“‘Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 – Xbox 360 version verified.”‘
When I watched Clive Barker’s Jericho in August, my main concern wasn’t that the game felt like another “me too” shooter (it wasn’t) or that the game was lacking in promises (it had plenty of them). No, my biggest concern was whether it had a chance to stand out in what was already looking like the best year for a 3D shooter in a long time. Could it live up to its potential, or would it fall short of the mark and lie flat on the face?
After playing the final product, the answer isn’t as simple as I expected. In some ways, Jericho surpasses my first impressions. In others, it’s a much worse game than I feared. There is real evidence of innovative thinking and artistic and technical prowess here, but there is also plenty of evidence of shoddy design, poor execution and cliched or just generic work. In a way, that actually makes me sadder than if Jericho were just your average wet squib.
If you read the preview, you already know that the game is a squad-based shooter, but with the usual military babble exchanged for a dark, gory horror theme. The seven-strong Jericho Squad – a secret military unit of psychic warriors – are sent on a mission to close a dimensional rift before a terrifying Elder entity can be unleashed upon humanity. The rift is enclosed in what the characters describe as “the box”; some kind of transdimensional prison that protects it. The rift has indeed opened multiple times during humanity’s lifetime, and each time it has crated a distorted version of the local architecture and population. Therefore, the Jericho Squad’s journey is divided into four thematic acts, the Barker versions of World War II, covering Crusades, Roman and Sumerian locales.
Funnily enough, the game’s real USP doesn’t turn out to be Barker’s story, which – frankly – doesn’t seem a million miles removed from the X-Files meets Doom meets Cthulu meets Aliens nonsense we’ve seen a million times before. Nor are the characters who similarly fit well-established sci-fi and horror stereotypes. Instead, the USP turns out to be what the characters can do. As mentioned in the preview, each member of Jericho Squad has their own specific weapons and powers. For example, in Gears of War mode, Delgado is a huge guy armed with a massive chain gun and can unleash a fiery spirit that can seek out and destroy enemies in sight. Black is a sniper, but she’s also gifted with telekinetic powers that allow her to push down barriers and guide bullets to their target in slow motion. Cole can slow time, while Church can perform blood rites that anchor enemies in place or set them ablaze. You’ll get along with everyone as your initially playable character finishes early but – awesomely – survives by owning his squadmates. You can switch to another member of Jericho by simply aiming at that character and pressing X, or by pressing X and then selecting with the D-Pad.
What the preview didn’t reveal was how complex and well developed these special abilities are, or how important they are to the game. Play Jericho as a pure 3D shooter and you won’t last five minutes; Your enemies are too tough and too numerous. Meanwhile, the simple d-pad based command system and poor squad AI (much more on that topic later) also make it impossible to play as a squad-based strategic shooter. The trick, then, is to quickly switch between characters and use their powers as needed to clear out the hundreds of skull-faced zombies and grisly metallo mutants coming your way.
Faced with a gang of grinning boneheads hauling exploding crossbow bolts? Black can take them out one by one from afar using her psychically enhanced sniper skills. Flame-throwing enemies along the way? Use Delgado to take some of the heat, then have the rest of the squad wipe them out. Why not see if Jones, your friendly seer, can possess a monster and use something nearby to cause disruption? Or maybe Church can hold this flying demon in place with a blood rite so the rest of the team can fill the agile little jerk with lead.
Jericho also makes a bit of an effort to incorporate these powers into other aspects of the gameplay, although these mostly boil down to lever-pulling or a little solo run. At times, the game also deliberately divides the team, forcing you to deal with certain characters and abilities that you would normally ignore. Let’s be clear right away: there’s some fun, imaginative stuff lurking here, and it has to be said that Jericho really doesn’t play or feel like your average FPS.
And while we’re giving praise, let’s also say that the guys at MercurySteam have much of their visual work to be proud of. Their custom engine is capable of some stunning results, and when the monsters, colors, and architecture come together like they do in the Crusade section of the game, Jericho reaches Gears of War greatness. Add in some huge monsters, generally a great creature design from the Clive Barker school with flayed skin and gory organs, and you have a game that always looks good, and often looks great – with one major caveat I’ll get to later will come back.
You see, with all the good stuff, it’s impossible to ignore that Jericho just isn’t that enjoyable a game.
Problem number one: AI. Your enemies don’t seem to have one, or at least none that has evolved significantly since the days of Quake II. It’s good. We don’t expect zombies to behave cleverly, and the game would probably be impossible if they did. What’s a problem is that your squadmates are clueless as well. I’ve seen them stand with their backs to a hail of bullets as they contemplate their next move. I groaned as they took turns going into the target zone of a encamped jerk with explosive projectiles, apparently because they wanted to join their comrades who had already been knocked down in the same spot. From the start you’ll be attacked by explosive zombie enemies, but even hours on your troops haven’t learned that a crashed exploder always detonates a second or two after it collapses. They also don’t seem able to attack the yellow weak spot pustules on the beasts. These guys are supposed to be seasoned veterans? Then why are they so fat?
To mitigate this, Jericho throws in a Gears of War healing system where downed buddies can be revived by approaching and pressing X. However, combine this with Jericho’s tendency to throw an endless stream of enemies at you, and at times the game becomes an absurd heal-em-up where you run around like a headless chicken trying to kill as many fighters from the Jericho- Keeping your squad as fit as possible – just because it’s the best and only way to avoid tripping to the reload screen again. 
And sometimes you’ll fail, partly due to the sheer volume and ridiculous bullet resistance of even the simplest baddies, and partly due to your squad’s lemming-like tendencies. To make this really annoying, checkpointing is often very poorly done, meaning you’re faced with a 10-minute hike through the same four battles every time your team goes down. To add insult to injury, you have to go through a yes/no prompt every time you reload, and Jericho even throws in annoying in-game cinematics right after a few checkpoints, meaning you’ll end up with the same weak lines of dialogue many times to be able to enjoy.
Worse still, this is a game that doesn’t need to get any more repetitive. The only major criticism of the art design is that each zone of the “box” uses a similar architecture over and over again, and that the game as a whole uses a very limited color palette. It’s all very dark and gothic, but after a while the black, red and brown become stale. Worse, the game is also structurally repetitive. It’s dumbly linear, and basically boils down to “Squad enters a new area, squad fights back hordes of baddies, repeat until level ends.” It’s no coincidence that the times the game picks up speed, the Times are when it’s daring enough to abandon the formula and have a more interesting encounter or fight with big bosses. It’s as if all the imagination went into the powers, leaving too little for what could and should be done with them.
And, please, please, please, please – can we stop having games ruined by quick time event sequences? Jericho has one within the first five minutes that will make your teeth jittery, and then sporadically throws in more to keep you trying to wear them down as the game progresses. The speed at which the button icon toggles on and off and the responsiveness required makes each one a nightmare. Most annoyingly, at one point you’re forced to kill a creature you’ve already knocked down twice by other means with a QTE sequence just because the developers wanted to throw in a cinematic payoff. Grrr…..
Well, I could probably live with some of those irritations, but the final issue Jericho has is the atmosphere – it just doesn’t have enough of it. You should clearly be intrigued by the game’s mythos and horrified by its dark visions, but after a while all that blood and guts melts into the background and you focus on the mechanics to progress from one fight to the next. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare it to survival horror titles when it’s always turned out to be a thriller rather than a chiller, but Jericho never pulls you into its strange underworld like a Silent Hill or Project Zero would. As an FPS, on the other hand, it’s not nearly as nerve-racking as Bioshock, Half-Life 2 or – ironically – Clive Barker’s previous game project Undying.
So the end result is a game full of good ideas and impressive graphics, but ruined by poor execution and design. If you’re a huge fan of scary movies and the Liverpudlian horror author and you absolutely have to have it, my only advice is to persevere; The game gets better the longer it goes. My real advice right now, though, would be to just not bother. If you look at what’s coming or coming out in the FPS genre, we’ve never had it so good. Good for us, hard for Jericho. But even without games like Bioshock, The Darkness, and The Orange Box, I would have a hard time recommending this game wholeheartedly.
“‘Verdict”‘
The design documentation was probably a great piece of work, but the Jericho minute-by-minute experience is a disappointment. While the game improves over time, it’s too buggy and annoying to be worth your money.
characteristics
| genre | Action/Adventure |
| player | 1 |