Imagine the following: A first person video game set in a Diablo-like world, with squad based tactical combat and psychic powers. Sounds pretty cool, right? Now imagine if this entire concept was ruined by annoying gameplay, poor execution, and an unfinished story.
Now you're imagining Clive Barker's Jericho.
You take the role as the commander of an elite occult military squad. Jericho is a black ops branch of the military trained in the art of modern and occult warfare. You've been assigned to investigate a rift in some abandoned temple in the middle of the desert called "The Box." God's first creation, "The Firstborn," is angry that he got thrown away. You immediately start investigating the situation, but then you're killed within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. Life sucks, but the afterlife is even worse. Now you have the ability, no--task of jumping between the 7 characters in Jericho Squad.
While this is a clever justification for squad based combat control, it turns out that it's just a jarring gimmick of frantic on-the-fly switching between characters only to draw the enemy's attacks to a new character until the rubber bullets that you're shooting finally takes them down.
About those enemies: They're a barely reactionary on/off AI nightmare, sometimes having more health than the bosses. It seems the enemies were designed to cause the player as much annoyance and frustration as possible instead of affording them a challenging experience. Worst, 4 out of the 10 or so enemies in this game are reused over and over again with absolutely no variety whatsoever. The other 6 enemies are spread evenly across the 3 settings, and are all tanks. One particular enemy has anywhere from 2 to 8 yellow dots that mark its health, and are the only way to dispatch them. After this creature's been painstakingly taken down, it explodes with enough force to kill anyone within spitting distance.
And that's the problem. You don't permanently lose party members (unfortunately), and instead have to get in arms length and resurrect them. This would be a somewhat interesting continuation element if your party wasn't dying every 30 seconds. You end up spending over half the game playing healer, and the other half riddling the same creatures with bullets over and over and over again. Oh, there's some puzzles in there, too.
Each character has their own unique powers to help you solve contrived puzzles that seem to litter this world. You'll know when to use said powers, as the characters will quickly shout out the answer to the not-so-clever puzzle ahead. Then it's a matter of remembering which last name to pick in your possession menu, as the first name of the correct character is being shouted at you. After that, you only have to tap a key and you've passed the puzzle. This ends up feeling like work, and is hardly worth the effort, as the only thing behind locked doors in this game is more of the same.
The voices yelling out random names and suggestions are sometimes pleasant surprises, and other times painful and awkward. Where there is a rare piece of decent dialogue, the voice acting is superb. Where there is usually a cliche, odd, or contrived character development line, the voice acting sounds B movie.
And that's the great part about this game. It plays out like a movie, albeit a B grade film. You want to get past the waves of enemies and hours of healing your teammate so that the game will take over and illustrate a beautiful and frightening cutscene. The story is inconsistent, as terms like "The Box" are exchanged midgame for another term referring to the slice of the world that the player inhabits. Character development seems tossed in last minute, and conversations that seem important one minute are abandoned by the next cutscene, and never make another appearance.
The game is beautiful. Amazing architecture, well designed enemy/boss models, unique and stylized characters, and gore galore. My only complaint is that some of the lighting ended up taking on the Doom 3 "plastic" look.
Something that really took this game down a few notches was the use of a now all-too-common mini-game. Contextual button mashing ala "God Of War" has been sprinkled onto the game at all the wrong places. Visually pleasing, but ultimately annoying and forced, these mini-games have you frustratingly jamming your hand on the keyboard, begging for the over-the-top sequence to end. This gimmick could have been left out, and its inclusion seems almost in spite of the player.
The many faults of the gameplay, the glaring gaps in the story, and the complete lack of an ending make what could have been a very unique and enjoyable gaming experience falls flat on its face, providing 10+ hours of painful treking towards an ultimately fruitless end. You should probably pick up this game when it's in the bargain bin, but right now it's hardly worth your time with so many other games this season.
My final score: 6/10
Now you're imagining Clive Barker's Jericho.
You take the role as the commander of an elite occult military squad. Jericho is a black ops branch of the military trained in the art of modern and occult warfare. You've been assigned to investigate a rift in some abandoned temple in the middle of the desert called "The Box." God's first creation, "The Firstborn," is angry that he got thrown away. You immediately start investigating the situation, but then you're killed within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. Life sucks, but the afterlife is even worse. Now you have the ability, no--task of jumping between the 7 characters in Jericho Squad.
While this is a clever justification for squad based combat control, it turns out that it's just a jarring gimmick of frantic on-the-fly switching between characters only to draw the enemy's attacks to a new character until the rubber bullets that you're shooting finally takes them down.
About those enemies: They're a barely reactionary on/off AI nightmare, sometimes having more health than the bosses. It seems the enemies were designed to cause the player as much annoyance and frustration as possible instead of affording them a challenging experience. Worst, 4 out of the 10 or so enemies in this game are reused over and over again with absolutely no variety whatsoever. The other 6 enemies are spread evenly across the 3 settings, and are all tanks. One particular enemy has anywhere from 2 to 8 yellow dots that mark its health, and are the only way to dispatch them. After this creature's been painstakingly taken down, it explodes with enough force to kill anyone within spitting distance.
And that's the problem. You don't permanently lose party members (unfortunately), and instead have to get in arms length and resurrect them. This would be a somewhat interesting continuation element if your party wasn't dying every 30 seconds. You end up spending over half the game playing healer, and the other half riddling the same creatures with bullets over and over and over again. Oh, there's some puzzles in there, too.
Each character has their own unique powers to help you solve contrived puzzles that seem to litter this world. You'll know when to use said powers, as the characters will quickly shout out the answer to the not-so-clever puzzle ahead. Then it's a matter of remembering which last name to pick in your possession menu, as the first name of the correct character is being shouted at you. After that, you only have to tap a key and you've passed the puzzle. This ends up feeling like work, and is hardly worth the effort, as the only thing behind locked doors in this game is more of the same.
The voices yelling out random names and suggestions are sometimes pleasant surprises, and other times painful and awkward. Where there is a rare piece of decent dialogue, the voice acting is superb. Where there is usually a cliche, odd, or contrived character development line, the voice acting sounds B movie.
And that's the great part about this game. It plays out like a movie, albeit a B grade film. You want to get past the waves of enemies and hours of healing your teammate so that the game will take over and illustrate a beautiful and frightening cutscene. The story is inconsistent, as terms like "The Box" are exchanged midgame for another term referring to the slice of the world that the player inhabits. Character development seems tossed in last minute, and conversations that seem important one minute are abandoned by the next cutscene, and never make another appearance.
The game is beautiful. Amazing architecture, well designed enemy/boss models, unique and stylized characters, and gore galore. My only complaint is that some of the lighting ended up taking on the Doom 3 "plastic" look.
Something that really took this game down a few notches was the use of a now all-too-common mini-game. Contextual button mashing ala "God Of War" has been sprinkled onto the game at all the wrong places. Visually pleasing, but ultimately annoying and forced, these mini-games have you frustratingly jamming your hand on the keyboard, begging for the over-the-top sequence to end. This gimmick could have been left out, and its inclusion seems almost in spite of the player.
The many faults of the gameplay, the glaring gaps in the story, and the complete lack of an ending make what could have been a very unique and enjoyable gaming experience falls flat on its face, providing 10+ hours of painful treking towards an ultimately fruitless end. You should probably pick up this game when it's in the bargain bin, but right now it's hardly worth your time with so many other games this season.
My final score: 6/10
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