Clive Barkers Jericho - 6/10
With the world of gaming literally drowning in a plethora of FPS titles from all consoles such as classics like Resistance Fall of Man, Halo 3, Bioshock and the soon to be released Haze, Crysis and Call of Duty 4, its fair to say that Clive Barkers Jericho has quite a mammoth task ahead of it if its going to impress amongst this big bad list of console sellers, and although there is no shame if it doesnt quite match these games *lets face it, that is huge competition* there is also no excuse in this next gen age for a game to fail so noticably in comparison with other FPS. What prevents Jericho from success? Well there is a number of things really, but first lets focus on what Jericho does do right.
Its no surprise that the best aspect about Jericho is the monsters that you will encounter, once you see these walking nightmares in motion you will immediately notice that you have walked into the twisted mind of horror legend Clive Barker. This game truly delivers a dark tone, and it does it better than most horror games already released, Silent Hill V has a big obstacle ahead of it if its going to topple the hell spawns from this horrific title. Some of the more standard enemies look like medieval chain clad knights with rotting, stitched faces, blood soaked mouths and gnashing teeth with rusty nails stuffed into there white diseased heads. Some of the more unforgettable mind menacing demons are the humans with there bodies literally inside out exposing multicoloured steaming guts dripping with gore, you will most likely hold your mouth to stop the trickle of vomit from coming down your chin, these are truly grotesque in the extreme, you will not want to be eating lunch while playing this game that is for sure. The biggest baddest, bile inducing monster of the lot is easily what can only be described as a giant flabby baby showered in blood dangling from the ceiling by two giant chains, what does this blubbering pile of lard do to make you put your sandwich down? You will notice a large slit down its stomach which opens up revealing all its steamy guts/innards, which it uses to attack you with. There really is nothing as nasty as this thing, if you needed one reason and one reason only to play Jericho it would be to see this big fleshy toddler in action. It is one of those moments that has you pointing at the screen muttering the word ' What the f*** ' These are the type of enemies that you would see only spawning from satans inner circle and their variety seriously makes you question the mentality of Mr Barkers condition and ideas to come up with some of these buggers.
Its not just the enemies that will have you crawling for the nearest toilet, but the grainy dark settings you and your soldiers trudge through are just as hideous as the monsters that populate the setting. The world of Jericho is full of rusty dirty grimy walls, warm exposed organs thrashing around, shiny pulsating lunks of meat, pools of pus and the odd level of torture. Overall the whole vibe you get when entering this games murky realm is incredibly unsettling and discomforting. Jerichos environments are called ' Time Slices ' which take our supernatural squad through the time of The Crusades, World War II and the 4th Millenium B.C, just to name a few. You have been warned, it is a very disturbing game and thats what it does so well, the developers obviously want to scare the player and boy did it work on me.
During the game you control as a squad of soldiers all with special abilities, these guys include:
Paul Rawlings - The exorcist and priest
Frank Delgado - An alcheimist and pyromancer
Xavier Jones - This guy has the ability to possession enemies and can control there movements.
Abigail Black - The telekinesis sniper who can control the flight of bullets that are fired.
Wilhelmina Church - A sexy PVC clad kitana wielding ninja-esque blood mage
Simone Cole - The hacker who possesses the ability to change time and teleport items to squad members
Now for the downfall of Jericho, you would think with such an awesome bunch of crew to play as, it would make Jericho such a refreshing and original game to play, and to some extent it does, but this doesnt necessarily bode well for the overall score when the visuals of this game are quite ugly, the monsters you fight are a different ugly, they are ugly because they are meant to be, but the squaddies you act are ugly in a visual way, and really, they shouldnt be. It can be pretty off putting to see such wickedly created monsters ruined by poorly animated lead characters.
The gameplay is squad based, which can have you switch between different soldiers during combat which helps keep proceedings fresh, the AI is quite smart which also benefits the whole squad based gameplay of the experience. Sadly there is not a whole lot of squad tactics to play with here, which really hurts when there is such a good variety of soldiers to use. The idea is right, its just not executed well, they have a perfect mix of characters but the lack of commands almost makes them pointless to use. If you want squad based gaming that is actually successful, then i would suggest you avoid Jericho and grab a copy of one of Tom Clancy's squad based titles like GRAW2 or Rainbow Six Vegas, because both those games do the whole squad based gaming mechanic much better than Jericho implements it.
What also hurts the gameplay is the linear pathways for each setting, granted, the settings look pretty awesome but usually there is only one route to take, which kills the option of flanking the enemy and putting these squad based mechanics to good use and because there is so little room to have fun in, it makes the game very repetitive in such a small time frame of play simply because you cant really split up or switch directions. 
The real killer blow for Jericho is the zero multiplayer, for a squad based game, your average gamer demands multiplayer in a game of this kind, even if its offline multiplayer, GRAW 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas are bathing in online success right now and so could Jericho but instead, the developers have chosen the silly option of keeping this game solo, leaving Jericho in a boring single player mold basically wasting its potential. Its poor compensation for a title that could have been successful if multiplayer was added.
Overall, from the beginning i wasnt expecting too much from Jericho, and it looks like my early thoughts were correct in the final analysis of this title, sure the monsters in the game are brilliantly designed and set the tone, but the characters certainly dont, they are poor to look at and pale in comparison to how great some of the enemies look. To me it seems like Clive Barker and co put more effort into enemy design and knocked off early leaving the rest of the game for the waste bin. To me it seems like a lazy development process that obviously needed more time before release.
Its a shame Jericho didnt turn out better, because it has all the right ingredients but just finished lazy, its like preparing a meal, you have all the ingredients to make such a tasty dinner but you rush it all too quickly because you want to feed the family before it gets late, resulting in a cold unfinished dinner that sounded delicious earlier on. By all means, give it a rent, because if you like your games solo and dont entirely care about stunning visuals then you may very well enjoy this game, even if it is just a sloppy boring linear slog. But for others who love squad based titles, then grab GRAW2 or Vegas and leave this collecting cobwebs on the video store shelf.
Submitted by callan5
26/10/2007
11
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