Reviews// Clive Barker's Jericho

In order to open the tomb, you have to shoot the doorway through. You eventually realise that you have to do this in fully-automatic mode. Why? Because your gun resolutely refuses to fire unless you place it in fully automatic mode. If it doesn't fire in single or dual-shot modes, why are they there? It just doesn't make sense.

Once you get through the door, you are treated to a cut-scene featuring dialogue so poor it challenges the intro to Alien Breed Tower Assault – in which I appeared. We were drunken Yorkshiremen making it up as we went along (ad libbing is the professional term, but we were not professionals). Mercury Steam, on the other clawed fist, has probably paid Barker more for this drivel than the entire Tower Assault cast earned in a year, and our day jobs were making the great game that was Alien Breed Tower Assault.

After some more appalling dialogue, it's straight into a cut-scene (Dragons Lair) sequence, where the floor collapses, and you fall into a pit. The way to avoid death at this point is to press the appropriate buttons as their images appear on screen.

This style of gameplay has no place in modern gaming, but it's rearing its head time and time again, from Tomb Raider to Heavenly Sword. In Jericho, if you die, you just get to replay the section time and time again until you get the button sequence right. It's not fun, and it's not entertainment. By the time I was past this I was ready to give Jericho the heave-ho; the fact that I had a review to submit was all that kept me playing.

It would have been a shame if I had abandoned Jericho at that point, because from here on in it improves rapidly. Once you're past the frustrating start, the game quickly becomes a fairly standard squad-based shooter. As you progress through the underground labyrinth and base below Al-Khali, you are pursued by monsters that appear at first, to be simply undead, but are soon revealed to have supernatural powers. Luckily, your squad members have their own powers and, as the monsters become more powerful, you have to rely on your supernatural powers to defend yourself, and to defeat them.

A quick word on the graphics: Jericho's graphics, on PS3 at least, are far from best in class. The cut-scenes use the game engine and, while this creates a seamless transition between the two, it does make them look pretty lacklustre when compared with games like Heavenly Sword.

In-game, even on SPOnG's immaculate Samsung, Hi-Def monster screen, the 'dark and creepy' theme is taken too far. It's actually, "stodgy" and "drab"...

Your squad members possess passable AI, meaning they'll swarm around you and defend you in combat situations. You can also command them to fall back and wait, or advance ahead of you and take all the flack. Being a healer (oh, you’re a healer, by the way), if one of them dies, you can just walk over and resurrect him. Magic!

As you progress through the game, you will need to switch between your squad mates, to control the one of them who has the power most applicable to the situation at hand.

The characters are mismatched, ranging across a selection of cultural backgrounds and both genders. While this makes the game inclusive, it also makes them look a little like a raggle-taggle band of gypsies – although the modern Goth ‘uniform’ is maintained throughout. None of the player characters are particularly appealing, and the one of them that dresses in quite revealing clothes moves away whenever your character lurks near enough to cop a peek.

Jericho twists the squad-shooter genre just enough to add spice for fans of the genre. But devotees of the more straightforward military style of game may find the occult aspects off-putting. Clive Barker’s name is likely to attract an audience, but his turgid dialogue and stodgy storyline will alienate roughly equal numbers.

The control system - despite the afore-mentioned button-pressing insult - is straightforwardly simple. Analog sticks to move around, L2 or R2 for firing. Well, really, nothing spectacular at all... and that sums the whole enterprise up.

SPOnG Score 67%

Conclusion
I can't help feeling that any sixth form Goth could have produced a story this formulaic and derivative in one free period. This would have saved Codemasters a bundle that it could have spent on more impressive visuals. If there is a better story editor and improved graphics, Jericho 2 could be well worth a look to those who want a mixture of gun and spell-casting.