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Clive Barker's Jericho

Written by DM on Monday, November 26 2007

I did mention earlier that the game was not scary along the same lines as Silent Hill or Resident Evil. This is true, but the game certainly is disturbing at points. Each rift you reach will take you further back in time, to fight another genre of bad guy, in another section of "the box." From World War II Nazis all the way back to Roman Centurions, you will have to replay history’s defeat of these evil squads who tried to get control of The Firstborn’s power.

The graphics and sound in Jericho are mixed bag. The graphics themselves can be extremely pretty at points, yet right around the next corner they can be simply adequate. The game uses darkness very well, and in fact has developed a way to make gamers unable to avoid said darkness (a feature I believe all games should have in future – call it a sort of “brightness cheat” defeat system). In case you were unaware, games that use darkness to hide enemies and traps can be undone by simply turning up the brightness. This is not so in Jericho. In this game, no matter how high you turn the brightness up, the elements of the game hidden by said darkness simply do not render unless you use the in game flashlight on the area in question. This means, even at the maximum brightness setting, the only thing that shows up on your screen are a few random puffs of smoke. Very clever, indeed. The sound, on the other hand, is more or less bland and uninteresting. The game does use some ambient music and sound effects to add to the atmosphere, and it does its job, but the gunfire and voiceovers leave a lot to be desired. Also, in case you were wondering, a few minor celebrities show up to lend their voices to Jericho. In fact, you may wonder why Jack Carver from FarCry, and Captain Ross from Jericho sound so similar (talk to Stephen Dorff).

The game's control mechanics are your standard FPS fare. Left-handers and legacy players will be able to switch the controls to their liking, but that is more or less the extent of the control options. Fire, alternate fire, reload, melee, and grenade/special power are all present. Not much to mention here beyond that, other than the D-pad is used to switch team members, which ultimately means switching weapons. You do tend to run out of ammunition often in Jericho, but as long as your supply team member is healthy, she will automatically summon ammunition to your person, whoever you are possessing at the time. The first few times it happens, it takes a bit of getting used to, but in the heat of battle it is most welcome.

When you first start Jericho, you will really want to like and enjoy the game. The amount of mediocre games released these days, coupled with the fact that Jericho has a man like Clive Barker backing it, will really make you want to enjoy the title. Unfortunately, the repetitive and relentless AI along with the staleness of the game in later levels (I say later levels, but the game is actually very short), make enjoying Jericho all the way through very difficult. The story is fantastic, and the enemy design is truly disturbing. If this was a movie it would be a real dark scare-fest, too bad it is a video game instead. Still, it is slightly above average compared to most of the FPS games being released these days. Once you finish the top-tier FPS games from this season, Jericho is one of the first I would look at next, be it rent or buy.

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