Clive Barker's Jericho - Review - Xbox 360, Playstation 3

A game just as painful to play as it is to look at

First off, I gotta say that I'm biased AGAINST FPS games, and biased FOR Clive Barker's work, so maybe the two will cancel each other out... Maybe...

Clive Barker's Jericho is the second 'Clive Barker' game to see the light of release after the brilliant game, 'Undying', which unfortunately never became the hit it should have become.

The story is this: In the middle east a great sandstorm hurricane appears, engulfing the ruins of an ancient city. Prior to your arrival, a special ops team was sent in to investigate the phenomenon, but they disappeared (of course) and you have to go in and investigate (of course). The underlying plot is that before Adam and Eve, God had a failed creation known to ancient cultures as 'The Firstborn'. The firstborn was beautiful, but ugly; was neither man nor woman; neither mortal or immortal. Infact, God made his Firstborn too powerful and, like any good father, locked the kid away in the closet to never see the light of day. *SARCASM... Christ...* However, every 100 years or so the area where the Firstborn was locked away reopens as a gateway and absorbs a chunk of 'time and space'.

So, in other words, you're making your way through a figurative 'Russian Doll' of perverse time periods, encountering the armies who faught for and were absorbed into this layercake of Hell: Nazis, Romans, Sumerians, etc.

Your team is the Jericho Squadron, a 6-7 member team of black leather-clad Spec-Op 'Witches' who look like they were rejects for The Matrix. (Fair warning, there's a LOT of S&M in this game, which is not surprising since it's tagged with Clive Barker's name.)

Each character not only has their unique weapons of choice (sniper rifles, mini guns, etc) but also have their own magical powers (telekinesis, pyrokinesis, divine healing, reality hacking, etc). It sounds like an interesting concept, but the concept proves even cooler when you combine magic with machineguns. One character can gun down enemies in bullettime, another character can literally 'steer' her sniper rounds through multiple enemies, and another literally has the spirit of a fire-dragon living in his arm that he can let loose to kill enemies. The other characters are far less memorable, so I'm not going to bother trying to remember anything about them...

The atmosphere is dark, disturbing, and disgusting, which any Silent Hill fan could love. While it's not as haunting or chilling as other horror games (Undying, RE, Silent Hill, etc) it gets the job done in this action title. Whoever designed these twisted time periods should either be given high praise from the art community, or given a straight jacket.


I look bad ass... but I'm NOT IN THE GAME!

The story is original (minus the cliche "hard-core marines killing demons to save the world" angle). The theme of going back through hellish-twists on time-periods within the city is pretty awesome in itself, and I like to monster designs, but the whole thing would honestly have been better executed with better voice-actors. Really, the voice acting made the whole game seem almost like a 'B-movie'. The characters are a real pain in the ass to listen to, to be honest. They seriously got their 'lines' from bad action movies. The things they say would make Arnold Schwarzenegger's ears bleed:

Minigun Carrying Mexican Dude possessed by Fire-Dragon spirit: "Hey Abby, what do you get when you cross a telekinetic lesbian with a brick wall?"

*this is your cue to take control of the telekinetic lesbian sniper chick (no joke) and use your powers to knock down a wall in order to progress*

*you then knock down fore-said wall*

*you wait for Fire-Dragon Mexican Dude to deliver a punch line*

*no punch line*

(Do you sense how odd the Jericho team members are yet???)

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I was borderline on this game. I like horror and it looked good but I hear some bad things about it being relly boring and your always healing people like you said in the reveiw. but the reveiw was too mixed to tell meif it was good or not. is it good ro bad?

PERSONALLY, I think it's a mediocre (average) game. Some people will like it more than others.

But if you like horror, by all means give it a rent.