GamerNode: Previews - Hands-on: Clive Barker's Jericho

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You control the seemingly 7th member of Jericho squad, named Capt. Devin Ross. In an interesting twist, you're killed very early in the game, but thanks to your telepathic skills your essence exists within the rest of Jericho squad. In other words, your "being" can be transferred to any of the other Jericho members, which allows you to control whatever member you wish. One thing I liked is how Jericho squad reacts to your seemingly invasion of their bodies.
 

 

Thankfully, switching between your squad is painless and the controls are implemented well. Left and right mouse click switches between your two weapons, Q and E switches between your paranormal powers and space bar lets you jump into someone's body. Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to jump which is a bit weird, especially nowadays.
 

In addition, the game has some situational moments where you have to tap directional keys in order to survive. The first time I encountered the demo's situational moment, I was blown away by its presentation; Church is trying to shimmy down a narrow well when an enemy attacks. While this scene was excellent, you're forced to comply with the keys or else you die; there's no alternative. Alright, that's fine, but this particular situational moment was pretty unforgiving, so that meant I died several times trying to pass it. I don't really enjoy these moments because while I'm frantically spending time trying to pass it, I miss whatever cool is happening on screen.
 

 

Visually, the game looks great. I mean, holy heck, I was stunned at how amazing it looked. The game uses Mercury Steam's Mercury engine and it definitely rivals the Unreal Engine 3. There are plenty of awesome visual flairs, such as motion blur, water blotting the camera, HDR lighting and plenty of bump mapping to make you love your eyes. Performance-wise, the game ran exceedingly well on a mid-range PC I was testing it on. With everything on high and using my normal viewing resolution, the framerate was perfectly stable.
 

After playing the demo, my excitement for Clive Barker's Jericho skyrocketed. It was only single-player, so I am still curious as to how well multiplayer will work; I'm also wondering about the number of play hours, but the game will allow you to traverse through Al Khalid during 5 distinct time periods. If you're a fan of FPS games or Barker's work, give Jericho a try.

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