GamerNode: Reviews - Clive Barker's Jericho

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• Clive Barker's Jericho
• Xbox 360
• Mercury Steam
• Codemasters
• October 23rd, 2007

It's just so unforgiving because you have about 1 second to respond, and if you're just even a millisecond off, you die. There's no leeway at all, and you have to be 100% accurate in timing the buttons, so prepare for plenty of deaths in this painful trial and error sequence. The sequences themselves are cool, but I have to friggin' look at buttons instead! I'm sorry, Mercury Steam, you blew it with this feature.

Jericho also suffers from some lame console techniques, namely no jumping, chopped up and shorten levels, the referring to a 'start' button in the main menu (even on the PC version, guys?), checkpoint saves and the complete lack of ammo gathering. I'm sorry to say, but I'm not buying these shaved-down techniques when playing a PC game. Call me fickle, but I want to be entertained when playing a game, not confused, angry or bored. They work with the console versions (and hey, if you play console games it's what you expect) but the PC version of Jericho feels too much like a console-to-PC port.

There's also no multiplayer whatsoever, so that's a heavy chop at the game's replayability. But if you really want to, you can play again and sample different characters. One of the big things in Jericho is the ability to seemingly invade your Jericho squad members. Each badass soldier has their own distinct weapons and abilities so you have 6 other main characters to "play".

Their AI is a mixed bag, though, since I saw both good and weird quirks. A good moment was just the AI pathfinding; the squad doesn't bunch up and took appropriate places during a battle. Sniper in the back, big guy in front. But for a weird moment, take all I said about the good movement and cram that into a tiny level. If you have your squad, or just even a few guys, in a cramped level, they'll bunch up. Ugh.

While there are some problems with the game, I think the good outweigh the bad in this scenario. Jericho offers standard FPS fare in a Strogg thrilling atmosphere with some cool soldiers and a nice camera view. Still, the game suffers from some poorly implemented tactics which work against the game, along with a completely useless gameplay mechanic. It would be good for a rent or a low-budget pick up, but it's hard to justify paying full price for this game when there are many better titles out there.

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