The shadows gather around us once again. Take our hands and wander with us into the darkness where the monsters gather. We’re bringing you 31 horror reviews in October. Whatever you do, don’t let go of our hands lest you find out what truly goes bump in the night.
Clive Barker’s Jericho is a squad based first person shooter where you assume control of a Jericho squad and have to defeat a God who wants to end the world.
Story:
Clive Barker know for his horror stories like Hellraiser, presents another good story. In Jericho you assume the role of General Ross who with his squad have to travel to a town where a breach is opened which will let out the Firstborn, a creature created by God and banished after being disturbed by his creation. After a few missions Ross is killed and he now has the ability to link up with his squad and control them.
The story in Jericho is really interesting and actually has some really good ideas, but sadly this doesn’t help to save what is a really mediocre game. There was room left for improvement with a cliffhanger ending and a rumored sequel synopsis, but since there’s been almost ten years since the release of Jericho it’s doubtful that we will know how the story for Jericho squad concludes.
Graphics:
The game back in the day must have been quite a good looking game, but sadly it hasn’t aged well. Each zone you visit is visually different and there’s some decent ideas, but the incredibly low resolution textures don’t look good.
Each enemy however looks great and there’s some truly great designs. The style really remind of Hellraiser where most people are in black leather spandex and are designed to look like they’re in immense pain.
Audio:
The sound design of this game however is really bland and there’s not much good about it. Steve Blum who voices General Ross is probably the only good voice actor in the game and everyone else does a mediocre job.
Other things like guns and explosions and the monster noises are things you’ve heard in other games and there’s nothing much I can say about that.
Gameplay:
Jericho is a squad based shooter, where you pick one of six characters who have unique abilities and weapons, but in the end there’s not much different about these characters. Each character has two unique abilities and different weapons, but each enemy is still a bullet sponge. When you pick a character like a giant with a minigun you hope that he will wreak havoc to every enemy on the map, but in reality his minigun does the same amount of damage as someones machine pistol and he goes down just as quickly as the tinniest character.
The game also has a squad mechanic where you can order your squad to move up or stay, but it won’t matter what you order them to do cause they will flat out ignore what you tell them to do. This becomes more problematic when in later segments there’s a bunch of enemies on the screen and they just stay in place missing every shot and dying meaning you have to pick them up.
During the boss fights this becomes even more tedious as every boss in the game has an attack which can kill three or more members of your squad in one hit.
Verdict:
Clive Barker’s Jericho is probably for me the biggest disappointment in gaming history. It has an amazing story, but sadly the execution of it is poor. The ending is also a slap in the face, baiting for a sequel, but sadly this never got resolved and probably will never be resolved. In the end Jericho is a wasted potential which will probably never get it’s second chance.
