Previews// First Look And Video: Clive Barker's Jericho

Of the seven different characters in the Jericho-team, I got a good look at three of them – a fat bloke who shoots fire out of his arm; a self-harming Samurai lady-witch; and a sniper who talks to her bullets in mid-flight.

My first good look was at Sergeant Frank ‘Pyromancer’ Delgado (A Pyromancer, for those wondering is “one who speaks with fire”). In Frank’s case this means he has some kind of fire spirit called Ababanili living in his cybernetic right arm (stay with me on this, it works when you see it!) who he is able to summon at will to wreak fiery havoc.

Next up was Sergeant ‘Billie’ Church - a ‘Blood Ward’ who doesn’t believe in firearms, but is quite handy with her samurai sword. She is also able to cast some fairly powerful enchantment and banishment spells, but in order to do so she has to cut into her hand. Did we mention already that this game is fairly dark?

Lastly I got to see a little demo of a character called Lieutenant Abigail Black, a telekinetic sniper who possesses the impressive ability to steer her bullets to ensure they reach the desired target. She can also redirect incoming bullets and assist in moving around parts of the environment (rocks blocking the groups way and so on) although the more she saps her powers, the more she bleeds out of her mouth, ears and nose. Nice!

Other members of the Jericho group – which I’ve yet to see in action - include Corporal Simone Cole, a ‘Reality Hacker’ with a bunch of bizarre abilities such as being able to slow or speed up time; Captain Xavier Jones a ‘seer’ who can see useful but cryptic events in the future (or even from the past) to assist the group’s progress; Father Paul Rawlings the group’s exorcist and resident expert on malevolent paranormal entities and last, but not least, Captain Devin Ross a ‘spirit/ghost’ with no physical weapons but the handy ability to heal incapacitated team mates.

You will have got the gist by now that Clive Barker’s Jericho is both incredibly disturbing and rather delightfully, intensely gruesome. The game is bound to appeal to fans of classic horror, but it should also hopefully appeal to a slightly wider audience as Jericho is a beautiful looking and very well executed videogame. The ‘fantasy horror’ tag doesn’t really do it justice. The lighting, shadows, colour and (taken-from-photo) textures in the game have been tweaked to ensure that players become fully, frighteningly immersed in Barker’s dark world. The all important suspension of disbelief takes a matter of seconds of playing the game

The enemies in the game are the real stand-out, proper shit-scary real deal. This is one of the few, rare genuine horror games that you really don’t want to be playing alone, late at night in a darkened, lonely country house. Although, weirdly, that is almost exactly where I envision the best place to play it would be. For the true horror-loving masochist, at least.

The blood-spattered, cybernetically-enhanced, open-wounded enemies include the Melee Crusader, twisted shadows of their previous human forms spread out across the cityscape, roaming in packs; hordes of creepy, spectral Children Crusaders, previously slaughtered and buried en masse in the crusades; and the suicidal Cultists who don't fear being killed because each rebirth approaches them a bit closer to perfection. Some of the cultists even explode when the commit suicide near to your character.

They prowl everywhere; if they perceive the presence of the Jericho squad they run towards them, trying to get distance to perform their attack: Instead of right hand they have kind of hook. When they manage to get really close to target, they knife themselves with that hook and explode, scattering their toxic insides, poisoning everyone inside the cloud of vaporized blood that remains for a seconds after explosion.

Clive Barker’s Jericho is one of the darkest, strangest, most twisted and intense next-gen videogames I have seen for some time. Alongside Irrational’s Bioshock, it promises to really please fans of action horror when it comes out later this year.

Watch out for SPOnG’s updated previews as soon as we get hold of the code. Right now, I'm going outside in the sunshine, as I've actually managed to scare myself a little too much merely remembering all the gory details about the game.