Jericho (PC)

A finger-blistering -- but far from bloodcurdling -- waltz into the world of first-person shock (or is that schlock?) horror...
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Sorry, PC gaming addicts: If you're busy biding your weeks waiting anxiously for Unreal Tournament III, don't expect rival first-person splat-'em-up Jericho to ease the burden in the meantime.

There's nothing particularly egregious about this shock-horror epic, which scores with its thrilling sense of momentum and sick, S & M-style aesthetic. But at the same time, there's nothing here, despite noted author and director Clive Barker's (Hellraiser, Imajica -- seriously, from young adult books to stark terror, we wish we had this guy's range) involvement, that'll turn many heads. And in a post-BioShock world, well -- unfortunately, that makes it awfully hard to justify a premium asking price (even if it curiously was developed by Mercury Steam, the same team behind the much-better-than-anticipated American McGee Presents Scrapland).

Call it a game of two halves. On the one hand, you've got the positives, e.g. gut-wrenching camera shifts and surprise assaults by enemies that result in furious hand-to-hand tussles, demanding that you mash specific buttons at timed intervals to survive Dragon's Lair-esque interactive action scenes (although these would be considerably more gripping if, say, you didn't instantly get to replay them, sans loading, should you accidentally screw up mid-stride and get your face bitten off or fall to your death). Taking obvious inspiration from Hollywood, expect lots of whispering voices, bodies that explode into swarms of flies, and dreamlike frolics with obsidian-skinned, asexual children who spout apocalyptic prophecy in synth-distorted tones.

What we're most impressed with, however? Ironically, what got us was merely the outing's dynamic sense of pacing and inventive use of the first-person viewpoint to give each new plot twist a more immersive and arresting sense of atmosphere. Even the tense opening sequence, where you are suddenly jarred from sleep at 3 a.m., then -- viewing the world through lead character Capt. Ross' eyes -- sit up and worriedly grab the phone, only to find an ancient evil has awakened (thereby proving there's still plenty of room to improve presentation-wise on traditional videogame cut scenes), does wonders to further the cause of virtual storytelling alone. (Although the canned and poorly acted pre-taped vignette that immediately follows does, for the record, suck some serious tushie...)

Nonetheless, it's right about the time when you start to get your bearings -- minutes in, thanks to an intuitive control scheme that works as well via keyboard and mouse as it does on console gamepads -- that you begin to realize 'bizarre' doesn't always equal 'good.' Meaning that while walls of pulsing, bloodied flesh; explosive enemies off which you have to carefully shoot blisters; mind-melting psychic Nazis; and gritty dialogue (love the references to telekinetic lesbian snipers...no, seriously) may be present, some of these gimmicks come off as more contrived than engrossing.

Likewise, the story itself never rises above dime-store-novel filler. The tale in a nutshell: Controlling paramilitary squad Jericho, consisting of dual pistol-wielding priests and chain-gun-packing pyromancers, enter the lost city of Al-Khali to stop the Firstborn, one of God's deranged creations that predates Adam and Eve, from annihilating humanity. To wit, for every step forward made (e.g. options to dynamically possess half a dozen teammates with multiple armaments and alt-fire modes, switching between bodies on the fly), the tale also takes two back (i.e. laughable voice acting, hit and movement animations that lack contemporaries like Gears of War's sense of weight and impact, or ammo restocks that suddenly and inexplicably materialize out of nowhere).