Roughly three days ago, I completed yet another game for my Buffet Challenge. This one is Clive Barker’s Jericho developed by MSE and Codemasters. Clive Barker is noted for his Hellraiser creation, which to this day, Pin Head still slightly creeps me out. Anyway, I figured this game would be a Sci-Fi Shooter, but it falls under the Survival Horror genre. Survival Horror is another one of those game types that I tend to fall in love with. The Silent Hill series still remains as one of my favorites. Even if a few of them left me slightly disappointed, I still enjoyed playing them. Survival horror games get my adrenaline rushing – you just never know when something is going to come around a corner and scare the living crap out of you. Also, most of the survival horror games that I enjoy tend to be a bit of a psychological roller coaster ride. I mean seriously – Silent Hill 2, people. Pyramid Head is a symbol to represent James Sunderland’s (the protagonists) punishment for his “sins”, to put the term loosely. If you want, go ahead and read the analysis of Pyramid Head. I know that I can get completely off subject with just him alone. Regardless, I was just trying to explain my love for the psychological, creepy, survival horror games.
Onward to Clive Barker’s Jericho!
You start out in a small dream that one of the characters, Ross, has in the middle of the night. He awakes from the dream to receive a phone call (“at three in the damn morning”) about a job that requires his skill and expertise. Naturally, Ross accepts the job, and he’s on a plane with six other individuals. Panning across the plane, you see a mustached man, a girl, a relatively large bald man, another woman, an African American man, and a barely clothed woman. This group is known as Team Jericho, a group that doesn’t truly exist according to the government. You then learn that each individual is skilled in ‘arcane arts’, and the group deals with Covert Occult Warfare, a ‘fancy euphemism for witches with guns’. The first character that speaks is Rawlings, the mustached man. His voice entertains me because it’s as though the actor is trying way too hard to sound like a Southern American bad ass. He briefs you and your team on the mission you will be required to complete. You learn that an old friend of Rawlings, Leach, is a core of the problem. Leach and his Brotherhood of Dark Rapture are trying to gain access into an area called Al Kali by using dark rituals. So far, this sounds pretty interesting. I don’t want to give the ending away at all, so I’ll just talk about the game play and a few of the levels.
Holy cow, that’s a lot of side boob on her! Anyway, Clive Barker has a very dark, imaginative mind. Keep in mind that he didn’t develop this game; he merely wrote the story to it. The game is a first person shooter with not too bad of graphics considering it was released in 2007. I wasn’t expecting much from the first handful of levels. In most games, the enemies and quests are pretty straightforward in the beginning. This game was no exception. You have a very linear path to follow in order for the story to continue. Also, the enemies never really jumped out at you at the beginning. As the story progresses, you (Ross) ends up getting killed. His spirit and arcane ability is able to ‘migrate’ to his team members. You have the option to change between six characters, each with a different skill set. At first, I thought this would be pretty interesting, but after a while, I wanted to stick with one character instead of changing to six different ones just to get a menial task completed. The one that I used most was Jericho member Black. She is a sniper that has a ‘ghost bullet’ ability which allows you to control the trajectory of the bullet. I mainly used it to get some of the achievements I needed 🙂 To be honest, I remember some of the team members abilities, but I didn’t use them that much.
As you’re trying to find Leach, you come in contact with Breaches that allow you to travel to different centuries and eras. At one point, you’re in the Greek/Roman era. This is also to the point where I’ve put nearly two hours into the game. Not one enemy scared the crap out of me. They were mostly annoying. Oh, look. A dude wielding a shield and some spears. What’s that? A flying thing? Well he’s about as annoying as a mosquito. I was expecting something to pop out and be somewhat challenging, but I didn’t come across that at all. I wanted the element of surprise. I didn’t see any of it. It was far too predictable. I knew exactly when an enemy was going to show itself. At one point, the enemies began flanking team Jericho between three rooms. It was literally like playing Whack-a-Mole. I knew exactly where they were going to pop from the ground or around the corner. The pattern was easy to figure out, and they came at you one at at time. There weren’t any puzzles or strategic missions in the game at all – it was so linear that it made this game agonizing. If there were any puzzles, then they were extremely easy. The boss fights weren’t any better. It was predictable on how to get rid of them. There was one really large guy that was slightly disturbing, but he just hung from these giant meat hooks and spat blood at you.
The story was intriguing, but I felt the developers could of put a lot more work into this game. Some puzzles, some monsters jumping out at you in the dark, and some more difficult bosses would of done the trick. I think the story made the game bearable. The gameplay was below average, the voice acting was average, and the story was extremely intriguing. I wish I could say more on this game however, I feel that I can’t. I also don’t want to give too much away in case any of you want to try to play it.
I think my top words to describe this game are: linear, predictable, interesting, WTF, and side boob.
To be honest, I wholeheartedly agree, the game was trying to be Lovecraft with action and ended up being less scary than Quake 2, given that Quake 2 made me seriously jump a few times back in the day, I mean my arm moved so much I ended up facing the wrong way jump.
I personally I think games were scarier when the developers didn’t have the graphical engines they do now, so there wasn’t the pressure to have the monsters standing out for everybody to see just so they could show off. If you see a monster coming its really not going to illicit a reaction, I remember playing Jericho and thinking “OK I have gone through some passages and am into a more open area, enemies spawning in 3… 2… 1… ” and even if my countdown was rarely right they would still appear.
I think the only way something could be scary and still let you know it’s coming would be if you didn’t know what was coming but each stage of Jericho seems to use the same enemies ad nauseum, there just isn’t the variety to keep it interesting.
I did find it funny that they tended to come out of the ground one by one though, it made it almost like a game of whack a mole with guns.
I didn’t finish the game so I cant comment on the ending, I just couldn’t go on after the first few stages, I’m just glad I bout it for £3 in a sale so didn’t feel bad about putting it down.
If you are a fan of survival horror I would really (and I mean really) recomend Amnesia- The Dark Decent, it is survival horror in the true sense (you have no means of defence) and managed to scare the bejesus out of the player using mostly atmosphere. However if you do play it do it in the dark with headphones on as the game suggests, it makes it so much better, seriously an unlock code for that game should be enclosed in every pack of laxatives in case the drugs don’t work.
I’ve been debating about Amnesia. I have the demo, but I have yet to play it. Fred will probably come home from work with towels on the windows and me hunkering over the computer. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! YOU’RE LETTING LIGHT IN!! STOP THAT!! I’M TRYING TO SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF MYSELF!!”
I do need to go back and edit about the monsters coming out of the ground. There was one level where there were waves of monsters flanking you and your team. It was terribly monotonous. I honestly felt like I was playing whack-a-mole.