Supernatural Chills, Sub-Par Thrills
Clive Barker's Jericho is long on action, short on actual fun.
Published: November 4, 2007
The story of Jericho is actually one of my favorite stories from the bible. In it, Joshua and his small army circled the fortress-like walled city seven times in seven days while carrying the Ark of the Covenant, blowing seven horns on the seventh time around on the seventh day while everyone screamed and the walls of the city crumbled to the ground. The number seven crops up in the Bible almost constantly, so it's fitting that it would make more than a few appearances in Jericho the game as well.
The story goes that before Adam and Eve, God created the Firstborn, a being neither good nor evil and neither male nor female, but apparently it was an abomination and God banished it to another plane of existence, starting over with Adam and Eve and progressing from there like everything was just peachy. The Firstborn, gifted with insane amounts of power that was stripped from mankind when God tried again, apparently wasn't down with chilling in eternal limbo, and at set points in history, tried to shatter the barrier between his prison and our world in one very specific part of the Cradle of Civilization that has been the site of six major occupations.
Each time, seven humans gifted with supernatural powers strode into the breach and apparently closed it off, preventing the Firstborn's appearance each time. Now, amidst modern-day Middle Eastern conflicts, the breach has opened again for a seventh time, and a seventh team of seven special forces ops head in to try to close the portal before the Firstborn escapes and destroys the world.
Except it doesn't exactly go as planned, not only because each time the portal is opened, more of the world is swallowed up, but because a former member of the Jericho squad, now an occult freak, is trying to open the portal, and the current leader of the squad, Captain Devin Ross, is actually killed early on in the game. Rather than dying, however, Ross actually learns to possess the other members of his squad and gains access to their unique powers and skills.
Developer Mercury Steam Entertainment clearly tried to add some variety to things; the six remaining squadmates have their own quirks and personalities, from a telekinetic sniper that can guide bullets through multiple targets to a preacher that can heal falled teammates to a hotheaded heavy gunner that made a pact with a fire demon who now inhabits is right hand to a sword-wielding bloodmage who uses her own blood to summon things to a guy who can remote view to reach far-off switches to a, um, "reality hacker" who can distort time. Each member of Jericho plays slightly different thanks to weapons, move speed and of course powers, and it really does make for a surprisingly solid premise for the game.
And then it all gets thrown away as the game regularly throws swarms of the same enemies at the player while guiding them down an extremely linear path. Much of the storyline ends up sounding a little trite (though the idea of stepping backward through time to each of the moments when the Firstborn tried to break out was a neat concept), and what could have been a creepy, atmospheric adventure instead feels way too action-heavy and far too over-scripted. Not even the little Shenmue-like timed button pressing events end up being much more than a distraction.
The story goes that before Adam and Eve, God created the Firstborn, a being neither good nor evil and neither male nor female, but apparently it was an abomination and God banished it to another plane of existence, starting over with Adam and Eve and progressing from there like everything was just peachy. The Firstborn, gifted with insane amounts of power that was stripped from mankind when God tried again, apparently wasn't down with chilling in eternal limbo, and at set points in history, tried to shatter the barrier between his prison and our world in one very specific part of the Cradle of Civilization that has been the site of six major occupations.
Each time, seven humans gifted with supernatural powers strode into the breach and apparently closed it off, preventing the Firstborn's appearance each time. Now, amidst modern-day Middle Eastern conflicts, the breach has opened again for a seventh time, and a seventh team of seven special forces ops head in to try to close the portal before the Firstborn escapes and destroys the world.
Except it doesn't exactly go as planned, not only because each time the portal is opened, more of the world is swallowed up, but because a former member of the Jericho squad, now an occult freak, is trying to open the portal, and the current leader of the squad, Captain Devin Ross, is actually killed early on in the game. Rather than dying, however, Ross actually learns to possess the other members of his squad and gains access to their unique powers and skills.
Developer Mercury Steam Entertainment clearly tried to add some variety to things; the six remaining squadmates have their own quirks and personalities, from a telekinetic sniper that can guide bullets through multiple targets to a preacher that can heal falled teammates to a hotheaded heavy gunner that made a pact with a fire demon who now inhabits is right hand to a sword-wielding bloodmage who uses her own blood to summon things to a guy who can remote view to reach far-off switches to a, um, "reality hacker" who can distort time. Each member of Jericho plays slightly different thanks to weapons, move speed and of course powers, and it really does make for a surprisingly solid premise for the game.
And then it all gets thrown away as the game regularly throws swarms of the same enemies at the player while guiding them down an extremely linear path. Much of the storyline ends up sounding a little trite (though the idea of stepping backward through time to each of the moments when the Firstborn tried to break out was a neat concept), and what could have been a creepy, atmospheric adventure instead feels way too action-heavy and far too over-scripted. Not even the little Shenmue-like timed button pressing events end up being much more than a distraction.
