I bought this game because I am a Clive Barker fan. This will colour this review, though not in the ways you might think. I feel I am going to be harsher than I should because I am disappointed that something that Clive seems to have had a hand in has turned out so averagely, when it could have been great.
This is Clive Barker from the eighties, Books of Blood Barker rather than Coldheart Canyon Barker. Designed for teenage horror movie fans, the kind of fan that the subtleties of Barker have always flown high overhead. The ones who hated Weaveworld because it wasn't scary. The ones who love the Hellraiser series beyond the first one. For me this is Clive Barker for gorehounds, Clive Barker working towards the medium of games for 13 year old boys and ultimately Clive Barker Lite. It has most of Barker's hallmarks, death of major characters, usually the hero, check. Homosexuality/lesbianism, check. Mutilation and perversion of the flesh, pain and torture, all the boxes are checked. Somewhere in there just enough to be noticed is also the brilliant and gripping story-line check box, but has it been ticked hard enough?
The story concerns the firstborn, which is described as God's first attempt at creating life, which was mistakenly given far to much power. God decided to make humans much weaker and with flaws. Unable to erase the Firstborn he locked it away in the pyxsis. This prision seemed to keep the firstborn in check but it found a way to talk to humans on Earth and managed to organise its release through mass sacrifice. The Sumerians were the first to release it and only through the actions of seven priests were able to seal the firstborn back in the pyxsis. The problem was that the firstborn took a slice of Sumeria with it along with the priests and presumably those unfortunate enough to be around at the time. Inside the pyxsis the trapped souls linger unable to die and slowly going mad. Throughout the centuries others have been influenced by the firstborn to let it out. Unknown to it though since the original Sumerian escape a sect of warrior priests have been set up to monitor for the firstborn's escape and to put it back into the pyxsis each time it does. So the cycle goes on, through roman crusades and second world war timeframes until present day when the jericho sqaud of today is sent in to seal the firstborn back into it's trap. The Firstborn is released this time by a cult leader by the name of Leach, who pops up from time to time to annoy you. The story takes you through the captured time slices inside the pyxsis being helped and hindered by the unfortunates who have been trapped inside a never ending hell for centuries and have had the time to go quite, quite mad. The story drives along reasonably and I was impressed by the twist at the end which has the Jericho squad going against all reason and taking a terrible risk which we will have to wait for the sequel to know whether or not they have destroyed the world or saved it.
So how does it play? The main gameplay mechanic of not is that each member of the Jericho team can be switched to and controlled. The others are controlled by a.i. and for the most part shoot at baddies and actually do a good job of getting out of your way. With seven of you milling around in small corridors this is a plus point. Switching to characters is done by aiming at them as if you were going to shoot them and pressing a button or by switching using a clunky and over complicated pop up interface, this should have been achieved by using an eight point wheel with the characters around the outside, hold a button and switch with left or right thumbstick, instead you have two four point wheels switched with the d-pad. There have been many similar games with multiple characters and abilities distributed amongst them. Kameo springs to mind. The mechanic is explained by the player controlled character dying, and becoming a spirit who can hop at will to the other squad members. The squad members have different weapons and abilities. There are heavy weapons, snipers, grenades, etc. All distributed so you have to know who to hop into to get at the relevant weapon for the situation. There are also special powers like being able to stop monsters in blood magic traps, slow time, astral projection. So simply put every weapon and fps gameplay mechanic is included and given to each member of the team. In practice however, I ended up going through most of the game with Black and Delgado who seemed the most effective characters, only using the others when I had need of their particular ability. Black was by far the most useful character with her grenade launcher and ghost bullet sniper rifle. The ghost bullet deserves special mention, it is simply a bullets eye view camera, but it was fun to try to string two or three head-shots together.
Strangely enough one of Jericho's most touted features is the characters and how much they can do. It might also be the games undoing, you see the learning curve is very steep. The game does try to phase all the characters in slowly and you can't control everyone and use all their abilities until about the end of the second level. The problem is that on first play the game asks you to take in a whole lot and run with it. By the time I had finished the game for the second time I felt I had mastered and learned all that could be learned about five of the seven characters.
The level design was very poor, it felt like there was little to no thought involved in their design. The majority of the game was simply corridors, or areas outside that may as well have been corridors interspersed with square like areas where bigger shoot outs took place. There was no sense of place other than a few decorations. Sure the roman area had baths, the world war two area had bunkers. However, there was little to suggest that these places had been ripped from a living breathing world and trapped inside this nightmarish box of space time.
The enemy design was not what I wanted from a Clive Barker game, they were nothing I hadn't seen before. Only the bosses seemed to have any ounce of Barkerishness. I was looking forward to seeing some of Barkers art come to life and attack me, it did, but in the end it seemed like I had seen the most prevalent monsters far to many times in other games. A.i. consisted of two varieties, those who run at you and hit you or explode nearby taking you with them or enemies that skulk in the distance and shoot at you from afar. Not the best, far from the worst. Hint to games developers, I really hate exploding enemies, like those here and in Gears of War, Far Cry, etc. Please no more, or at least make them easier to kill with one or two shots instead of ten.
The graphics were nice enough, however the levels did all have a similar feel, with only the Sumerian and the Roman areas having any real distinction, especially the arena. The others seemed muddy and dark and boring, too much corridor and not enough architecture. There were some nice graphical touches, the characters of the team all looked good, but the same could not be said for most of the enemies. This game won't be winning any awards for it graphics, they are serviceable however.
The game uses the now obligatory checkpoint save system and for the most part doesn't expect you to tread too much old ground when you die, though it is guilty of making you repeat some nasty sections over and over due to misplaced checkpoints. Not as bad as some games, I always remember F.E.A.R. as being a bad one for that.
The menu presentation is standard and needs no mention, There is some concept art and background text unlocked with each achievement and this is reasonably interesting, it's a pity they couldn't have showed instead of told in game as the stuff really did add to the characters, of the team and the enemies.
Speaking of achievements, I gained 150-200 points for a first play through on normal, and 580 in total for a second on hard. The achievements are the usual completed level and snipe / stab / blow up x amount of monsters variety. For those contemplating doing it on hard first I would recommend playing through on normal or easy first simply to learn the characters and what you use them for, it makes the hard difficulty that much easier to take as there as some areas that need a little strategy to stop them becoming frustrating which if learnt on easy will make hard all the more fun.
There is no multiplayer option at all. This game was crying out for online co-op if you ask me, it could have been much better if all of the squad could have been real people. I don't think multiplayer would have been bad, I just couldn't have seen me playing it much. The different characters would have made for a game similar to Shadowrun. Which wasn't all that bad? If there had been a gametype with an enforced team mix it could have been interesting, one being the healer, one the sniper, one the heavy, etc. Still it wasn't to be so we will never know if it would have been any good.
So there it is, some nice ideas, story, etc., marred by adequate implementation. Level design is really the one major problem here. the rest is all solid enough. After playing Call of Duty and Halo 3 this game suffered from having to follow the big fps juggernauts. Come to think of it if Infinity ward or Bungie had developed this it could have been stunning. The only sad thing here is that I actually find myself wanting to know how the story ends, I want Jericho 2 and 3 to be made, With sales according to vgchartz of 300,000 I am not sure I will ever get those sequels.
