For those of you who might not be too familiar with Clive Barker let me enlighten you. Barker is best known for his Hellraiser series, the cinematic home of horror icon Pinhead. Pinhead, along with his fellow Cenobites are the main draw card for this series of horror films and with their fantastically gruesome appearances and demonic presence one wouldn’t be wrong to get a little excited about the hellish visions that Barker could have the player endure throughout this game. As you may have picked up though this is not even close to being delivered in the game, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself as I haven’t even told you about the game yet.
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| Pinhead was very angry that Jericho was not released on GameCube |
The world of Jericho takes place in modern times with you taking control of Devin Ross, the commanding officer of an elite team of “mystic warriors” known as the Jericho squad. Witches with guns is how Ross describes the team as they fly into a section of the Middle East called Al Khali to investigate some paranormal activity in the area, which takes the form of a giant tornado, I was hoping to land to see Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton trying to get Dorothy to fly… mainly so I could shoot Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. While riding the helicopter to the site you are also introduced to your main enemy, Arnold Leach. This is a pretty bad dude, bombings in London, attacks on children in Boston and gas attacks in…Sydney, Oh THAT’S IT MOTHERFUCKER!! NO ONE GASES MY TOWN!!! Well now that I have found a little extra motivation to stick my army boots securely up Leach’s ass I jump off the copter ready to run into a massive battle only to run into the games first, of many, issues. Ross gets an incoming communication from some Swiss idiot who apparently is somewhere relevant (I’m serious, this is as much as I could get out of this conversation) who informs you that Al Khali is currently surrounded by a tornado…. Well no shit! However whilst this captivating conversation is taking place Ross drops his gun and walks at around the same speed a snail covered in cement would move, and this happens every time someone needs to talk. It’s so horribly annoying that the game can’t carry on while the plot exposition is happening… you know like pretty much every other game lets you do. Unfortunately this is just the tip of a giant shit iceberg. At this point as well I would like to say a word on the character of Devin Ross. He reminds me of a mate I used to have at school, you know the person, that one who thinks that the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket is the funniest person alive and their personality should be a reflection on that one character…. That is Devin Ross. With lines like “C’mon Jericho you want to live forever” Ross immediately becomes a walking cliché and very annoying.
I have completed the first level of the game now….having not fought a single enemy. Sure I got to fire my gun as part of a “weapons check”, which I should say Ross’ weapon is a handy assault rifle/shotgun known as the Patrioteer, but to not be able to sink my teeth into some aspect of combat on the first level is unacceptable. I should mention that the “levels” in this game are not so much levels as chapters of the story that can vary in length and combat heaviness, no word of a lie there are several levels in this game with only one enemy for the entire level.
Moving through the next couple of levels I finally have the opportunity to fight enemies, which seem to grey people with pointy hands, I know I can hear your spine tingling from here, meeting people who occasionally talk about the First Born. You will have also noticed that due to Ross’ special power of reviving the dead you will spend less time fighting enemies then you will reviving your stupid team mates you have walked into harm’s way. I will warn you know that I will be revealing plot lines and spoilers so if you don’t want to know how the games turns out then by all means stop here and go and finish the game. The main aspect of Jericho’s game play comes when Ross is ripped to pieces by Leach, who has turned into a winged demon…… for some reason, and his spirit is transported into the other members of his team. At this point I was getting a little excited because I thought that the previous dreary game play was just a pre cursor to the now ass kicking gore fest that the rest of the game was going to be. How wrong I was.
So yeah, Ross is now fly food and you get to control one of the six remaining Jericho squad members with the ability to jump from one to another. At this point I fell it is only fitting I give you my guide to the usefulness of each member of your squad. To be as helpful as I can I will run through them from the most useful ass-kicker you could ever have to the person in the squad the equivalent of wind screen wipers on a submarine. Let’s get started.
Coming in at number one for the best person in your squad is Frank Delgado. Seriously, unless you have given yourself a handicap or want this game to be somewhat challenging then you will be playing as Delgado almost all of the time. The reason for this is because, for the main, he carries around a giant minigun as his primary weapon. Kiss accuracy goodbye as you simply hold down the fire button and leave a string of enemy corpses behind. I always feel a bit like Jesse Ventura from Predator when playing as Delgado, and it’s true that chewing tobacco will make you a sexual Tyrannosaurus. If this wasn’t enough Delgado’s secondary weapon is a cannon sticky taped onto a pistol grip. I know this game is supposed to be somewhat a suspension of disbelief but this is just not possible. I think a more subtle approach to Delgado’s side arm would have been a far better approach. His special power is also one of the best in the game as he sends a giant flame dragon to seek and destroy enemies. In short Delgado was built for one purpose and one purpose only, fucking shit up! Don’t think that Delgado doesn’t come without his issues because unfortunately when coming up with the character of Delgado Clive Barker went straight to the stereotype store and asked for their standard Hispanic model. That’s right everything that spews forth from Delgado’s mouth is a constant reminder that he is a minority which I assure you will make you go loco eh cabrone. Again subtly would have been the order of the day, but apart from this Delgado is your man for getting through pretty much the entire game.
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| Homie will mess you up!! |
Next off the rank in terms of effectiveness is Simone Cole, your resident hyper nerd. You are going to notice a bit of trend towards clichés and stereotypes in this review and I do apologise for this however I am simply working with what the game is giving me. So as you can imagine fitting in with the nerd stereotype Cole always talks in big words that no one else understands and is constantly being belittled by the other members of the team. In terms of firepower Cole carries around a decently powerful assault rifle with a scope on it and her back up weapons are grenades that can be altered to be timed, proximity or regular which a decent enough if you just want to start spamming death at people. What makes Cole such an asset is her special ability to slow down time. Consider it like bullet time…… except not as good…. or polished……. or executed. Why I say this is because most games when they use their “bullet time” like to make the screen crisp and clear in order for you to use the slow down effect more efficiently. Jericho decided to make their bullet time the exact opposite and as Cole activates it the screen turns grainy like a 1950’s television set making it very hard to use it to its full potential. Having said that in some periods when bullets are flying everywhere it is very helpful to activate this and take stock on where your enemies are, hence why Simone Cole gets her position as second best member of your squad. If I am to be fair, except for the character specific sections you could use Cole and Delgado for the entire game quite comfortably (which I did on the hardest difficulty). Meaning that the next four squad members are ranked not by who is better, but rather who is worse.
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| See, wearing a sunvisor. Classic give away that you are a nerd |
The best of the worst is Jericho’s resident sniper, Abigail Black. In keeping with the long list of clichés that this game is guilty of Black is an interesting case. Black is the culmination of every minority group not covered by the other members of the Jericho squad. This means she is emo, goth, lesbian and a whole cavalcade of other endearing character traits. I don’t know if Clive Barker knows the meaning of the word subtle (judging by the Hellraiser movies I doubt it) but someone desperately needs to teach it to him. Anyway, now that’s out of the way time to let you know why the sniper who is normally a necessity in games like this is not particular effective. This is not the fault of the character, who has a couple of interesting features on her sniper rifle, but rather the fault of the level design. The level design of this game is basic at best meaning you do not have situations where you can set a sniper nest. Every battle in Jericho is basically a frontal assault where either you are being rushed by melee using enemies or ranged enemies where very little cover is available. In both of those circumstances being a sniper is more of a handicap then a help. As I said her sniper rifle does have some special features, one being her ghost bullet ability where you can fire a bullet and guide it toward enemies. This is a little sluggish and hard to control but a decent attempt of something different. The far better feature is her secondary fire which is a missile fired from the rifle which annihilates anything it touches. I found the only time I ever used Black was when I was so furious with the game that I wanted to rampage, very therapeutic I assure you. However as I stated above this game is not made to give a special advantage to a sniper and hence this is all wasted due to lackluster level design.
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| I'm angry at men, angry at the world but mostly angry at Clive Barker. |
Next up is Xavier Jones, your resident African American and well that’s about it. Jones is probably the most uninspired character in the game. His dialogue is boring, he has the same gun as Ross so that is nothing new and his power of astral-projection basically does nothing. The only time Jones even becomes somewhat useful is late in the game when he can really spam the shield using enemies by stunning them from a distance (hence why I have elevated him this high) but otherwise he is just thoroughly uninteresting.
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| God, even his pictures boring!! |
Paul Rawlings is the member who finds himself second from the bottom for a number of reasons. Firstly, Rawlings is the only other person besides whoever you are currently inhabiting who can resurrect people so it’s counter intuitive to play as Rawlings as you will be taking away your only other “medic”. It’s annoying enough when you have to stop combat to play field medic but to guarantee that you have to play this to role by taking away the other healer is just insanity. This doesn’t mean you can leave all the healing to Rawlings because unfortunately Rawlings is the dumbest S.O.B in your squad. Rawlings, being the outspoken, deep south, priest of your squad (sayings like “praise the lord and pass the ammunition” are permanent reminders of this) I believe that he thinks he is protected by god and as such will run head first into any fight and get completely massacred. This of course means that you are back to medic duty for pretty much the entire game. A great feature of the game would be the ability to have Rawlings’ AI set to be hanging around the back of a battle and heal people, because one of his powers is to basically fire a spiritual Hado-Ken that revives people from a distance, but unfortunately that would require this to be a great game. In terms of weaponry Rawlings is armed with two desert eagles which are reasonably powerful but certainly nothing to get excited about. Rawlings is a great example of someone who should be integral to your success in this game being ruined by sloppy AI and programming.
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| That is exactly how he looks before he gets shot in the face!! |
The prize however for most useless member of the Jericho squad, and wins it by quite a margin, is Billie Church. Church is your blood mage but seriously she is just making up the numbers because she has no redeeming features. I’ll start with her arsenal, she is armed with a machine pistol which is the equivalent of an automatic pea-shooter. It is insanely weak and completely ineffective against the stronger enemies later in the game. To add to this her secondary weapon is a sword. In any other game this might sound awesome but unfortunately enemies you encounter in Jericho either have long ranged weapons and will annihilate you before you can get close enough to use it or they are melee attackers and it still takes five or six slashes to take them down. If you’re going to have a character with a sword it better be one hit fatal to give you at least some reason to use it. Her special powers are not much to write home about either. Being a blood mage she has to cut herself (therefore leading to health loss) to either stun or set enemies on fire who are in close proximity to her. I’ll say that again, you injure yourself to stun others, doesn’t make much sense does it. To add insult to this Jones can do both of these things but do them at a distance and cause no damage to himself. I think the developers knew that Church was completely useless and hence they gave her the most character specific duties throughout the game, to give the illusion she is important when in reality she is a complete waste of time.
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| You don't deserve a full sized picture!! |
Now that I have talked about the characters it is time to really dive into the game and firstly I have to talk about the look of the game. To be frank you better be a fan of brown and grey because those are basically the only colours you are going to see throughout the game. It is so uninteresting and hideous to look at that it’s almost enough to get you to stop playing on that alone. I understand that it’s a horror game so it needs to be dark and creepy but if I take a good horror shooter game, like Doom, you can see that yes Doom starts out the same with a lot of greys and browns but as you descend further into hell there are more vibrant reds and greens, there are even some blues around the place. To get that eerie feeling you can still have it interesting to look at but unfortunately in the world of clichés which this games lives in that does not register.
Another reason this game falls completely on its face is the lack of variety of enemies. For the first half of the game you run into approximately four different enemy types. It varies a little more after that but doesn’t reach more than ten different enemy types over the course of the game. For any game on a next generation console this is just not good enough, I mean for heaven’s sake Sonic The Hedgehog had more enemy types than Jericho does. On top of this the enemies aren’t the hellish visions one might have been expecting from Pinheads creator. They are mostly just muddled piles of flesh that lumber towards you without any great menace. The only enemy which is slightly creepy are the ghost children who are fought mid way through the game but that’s only because children are naturally creepy. On top of this the bosses, which there are only four throughout the entire game are just appalling. They are either way too easy, like the first boss where you simply need to cast a blood curse to catch her and the battle is over, or they are so badly explained that you have no idea what to do and you will get destroyed, the final battle with the first born is a good example of this where you have to mimic the moves it does to defeat it which you are never told to do. The worst example of this is during a boss fight against a bishop from the Crusades (I think his name is Malteus but really I couldn’t give a shit). This fight brings up everything that is wrong with the game. Firstly the boss himself is simply a statue who floats around without moving in any discernable way. I mean this is just lazy to create a boss that is a blank expressionless blob. Secondly there is a brief window in which he is vulnerable to attack but there is no indication on when this is you simply need to spray him with bullets and hope some get through to hurt him. Thirdly, and probably the worst, is that he has one attack (again another showing of laziness) in which he casts a supernova around himself that covers half the battle area and if you are anywhere near it you die instantly. Why this is bad is because you have very little control over how to maneuver your squad to get them out of harm’s way and as such you will always lose at least half your squad to a single attack and spend the time between attacks reviving those who have fallen. This one battle highlights almost every major problem with Jericho, except for one.
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| The sewer grate demon, one of the few enemies you will fight in Jericho. |
The biggest problem of this game is the sheer repetitiveness of it all. The run of the entire game flows like this; walk forward, ambushed, kill enemies, walk forward, ambushed, kill enemies, walk forward, ambushed, kill enemies. This is the entire game and as you can imagine it is insanely boring, compounded by the lack of enemy types and dreary surroundings it makes this one giant lump of shit. Any half decent game developer knows that a smattering of puzzles and non-combat related facets in a game make it more varied and more enjoyable. I think that might be the problem with film makers trying to make the leap into games in that they can weave a decent story (which I will admit Jericho and Stranglehold both have) but unfortunately do not have the know-how about making that translate into compelling game play.
That finishes my trip into the world of Jericho, next up I will try and be Clive Barker’s off sider to help him make a far better game.
