Clive Barker's Jericho (Xbox 360)

Jericho is squad-based horror shooter from the twisted mind of Clive Barker. Upon discovering a lost city buried in the blistering desert, a team of psychic commandos are dispatched to unlock its secrets within. Upon entering this lost necropolis they discover that the city is actually the prison of the First Born - a creature of boundless evil that was God's first attempt at creating life. Unhappy with his creation, the Lord banished it to its prison, where it has remained and plotted its revenge upon creation ever since.

Clive Barker is an amazing writer - his imagery and style is truly unique, and any computer game featuring his talents is bound to be something exceptional. By combining intense action, perverse abominations, and twisted surroundings to the mix, Jericho promises to breathe much needed life into the already stagnating FPS genre.

So does it work?

Well, no. To be fair, Jericho is an absolute travesty to the games industry. After enduring the game for two hours I found it hard to believe that they still make games like this. Perhaps five or six years ago this sort of attempt would have been acceptable - but with so many other titles on offer it is hard to recommend Jericho for any reason.

The main problem with Jericho is it's actual gameplay. The entire game plays like some hi-res Time Crisis on the Playstation One, or Cobra Command or Road Avenger on the Mega CD. Enter area kill all enemies. Move on to the next and kill more enemies. Move on to there and kill a few more. Then repeat. Again. And again. And again. Progress is so linear that there is only ever one set path to follow with no deviation or interaction with the environment what-so-ever.

Which leads to problem number two. As this is a squad-based shooter the player should be given some choice as how to manage their squad. With one set path to progress through it is impossible to co-ordinate your team and use effective group tactics. So what could have been a tactical experience quickly develops into a bog-standard shooting mess. There is absolutely no point splitting your team up - there is no multiple routes to flank enemy monsters, no cover to use and no high ground to use your sniper. Which I must say is a useless team member. Its just shoot. And shoot. And shoot.

Further excitement has been removed by giving the team infinite ammo. Rather than forcing players to make best use of the three firing modes for each weapon, players can just fire willy-nilly forever with little regard for ammo conservation, again, reducing the amount of tactics required to progress through the game.

The weapons in Jericho are pretty bad, and only add to the pain. They lack the power to take down even the most generic of enemy monsters. Shooting creatures in the head with your sniper inflicts little damage rendering her useless, and spraying a group of gibbering demons with a heavy-duty chaingun has all the power of shooting peas through a straw.

But the agony and boredom just keeps getting better. In an attempt to pervert the fabric of reality Jericho forces the player to several situations where they are required to hit buttons in a certain sequence to cheat death, etc. However, each button needed flashes up on the screen short of a nano second, so success is only certain by replaying these events over and over again to memorise the entire sequence.

Its hard to recommend Jericho for anything other than its graphics and monster design, and the fact that Clive Barker had something to do with it. The whole game plays like an early Mega CD game without the option of pressing left or right. Instead its pressing shoot and shoot. Add to the fact that you cant die (you possess other members to switch between each squaddie) and you have the most basic of games that offers as about as much fun as the DWP PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHEME- a complete waste of time and money.

Out of the box, Clive Barkers Jericho is fantastic on the eyes, the first thing that struck me, was the graphics seem to superceed that of even Gears of War. After you have got past some of the major features of the game, you may feel a little let down by some of the major errors.

You play as a tactical squad trained in "Occult Warfare" and are placed into a story in which you must go back in time and visit some key historical places in order to change some events which happened a long time ago. Along your journey, you will encounter a different array of enemies ranging from zombies to some harder to kill level bosses amongst others.

Your squad members each have their own strengths and weapons, ranging from slowing down time and resupplying ammo, to miniguns, swords and freezing enemies for a few seconds. Like most FPS's these days, you have a main weapon and a secondary, which in most cases is a melee weapon, as well as 2 psychic powers, some of the more useful ones include: Ghost Bullet, Fire Spirit and slow down time.

Throughout the game, team-mates are next to useless, rarely killing enemies, and leaving the player to do most if not all of the killing. Should the whole team be incapacitated, the mission and game is over, and the player will be teleported to a checkpoint prior to the point they reached before death. The frustrating amount of overpowering enemies makes this game unenjoyable at times, the level design means you have little room to maneuver to avoid attacks and heal your team mates.

Unfortunately, the enemies which make you say "i hope i dont see them again in the entire game" will most of the time make a frequent appearance, usually bringing more than one, which will in turn force your untimely and undesired demise. The main culprites for me are the exploding zombies which will only die if a small yellow patch is shot on their body. Frustratingly, you will usually be facing up to 3 or 4 at a time, and each one of them could have up to 5 yellow patches. This plus the level design can restrict your retreat, sometimes meaning you have a rediculously small time to dispatch them before they reach you.

Should you be unlucky, and they do reach you, they will detonate, which will incapacitate you with one hit. Your teams severe innability to shoot and kill anything means you could be reverting to a checkpoint a few times if your up against alot of exploding zombies in one go, one word: Annoying.

The squad mechanics clearly mentioned in the blurb on the back of the box are a strong point of the game, although when a character is too far away to go up to and double tap A to posess, things take a turn for the frustration. To operate the Possession system, you need to use the D-pad, and select a team member which have been arranged into 2 separate teams. This can present problems when one desires to change character mid-battle.

Another frustrating challenge (lots of frustration i know) is when a player is required to stop themselves from dying by pushing a certain sequence of buttons that appear on screen. This might seem like a good idea, but given the short amount of time you have to react or even realise the buttons are on screen, means this adds to the games already large repetoir of faults. Should you fail, you fall down or get brutally murdered by a monster, then return to the top, only to do it all again. After a while this becomes childs play, as you can just learn the buttons and pass it easily, if you fail enough times.

The challenges that are presented in the game can be a little obscure at times, because little instruction is supplied on-screen as to how the player is to go about accomplishing them. The only hint the player has to go by is the sometimes informative but mostly brief hints from the team.

The level design is by far the biggest let down for the game. This starts to sink in when the opening cut-scene has ended and the game begins. The level design makes the player feel as if they are trapped inside a box, and creates a somewhat linear gameplay, which in my opinion isn't going to cut it with the next generation consoles.

The level design offers no choice in direction and guides the player in one direction, which kills the game completely. A game of this standard and graphical content shouldn't have such things, and should offer the player at least some sort of choice, because Clive Barkers: Jericho had potential to be a blockbusting game.

Overall a tired effort from Codemasters, redeemed only by its great graphics and well thought out model designs. The story ending, and level design leaves alot to be desired, and no online features poison the game for me. Unfortunately, if you buy this game, you will be left disappointed by the move-to-the-next-area-and kill-everything-that-moves gameplay which is the only thing the game has to offer.

Worth a buy if you like the look of the graphics, don't expect too much else here though.

Having been put off in the past by the poor reviews I finally gave this game a go. I like Barkers books, the films not so much. How would a game do? Overall the first hour is pretty poor, obviously there's a lot that could of made this game significantly better. But, if you stick with it, it's actually pretty good fun. The story and graphics are good, the abilities are pretty good. The poor side is the limited team coordination - it's no Rainbox 6 etc - but it never was going to be.

All in all, I actually enjoyed this game, the closer to the end it gets the better it gets. Give it a go. Just don't expect too much and you'll be surprised.