Clive Barkers Jericho review

Oct 23, 2007

Diehards will know this is not Barker’s first foray into pixels and polygons, he’s already dabbled in the genre with the PC adventure, Clive Barker’s Undying and the oft-talked about among horrorites, Demonik that was once being tinkered with by the same crew behind BloodRayne (eek!) before being canned. Now the Scouse scarer has teamed up with Codemasters for this, Jericho, a sort of sickly supernatural “middle finger” to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six shooters slathered nicely with his own disgustingly unique brand of gore, scares and unholy parables.

Barker throws them all at us; skinless demons, S&M Nazis, cyst-covered monsters and blood-spewing hellhounds with faces that bare a striking resemblance to the female anatomy. They even spew scalding blood; very akin to a seething woman. Everything you could ever not want to meet is in here making for one deliciously devilish fright fest that first-person shooter fans and gore hounds will absolutely lap up when it hits shelves. So colour us excited because Barker and Codemasters have pulled it out of the bag. And now it’s dripping all over us. Gross.

Unfurling across an intensely whopping 32 chapters, Jericho is one tough bastard that will kick your ass if you don’t pay attention. Barker and Mercury Steam hurl nasties at you left, right and centre making for some frantic firefights that in some cases are won over by trail and error and ample utilisation of your simple, but neatly effective squad-based commands, all of which are controlled by simple taps of the D-pad. Left and right determine which squad you want to use (Alpha or Omega); up and down hurling out advance and halt commands to your squad of trigger happy misfits. Of course, you can make it through the game with little or no consideration for these commands but the chances of your squad mates croaking it at every turn increase tenfold, so be warned.