Clive Barker is best known for horror genre books and movies. Hellraiser and Candyman were his successes that led him to move on to a video game. For Jericho, Clive Barker collaborated with Mercury Steam. The result is a not very well acclaimed horror FPS. The story line is interesting, but it does drag. You begin as the leader of a special forces squad that includes both male and female characters in a Psy – Ops a la Babylon 5 rip – off. But you do not get to choose if you can play as one of the attractive female characters. One of them has a short mohawk her name is Black (who isn’t), but she has facial tattoos. The other female character, Church carries a sword as well as a pistol. Both of the females look very buff and like they can take care of themselves in a fight. There is no reason why you should be forced to play as the male, “Jones”. (Not the female Grace Jones, right.) You do switch between them sometimes in the game but it’s too little and too late.
You and the team are headed into the ruined city of Al Khalid. The story is narrated with a male voice rattling on in biblical – ese about how the Firstborn of God were a mistake, presumably the Children of Nod of Genesis. Not being a very magnanimous type this Jeudaeo – Christian deity banished his first kids into the abyss, and never paid child support. Now these fallen angels are raising hell and you need to stop them. With guns. It seems odd. There are more critters, not just the Firstborn that you need to kill, and there are the numerous spawn that resemble Silent Hill monsters.

Magic should fight magic and although there is some patter about psy, not much use of it is made. Some of the characters have two special ‘magical’ abilities that don’t become available until the game progresses.

You get the impression that the story line might have been Barker’s, but that was about where the collaboration ended. The rest looks like it was hacked together from bytes of several other games. With the title it has you aren’t expecting a run of the mill first-person shooter. There is so much potential for puzzles and cool pick ups with the story it has but none of it is followed through. The characters sort of mince along not touching the ground without footsteps. Their bodies look like the most rudimentary rag doll physics marionettes.

One problem is that you’ll get teleported into another character who could be anywhere but where you need them to be. You can switch to another player or the game will switch for you. But during a fire-fight in the dark isn’t the right application for it. Again it seems like a throw in.

You have the ability to revive team members. You’ll find that you might have to choose if you should be making sure that the team is healthy or just kill the enemies. It is difficult to really make any progress with these annoying henchies who are always getting shot up.

It’s too bad because the whole plot of Jericho was interesting. Even the characters has a lot of potential. But you couldn’t take them seriously because they didn’t even look like they were walking properly. The graphics aren’t very good by next gen standards and you get the impression that that wasn’t a very close partnership between the designers and the author. It is as if they added what they were told to a tired older game, instead of making it a robust new IP.

For the most part the game is practically broken. I’d skip it if I were you. I wish I did. I give Clive Barker’s Jericho 5 misshaped zombie heads out of ten.