MULTIPLAYER!!!! I really wish this one was more challenging than that but in reality adding multiplayer to almost any type of game, especially a first person shooter, makes it better. I know that there a plenty of games that have attempted to add multiplayer to their game play options and failed miserably but in those instances (Dead Space 2 comes to mind) the original game is normally pretty good and the addition of multiplayer ruins it. But Jericho is already shit so in reality if the multiplayer isn’t particularly good it’s still going to be better than the single player game. On top of this it’s squad based, meaning if you could create a multiplayer version of the game online then you could have one person control each member of the squad and it would not only make the game far more challenging (as you would only have one medic) but it would also breathe some life into the dreary and repetitive game play. Really, just think about it for a second, even though the fights in Jericho aren’t inspired at all you could still set up some forms of strategy to give you an edge in battle, as opposed to playing it with AI partners who just run head first into gunfire and get annihilated. However I can hear a few of you saying that this game was pretty early on in the next generation cycle so the ability to harness Xbox Live or PSN might not have been readily available and that is a fair point but there is another way of adding multiplayer to a game. It is a little archaic by today’s standards but even using split screen multiplayer would have made this infinitely better. Before you start hating on me for squishing the game into two indefinable rectangles hear me out. Basically I would have it so at the start of the game you had to pick one character each and assign one of you to be the medic. If neither of you had chosen Rawlings then you would have a second medic and basically press through the game that way. I know there are character specific actions throughout the game but I’m sure you could make it in such a way that the game could handle these on its own without you having to intervene, and for the single character chapters (of which there are only two) one person would simply sit out for a little while. At least this way you would have to be more battle aware as to who has died and work around that instead of being able to charge people head first into battle in the comfort that you will be able to shoot yourself into another character in mere seconds. At the very least you have a second person to take your mind off how mind-numbingly stupid this game is.
Okay, now that the most obvious point is out of the way what else could be done to improve this game. I alluded to this in my review but the level design for this game is appalling. Battles will normally take place in corridors with random shit scattered around the place to act as rudimentary cover. In a squad based shooter where each character has its own special weapons and special powers this is just unacceptable. Each type of character needs to be considered when designing levels and battlegrounds. Having sniper nests and pill boxes for Black to hide in, narrow bottle necks that if used properly Delgado could use to destroy enemies in a row and urban settings where Cole’s grenades could to be used to clear rooms where enemies might be hiding. These are just a few examples of how you can alter the fighting terrain in order to make the experience of battle more rewarding. Really a game like this should have a level design whereby before entering an area you should be thinking “who would be the best person for this section of the game”. The game at present had me simply thinking “Delgado will take care of this in no time”. Seriously the only time I ever switched from playing as Delgado was if I needed to because of character specific section or if I got so shit bored playing as the same character that I had to switch to protect my sanity. The rest of the characters may as well have been drones who had no personality because I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. Having some varied terrain would have done this game no end of good.
I think the plot needs to be addressed next. Before I start I will say that the plot isn’t all that terrible. While it can be full of rambling religious rhetoric and be a little wayward at times it does do a decent job at building tension toward the final boss fight against the Firstborn. My problem lies in the fact that any real significant chunks of plot development are spread so far apart from one another that I find it really hard to keep the motivation to keep playing. Knowing that I have to press through however many waves of boring after boring enemy fights only to get a smidge of the story explained to me is hardly worth it. An example of a game that overcame this was Final Fantasy 12. While not the best game out there (and having one the biggest anti-climaxes in video game history) it did have a decent story so I didn’t mind hacking my way through the same encounter a number of times as I knew I would get a decent cut scene at the end of it. Simply put Jericho needed to really flesh out its story and not be afraid to have cut scenes that ran for a decent amount of time. Doing this as well gives you the advantage of being able to develop the characters a little more so we might actually care about the fate of them and their plight against the first born, instead of seeing them as meat puppets that are easily sacrificed. I’m not suggesting this game go as over the top with cut scenes as Metal Gear Solid 4 did but having cut scenes that last more than two minutes would not be the worst thing to happen to this game.
Seeing as this game came from the man behind Hellraiser I was fully expecting to be in for a treat when it came to the enemies in this game, after all the Cenobites are some of the most gruesome creations to come out of the golden gory age of eighties horror. Yet what we are given is pathetic. Most of the time it felt like I was fighting pieces of moldy bread that could shoot at me more than the unholy forces of a hell trying to escape its dank prison. I will admit there is one enemy I do like in this game. They come in around two thirds into the game when you travel to the time of the Crusades. You are sent to a dungeon where many child soldiers were sent to die and as such when you get there ghostly children are weaving all around the room. Just when you think they are harmless they take form and become ugly fucking things that slash out at you with disfigured tentacles. This works because children are naturally creepy and the first time one takes form it does take you by surprise. This game desperately needed more enemies like this. I know some of these seem like clichés but having enemies that contort and spider walk at you, or enemies who disappear only to be standing right behind you when you turn around would really have added that chill element that this game really needs. While I am speaking of enemies the bosses need a serious revamp. Firstly they are insanely easy. With the exception of the Firstborn who can be a massive pain in the ass if you have no idea how to fight it the rest can be taken care of in less than a minute in most cases. Secondly in these sorts of games you expect the boss to be a giant mass of disgust, eeriness or downright terror. Looking at the boss roll call for this game we have a fat zit, a floating statue and a retarded German meter maid. Hardly what I would call bone chilling, I’ve seen scarier sights in a Muppets episode (seriously those puppets are freaky!) The real tragedy here is that with the period piece motif this game runs with there was great potential to make some truly great bosses. For example at the end of the Crusades level the archbishop at the end should have been a monstrous entity, covered in the crying souls of the children who perished at his hand, constantly grabbing at you to save them from the torment they are attached to while the boss uses the children to try and assimilate you into him. There a probably better examples of this but I think you get the idea, simply having a floating Venus Di Milo that casts a Nova spell does not cut it at being a proper boss.
I want to now address one of the main points of my review of Jericho, the fact that Billie Church is completely useless. Normally I wouldn’t care that one out of six characters was not particularly effective but the fact that Church is so utterly terribly something needs to be done in order to make her matter, to some degree. I thought about this for a while and thought the best way to handle this would be to add an element of stealth to the game. Given that Church is armed with a sword, which is perfect at silently taking enemies out, why not let her be the infiltrator of sorts and try and cut enemy heads off without the others suspecting. You can even keep her emo blood letting powers, simply change the one that stalls people (you know the one Jones can do more effectively) and make one that turns her invisible. This game is hardly grounded in reality so what is to stop Church from having this power, no one will second guess it, and then you can add a sort of Splinter Cell aspect to the game play. Basically have parts where you find enemies patrolling an area and have Church (whose invisibility only lasts a short while) try take them out silently. This gives you a break from the monotony of the fight scenes currently in the game and actually makes Church fun to use. I have no idea how the game developers did not think to use Church in this way, it seems perfectly logically….. Oh right logic, sorry I forgot that was left out of the game development process.
I said at the top that multiplayer was the biggest improvement this game could make but over the course of writing this remedy, and the review, I have noticed one major issue that would have to be addressed before multiplayer even came into it. I have noticed I have said the word “repetitive” quite a lot, ironically. This is definitely the worst aspect of this game in that you do the same thing over and over again without break. Come to think of it that was the biggest problem of John Woo’s Stranglehold so both John Woo and Clive Barker pay attention as I am going to let you in on a little secret about us gamers. WE LIKE TO BE ENTERTAINED!! We are a lot like movie goers in that respect but unfortunately the same conventions in film cannot be translated over to games because variety needs to be readily available. It doesn’t even need to be anything too out of the box, in fact let me run through a few ways you could have varied the game play.
1. Puzzles. The oldest video game convention. Breaking up the combat with a few lateral thinking puzzles can give the over violent side of the brain a rest, even if only for a few seconds. In addition after solving a puzzle more often than not you are ready to get back into the business of fighting.
2. Varied combat styles. I hinted at this at the top with making Church stealthier. Don’t make every battle in a game a frontal assault, or ambush. Have some stealth sections, have sections where Black defends the team from afar with her sniper rifle, or have scenes where Jones has to solve an astral projection maze within a certain time frame or the rest of the squad dies. Things like this can make the game feel more fresh and vibrant as opposed to the walk-shoot-walk-shoot mentality the game has now.
3. Skill trees. Yes even something as simple as a skill tree can take your mind onto another matter for a moment or two. Being able to select what to upgrade for each character and when gives the gamer some control and an ability to make that particular play through feel like their story, not yours. Almost every game has some form of skill upgrade system so there is no reason not to include one in any game.
While the ideas above are hardly original they need to be present in almost every type of narrative game because quite simply we do not live in the 16-bit era anymore where 10-12 vibrant colored levels of repetition will suffice. In reality if you can’t grasp this simply concept that you have no business in the world of games and should go back to directing B-Grade movies where this mentality is somewhat effective.
That closes the book on Jericho. I can now bury this game in the darkest recesses of my cupboard, never to be seen again. Next time I will be succumbing to the oldest ritual of online reviewers……. The Top 15 list.
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