Clive Barker’s Jericho (PlayStation 3)

The Bible tells us that God created Adam as an image of himself – that is not true. It is also not true that Adam was the first thinking being to walk upon the earth. In the beginning was the Firstborn. The Firstborn was a true image of God. Perfect to the core, a creature with no sex, neither dark nor light and both beautiful and terrible to behold. God feared his creation and left it unfinished, banishing it to the Abyss and created Adam instead with all his flaws.

But the Firstborn had already touched the Earth. Leaving behind a taint so powerful that even God’s expulsion couldn’t keep it from breaking through into the mortal world to reclaim it’s birthright. In a remote desert in the Middle East the Earth was wounded. Eon after eon the Firstborn continued to fester, breaking down the fabric of reality as human civilisation flourished around it.

According to an ancient prophecy the Firstborn will successfully break through into the mortal world seven times. Bringing with it diseases, corruption and perversity until seven mystics come and sacrifice themselves to drive it back into the abyss. This has already happened six times. Now once again the ground under the city called Al-Khali trembles as the Firstborn enters the world one last time to either be defeated in a last battle or find eternal freedom.

During the centuries every civilisation made sure that those seven mystics would stand ready to defeat the Firstborn and this hasn’t changed. Known as the Jericho Squad they are now called to Al-Kahli. The city in which one travels further back in time as he ventures deeper into its heart until he reaches the beginning of all.

The game is a pretty straight-forward First Person Shooter but every one of the seven members of the Jericho Squad has different abilities and uses different weapons. While Cpt. Devin Ross uses the Patrioteer (a combination of shotgun and assault rifle) and is besides Father Paul Rawlings the only member of the team that can heal wounded teammates, Sgt. Wilhelmina “Billie” Church is more of a samurai. She uses a Nodachi as a melee-weapon and a rapid-fire sub-machine gun in addition to Blood magic which allows her to summon either a Blood or a Fire Ward.

Although your teammates do a pretty good job on their own, later on you have the ability to take over one of them and do whatever you want to do yourself. The squad is also divided into two teams which you can give the orders “Hold” or “Follow” which comes in handy if you position one team to cover your six and take the rest with you into the fight.

The health system is somewhat similar to games like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas or Call of Duty. This means that there are no health packs scattered around. When you’re hit you have to search for cover to regenerate. If you are hurt badly enough you’ll go to the ground but as mentioned Ross and Rawlings can bring you back to life. The game only ends if you can’t be healed fast enough or both Ross and Rawlings are dead.

As the name suggests, Clive Barker, the maker of the Hellraiser movies, had great influence in the making of the whole game including art-direction and background story but Clive Barker’s Jericho is not the successor to Clive Barker’s Undying.