powerful for even God to keep locked, and over time would make seven attempts to break free of the prison, and rejoin with the mortal world God had created. Each time the Firstborn attempted an escape it would take back a piece of the earth to add to its domain and each time sent back to the Abyss where it waited. Fragments of time and space would form layers around this domain, linked to this world in the city Al Khali. Eventually this city got lost over the centuries, and soon became buried with the sands of time, until now...
The Department of Occult Warfare was formed in the 1930's to combat the supernatural and unexplained, and now in the present day must send in the Jericho Squad to prevent a member of evil from opening the breach and unleashing the Firstborn upon mankind once again.
----------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS - 2/5
----------------------------------------------
The Jericho squad consists of 7 people, who each possess forms of special powers, the reason in which they signed up to Jericho in the first place, so they could use their given gifts to good use against the horrific other worldly monsters and spirits who look to gain entrance to the mortal world and beyond.They have the potential to be an interesting bunch, but when they do communicate along your travels, the conversations are hampered by cheesy one-liners, which don't do the game any justice. They each carry their own preferred weapons for battle, and can combo these with their supernatural abilities.
Because of an event which occurs near the start of the game, you'll gain the ability to switch between characters whenever they are available and whenever you want, to expell the other worldly creatures using a variety of skills, and equal out opportunities when you feel that the character is best suited to a specific situation.
-------------------------------------------
GAMEPLAY - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
The Jericho squad will have their hands full on their objective to eliminate the Firstborn back to where it belongs, and will be frequently tackling the armies of hell to get that quest done.
With the ability to jump to different characters at certain points of the game, a tactical element is chucked into the fray of things, but this only proves problematic. Your team mates will die extremely easily and annoyingly quickly, and you'll frequently find that your running around healing them rather than shooting your attackers. This takes away a lot of the potential enjoyment that there is to be had, and funnily enough, its one particular enemy type that will be much of the cause for this frustration. The demon to be wary of trundles towards you and basically self-destructs, killing everyone within a set radius of the blast. This wouldn't be so bad, but it also detonates itself once you've killed it, meaning you simply must take it out from a safe distance. However, its not as easy as that, as this demon moves surprisingly quickly, and when your in a battle with lots of other deformed monsters you simply must focus your attention on these abominations first, leaving your team mates open to other attacks.
The gunplay is dull, and weapons seemingly lack in power on monsters. You can unload whole clips of ammunition into the monsters without them even flinching, and the main enemy type is agile and alarmingly fast at smelling out your flesh. Even when there is 7 of you, battles can rapidly turn frustrating, the highlight of that irritation all comes down to the horrifically confined level design, which limits your space to manoeuvre, and the possibility to take cover. This can make for intense shootouts, especially when you're pinned down by constantly respawning enemy forces, and your using your imagination by switching characters and combining powers effectively, but the overall concept is poorly thought out, and in the end is a huge affect on the entire gameplay.
You'll move through various layers of time as you home in on the Firstborn's lair, and at the end of each time slice, you'll engage with a boss fight. Most boss fights are extremely difficult, even when played on lower difficulties. They last for long lengths of time, and withstand plenty of bullets and magic. Like I mentioned above, your team mates die very quickly, and so in some of these boss segments, you'll be forced to keep going over and reviving fallen squad members.
Approaching each situation carefully and constructively is the way forward in a lot of set piece fights, but a some characters powers will rarely be used. For example, one character called Captain Xavier Jones is skilled in Astral projection and empathy, but you won't find much time using these outside of puzzle sections. Some powers you'll like more than others, in particular the slow down time ability and ghost bullet. These are more effective aren't long to perform. Powers require animations to execute, and while it looks realistic and cool, some are longer to perform and leave that character vulnerable and open to attack. The supernatural abilities of your squad will definitely have a prominent role in the game, and its up to you to play to your play style, and find the different characters strengths and weaknesses relevant to the unfolding scenarios.
-------------------------------------------
GRAPHICS - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
The graphics really don't pick up any positives from the level design, and while there is a nasty visual look to your surroundings and a deep sense of hostility and insecurity, the graphics aren't sharp, and so you can see just how undetailed the environments are. Blood is smeared across walls, and provides some chilling imagery to dwell on, but from a first-person perspective for the whole game you can see how unpolished the visuals are, and the probability that the visual design will capture your eye is unlikely.
------------------------------------------
SOUND - 4/5
------------------------------------------
The various sound effects of demonic origins are believable, and give you a foreboding feeling when navigating treacherous corridors and temples. Voice acting, despite the cheesy script and laughable one-liners, is decent, and the voice actors do a good job of making you feel involved with the crisis at hand.
The music is also very good, it's chilling and will captivate you into moving forward and dealing with whatever lies in wait in the darkness beyond your squad's position.
The sound department is probably Jericho's best point, one which certainly shouldn't be. You'll be on edge with the creepy sound, but the gameplay is where the game's selling point should stand, not in the background of all the events occurring.
-------------------------------------------
CONTROLS - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
The controls are tight, and won't take long to grasp, despite the vast amount of options. With all the possibilities for variety in combat, you'd think that your mind would be a mess trying to remember who's power belongs to who, and the means of activating it. But the game does a good job of slowly unveiling each power, and not unleashing them all in one go, so eventually each person's strengths will become second nature. The rest of the controls are sensible to the genre, and so if you've played first-person shooters prior to this, then it won't take many minutes of understanding to master them.
-------------------------------------------
ATMOSPHERE - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
A positively charged eerie atmosphere will be generated along your journey through unknown lands, and each corner you draw near will provide some unnerving moments of silence, as your flashlight is the only thing keeping you from being enveloped by the thick and perilous darkness. The creepy music will arise and you'll be thrust into unimaginable combat scenarios filled with all sorts of deranged and mutated monsters that hell has thrown out to obstruct your mission. Your team mates cleverly use their magical abilities on their own, and these small additions make for some interesting teamwork, as you watch your team dispatch foes effectively.
Sadly though, hardly any artistic imagination was put into making the environments, so the terrific creepiness is punctured almost instantly in each and every level.
-------------------------------------------
ENEMY AI - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
Even though the enemies look creepy and have the essence of possessing an evil force deep within their rotting flesh, the effect of rotting seems to have a larger impact on their intellectual side. Their formation in battle is relatively straight forward - they spawn out of the ground and run towards you. It proves effective, but their animations are limited, showing no signs of changing the way they attack. There are some great monster designs, and each different type attack in different ways. Whether its the ghostly souls of dead children who drift menacingly towards you, or the blade-wielding, bloodless gladiators who still strive for blood long after they've perished, hells gates are literally wide open, and unleashing all sorts of horrific demons in attempts to consume Jericho squad by any means necessary.
-------------------------------------------
LENGTH - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
If your capable of reaching the end through frustrating struggles, then Jericho lasts an average length of 8 hours, but because of the erratic difficulty it will last longer. The frustration of this game will often negotiate with your commitment of actually continuing to the end, because afterall, the gameplay is where all the annoyances take place, and if your not enjoying it, then there isn't much point in carrying on.
-------------------------------------------
REPLAY VALUE - 1/5
-------------------------------------------
If you complete Clive Barker's Jericho, then there isn't any reason to replay it. Your first playthrough is likely to have been challenging enough, and selling it looks a viable option. The overall game had some promise, the story from Clive Barker was good, but the developers didn't sort out many of the issues that needed to be fixed in the gameplay. The level design proved too crowded, and while that claustrophobic feeling made some battles exciting, most of the time you'll get the feeling of being constantly harassed by certain enemies, and healing many of your fallen team mates when their deaths is not your fault. The next big factor which should have been sorted to a more reasonable degree is the difficulty. On the default setting, your journey will be a troublesome and extremely hot heated nightmare, where you'll rarely be relieved.
If you want to undertake the mission set by the Department of Occult Warfare then take it with caution, because Clive Barker's Jericho is hard, and not worth your time.
========================
OVERALL SUMMARY - 6/10
========================
Good Points: Switching characters provides a lot of weapon and powers variety in combat, Sound department is great, Creepy monster designs.
Bad Points: Difficult and frustrating gameplay and boss fights, Some battles spawn loads of relentless enemies, Squad members die too easily, Horrifically confined and boring level designs.