RSS
Clive Barker's Jericho
Barker's twisted vision is evident but there is more horror to this story.
October 26, 2007 | 6:17 PM PSTAMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
The name might not be familiar in mainstream gaming circles, but fans of the horror genre have probably heard of Clive Barker. A writer, director and artist, Barker has brought his distinctly twisted touch to everything from mainstream slasher flicks to niche comic books. Not too long ago Barker threw his name into the gaming arena with Undying, a terrifying first-person shooter that was criminally overlooked by the PC gaming crowd. Several years and one cancelled project later, Clive Barker's name is back on the gaming scene with Jericho, a squad-based shooter that combines tactical shooting with supernatural powers, a pseudo-religious storyline and a hefty dose of gory visuals.
What's Hot
Jericho has tons of great concepts. The pseudo-religious storyline begins with an interestingly twisted take on the Judeo-Christian creation myth and the age-old struggle between demonic forces and humanity. The narrative devolves into incomprehensible gobbledygook by the end of the game, but there are enough cool ideas littered throughout the game to help keep the context for the action intriguing. One of those nifty ideas is the existence of a super-powered black-ops team put together for the express purpose of keeping otherworldly threats in check. Each of the members of the Jericho team has their own set of military and paranormal specialties, and as the disembodied spirit of the team's KIA commander it's up to the player to appropriately utilize each member's talents in order to lead the team through time and eliminate a rising evil.
The squad mechanics in Jericho are fairly well done. Whereas traditional squad shooters like the Tom Clancy titles give players full control of only one character and forces them to issue general orders to the friendly AI units, Jericho gives players the ability to take full control of any of the Jericho squad members at any time. Doing so allows players to choose how they want to contend with different situations, since each member of the Jericho squad has a unique assortment of weapons and skills. Delgado, for example, uses a chain-gun and has a fire spirit living in his arm so he's perfect for frontal assaults, while Black is a sniper that can telekinetically alter the path of her bullets once they've been fired and is best used from the rear. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't really do much to encourage experimentation with each of the different character's abilities. Instead of challenging players to be creative the game pushes them to deduce which character's skill is needed at any given time, and it's usually extremely obvious which character has the skill required to get through a particular room or battle with the least amount of trouble.
The combat in Jericho is fast-paced, as the game throws wave after wave of enemies at the player, all of which act in concert with each other to make the most of their unique abilities. Demonic beasts pour out of the walls and rush the Jericho team from every direction while tall, stoic demons stay back and support them with fiery projectiles, and child-like specters flank through the walls only to materialize behind the player to deal damage. Jericho is billed as a horror game, but it fails to terrorize in the traditional sense since there really aren't that many genuinely scary moments. However, the game succeeds in arousing an oppressive feeling of discomfort through the sheer amount of chaos that it throws at the player in pitched battles, filling the screen with demons, bullets and magical attacks going every which way.
Of course, the design of the demons certainly goes a long way towards creating that discomfort, since a rush of hellspawn wouldn't be particularly intimidating if they were cute and fuzzy. Most of the demons are rendered in gore and flesh tones and look as though they might have once been almost human. Of course, they also look as though they've spent the last several eons being tortured, ripped apart and haphazardly sewn back together in a heinous hell dimension and they certainly have the pissed-off demeanor to match such a history. The game may not sport the most original enemy or environmental designs, but it nails a cohesive aesthetic that would be hard to misinterpret as anything other than evil. Generally speaking the art direction and sound design do a convincing job of making the player feel as though they've walked into hell.
What's Not
Unfortunately, all of the great concepts in Jericho are neutralized by a host of poorly-executed gameplay elements that drag what could have been a stand-out shooter down into the depths of mediocrity. By far the biggest problem is the artificial intelligence, or lack thereof. Enemies make effective use of their respective abilities, but they really only have one setting: attack. Enemies either charge the player head on or stay back and use projectile attacks depending on their forte, but they never attempt to find cover or coordinate with each other in efforts of out-maneuvering the Jericho team. Games as far back as DOOM have proven that enemies don't need to be intelligent to make for a fun first-person shooter, but the poor AI hurts Jericho badly since it undercuts so many of the game's goals. While surviving against wave after wave of relentless demons is initially exhilarating and at times frightening, eventually the constant flow of repetitive combat leads to battle fatigue, and mowing through the legions of hell becomes little more than a chore. Likewise, enemy designs that initially provoke fear or disgust are eventually met with apathy. Suffice to say, yawning is not the reaction the developers were hoping to elicit.
The various abilities of the Jericho squad and the body-switching mechanic offer a great deal of tactical options but the mindless behavior of the enemies makes any effort to play tactically a pointless endeavor, effectively wasting the game's greatest strength. There's no reason to try to out-flank the opposition or make use of cover when the enemy's sole strategy is to run straight at the Jericho team and deal as much damage as possible before inevitably succumbing to a hail of bullets or magic. Clearing rooms of enemies never takes much thought, just ample use of the Jericho team's magical powers complemented by lots of backing up and circle strafing. The Jericho team has its own problems, as the player's teammates will routinely try to beat the enemies at their own game and charge head-long into combat against suicidal odds. Thankfully the 'Game Over' screen doesn't hit until every member of the Jericho squad goes down and two of the members have the ability to revive fallen comrades, but the end result of that 'fix' is that players spend most of their time running back and forth reviving their buddies instead of actually, you know, shooting at the bad guys.
A host of other smaller problems take a cumulative toll on the game's fun factor. The level design in the game is insipid and repetitive, leading players along an incredibly linear path through confined hallways interspersed with larger open areas for the major set-piece battles. For some reason the game seems to have a lot of trouble processing these straight-forward levels, as players are forced to progress through them one small chunk at a time, each one interrupted by a lengthy loading screen disguised by a cinematic featuring a typewriter printing up additional story details. Speaking of the story, while the concepts at the heart of the narrative are intriguing the actual writing – particularly the dialog, delivered through abhorrent voice acting - is amateurish at best, which is obviously disappointing considering the merits of the name attached to the project.
Finally, we've hit the tipping point as far as quicktime events in videogames. It's a gameplay device that's been done to death over the last year and yet amazingly no developer has been able to pull off the simplistic simon-says mechanic even half as well as the originators behind God of War. These sequences are no longer clever or even fun, they've just lazy game design at this point. Jericho features one of the worst implementations of the mechanic to date, giving players all of a nanosecond to react to the icon on screen before failing the sequence and having to replay the entire affair from the beginning. There's no punishment for failing the sequence, unless you consider having to play through it again a punishment, which most players will by the fifth or sixth time through.
Final Word
Clive Barker's Jericho is a mish-mash of great concepts and stupid design choices. Every one of the game's strengths is undercut by a glaring weakness: the overarching narrative is sabotaged by campy writing, the squad mechanics are rendered irrelevant by poor AI. During a slower time of year, Jericho might have been worth a rental for fans of the horror genre, but during a holiday season packed with top-tier first-person shooters, gamers are better off spending their valuable time with better games.
What the Game's About
The name might not be familiar in mainstream gaming circles, but fans of the horror genre have probably heard of Clive Barker. A writer, director and artist, Barker has brought his distinctly twisted touch to everything from mainstream slasher flicks to niche comic books. Not too long ago Barker threw his name into the gaming arena with Undying, a terrifying first-person shooter that was criminally overlooked by the PC gaming crowd. Several years and one cancelled project later, Clive Barker's name is back on the gaming scene with Jericho, a squad-based shooter that combines tactical shooting with supernatural powers, a pseudo-religious storyline and a hefty dose of gory visuals.
What's Hot
Jericho has tons of great concepts. The pseudo-religious storyline begins with an interestingly twisted take on the Judeo-Christian creation myth and the age-old struggle between demonic forces and humanity. The narrative devolves into incomprehensible gobbledygook by the end of the game, but there are enough cool ideas littered throughout the game to help keep the context for the action intriguing. One of those nifty ideas is the existence of a super-powered black-ops team put together for the express purpose of keeping otherworldly threats in check. Each of the members of the Jericho team has their own set of military and paranormal specialties, and as the disembodied spirit of the team's KIA commander it's up to the player to appropriately utilize each member's talents in order to lead the team through time and eliminate a rising evil.
The squad mechanics in Jericho are fairly well done. Whereas traditional squad shooters like the Tom Clancy titles give players full control of only one character and forces them to issue general orders to the friendly AI units, Jericho gives players the ability to take full control of any of the Jericho squad members at any time. Doing so allows players to choose how they want to contend with different situations, since each member of the Jericho squad has a unique assortment of weapons and skills. Delgado, for example, uses a chain-gun and has a fire spirit living in his arm so he's perfect for frontal assaults, while Black is a sniper that can telekinetically alter the path of her bullets once they've been fired and is best used from the rear. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't really do much to encourage experimentation with each of the different character's abilities. Instead of challenging players to be creative the game pushes them to deduce which character's skill is needed at any given time, and it's usually extremely obvious which character has the skill required to get through a particular room or battle with the least amount of trouble.
The combat in Jericho is fast-paced, as the game throws wave after wave of enemies at the player, all of which act in concert with each other to make the most of their unique abilities. Demonic beasts pour out of the walls and rush the Jericho team from every direction while tall, stoic demons stay back and support them with fiery projectiles, and child-like specters flank through the walls only to materialize behind the player to deal damage. Jericho is billed as a horror game, but it fails to terrorize in the traditional sense since there really aren't that many genuinely scary moments. However, the game succeeds in arousing an oppressive feeling of discomfort through the sheer amount of chaos that it throws at the player in pitched battles, filling the screen with demons, bullets and magical attacks going every which way.
Of course, the design of the demons certainly goes a long way towards creating that discomfort, since a rush of hellspawn wouldn't be particularly intimidating if they were cute and fuzzy. Most of the demons are rendered in gore and flesh tones and look as though they might have once been almost human. Of course, they also look as though they've spent the last several eons being tortured, ripped apart and haphazardly sewn back together in a heinous hell dimension and they certainly have the pissed-off demeanor to match such a history. The game may not sport the most original enemy or environmental designs, but it nails a cohesive aesthetic that would be hard to misinterpret as anything other than evil. Generally speaking the art direction and sound design do a convincing job of making the player feel as though they've walked into hell.
What's Not
Unfortunately, all of the great concepts in Jericho are neutralized by a host of poorly-executed gameplay elements that drag what could have been a stand-out shooter down into the depths of mediocrity. By far the biggest problem is the artificial intelligence, or lack thereof. Enemies make effective use of their respective abilities, but they really only have one setting: attack. Enemies either charge the player head on or stay back and use projectile attacks depending on their forte, but they never attempt to find cover or coordinate with each other in efforts of out-maneuvering the Jericho team. Games as far back as DOOM have proven that enemies don't need to be intelligent to make for a fun first-person shooter, but the poor AI hurts Jericho badly since it undercuts so many of the game's goals. While surviving against wave after wave of relentless demons is initially exhilarating and at times frightening, eventually the constant flow of repetitive combat leads to battle fatigue, and mowing through the legions of hell becomes little more than a chore. Likewise, enemy designs that initially provoke fear or disgust are eventually met with apathy. Suffice to say, yawning is not the reaction the developers were hoping to elicit.
The various abilities of the Jericho squad and the body-switching mechanic offer a great deal of tactical options but the mindless behavior of the enemies makes any effort to play tactically a pointless endeavor, effectively wasting the game's greatest strength. There's no reason to try to out-flank the opposition or make use of cover when the enemy's sole strategy is to run straight at the Jericho team and deal as much damage as possible before inevitably succumbing to a hail of bullets or magic. Clearing rooms of enemies never takes much thought, just ample use of the Jericho team's magical powers complemented by lots of backing up and circle strafing. The Jericho team has its own problems, as the player's teammates will routinely try to beat the enemies at their own game and charge head-long into combat against suicidal odds. Thankfully the 'Game Over' screen doesn't hit until every member of the Jericho squad goes down and two of the members have the ability to revive fallen comrades, but the end result of that 'fix' is that players spend most of their time running back and forth reviving their buddies instead of actually, you know, shooting at the bad guys.
A host of other smaller problems take a cumulative toll on the game's fun factor. The level design in the game is insipid and repetitive, leading players along an incredibly linear path through confined hallways interspersed with larger open areas for the major set-piece battles. For some reason the game seems to have a lot of trouble processing these straight-forward levels, as players are forced to progress through them one small chunk at a time, each one interrupted by a lengthy loading screen disguised by a cinematic featuring a typewriter printing up additional story details. Speaking of the story, while the concepts at the heart of the narrative are intriguing the actual writing – particularly the dialog, delivered through abhorrent voice acting - is amateurish at best, which is obviously disappointing considering the merits of the name attached to the project.
Finally, we've hit the tipping point as far as quicktime events in videogames. It's a gameplay device that's been done to death over the last year and yet amazingly no developer has been able to pull off the simplistic simon-says mechanic even half as well as the originators behind God of War. These sequences are no longer clever or even fun, they've just lazy game design at this point. Jericho features one of the worst implementations of the mechanic to date, giving players all of a nanosecond to react to the icon on screen before failing the sequence and having to replay the entire affair from the beginning. There's no punishment for failing the sequence, unless you consider having to play through it again a punishment, which most players will by the fifth or sixth time through.
Final Word
Clive Barker's Jericho is a mish-mash of great concepts and stupid design choices. Every one of the game's strengths is undercut by a glaring weakness: the overarching narrative is sabotaged by campy writing, the squad mechanics are rendered irrelevant by poor AI. During a slower time of year, Jericho might have been worth a rental for fans of the horror genre, but during a holiday season packed with top-tier first-person shooters, gamers are better off spending their valuable time with better games.
November 20, 2009
