Clive Barker's Jericho

Diamond in the rough (Extra on the rough)

Clive Barker's Jericho is one of those games that you will either love or you will hate, a point made clear by the wide range of reviews found around the web. Chock full of gory imagery, vicious monsters, bloodthirsty lunatic cultists, and seven seriously bad ass heroes; it seriously delivers in the action department.

One unique aspect of the game is that it is set in only one location, but that location changes repeatedly as our seven (six!) heroes bounce around in time trying to close the breach (door) and stop the Firstborn (bad guy) from getting free. And, as one would expect from a Clive Barker product, it has a seriously twisted plot line.

The game play is fast paced from the start with hordes of bad guys that could be straight out of the Hellraiser series mobbing our seven (six!) heroes right from the starting gate. After the first bit of the game your character Cpt Ross "dies" but sticks around, possessing one of the other six members of the team left, bouncing from member to member whenever one of their unique talents will come in handy.

The visual aspect of the game, while probably not up to Crysis standards, is breathtaking...that is if you can handle the gore that is liberally strewn about in the background. The pace is what you'd expect in a blood drenched, story driven shooter; rather fast, but slowing down here and there to make a plot point or two.

The interface is very unique once Ross is in his ghost phase. You can switch between members at will and utilize their skills as each situations calls for it. The learning curve is rather steep at first, mostly because each of the Jericho team is a virtual one man (or woman) army in their own right and making decisions on what power or weapon would be better at any given time takes quite a bit of experimentation.

The story itself was rather good, but this is to be expected if you are a fan of Clive Barker's work; which I am. It's adequately moving and twisted in all the right places. The chatter amongst the squad is always in character and usually isn't annoying unless Church kills several bad guys in a row.

But with every game you must have the bad to go with the good. The main downer of the game being a lack of variety. What you're fighting at the beginning of the game is pretty much what you'll be fighting at the end of the game. Sure, you'll get a few new baddies as you go on, but not a whole lot of them. I was very good at killing cultists at the end of the game. Another aspect of the lack of variety is that, while the scenery changed with time switches, you're still in the same place. It all blends after a while.

There are some game mechanics in this game that I could have done without as well. The run up to the group and explode bad guy was annoying. The ten run up to the group and explode bad guys were even more annoying. Another mechanic that didn't thrill me was the reaction segments. If a character falls in a whole or runs through a scripted room you get a series of reaction tests; hit up, down, left, left, up....miss and die. Not too thrilling.

Overall it was a pretty good game with a few rough spots. I would recommend this to anyone with a penchant for the twisted and creepy.