Clive Barker’s Jericho

British writer Clive Barker clearly decided not to give in to his legendary colleague Howard Lovecraft and rushed into battle on the video game field. While Lovecraft inspired the developers of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Barker, together with the Mercury Stream Entertainment studio, released a creepy first-person shooter — Clive Barker’s Jericho. However, the competition was not entirely fair: the games turned out to be from different leagues. Call of Cthulhu under the wing of Bethesda is a dark, atmospheric thriller with a touch of intellectual horror, but Jericho, published by Codemasters, is more of a brutal, almost trashy attraction with mountains of corpses, buckets of blood and a minimum of subtle hints.

Clive Barker’s Jericho Free Steam Account

In terms of visual execution, Jericho is like Clive Barker’s nightmare has come to life and decided to play hide and seek with you. Everything that fans love about his works like Hellraiser is here: crazy aesthetics, a sea of ​​blood and a dark atmosphere that gives you goosebumps. Already in the first minutes of the game, you are knee-deep in guts and bones, and this journey into meat hell continues until the credits. But it is in this magnificence that the first warning bell is hidden – excess. During the first couple of hours, a spectacle like a man with nails driven into a bald skull still evokes emotions – sometimes disgust, sometimes admiration. But Jericho lasts about six hours. And all this time you are mercilessly drowned in streams of blood, pus, entrails and other physiological exotica. Characters? What characters are there. If someone isn’t skinned to the muscles, it’s a demon with wings or a dude in leather gear, like he escaped from a fetish party.

The game is really captivating at first. But somewhere around the second hour, you’ll start asking yourself: what’s there, besides visual shock? And it turns out – almost nothing. The plot, as befits Barker, is tied to the themes of temptation and punishment. While your team of specialists flies by helicopter to another cursed point, the divine mythology is briefly recounted over the radio. God, they say, first created not man, but the Firstborn – a strange creature without gender, but with the voice of Darth Vader. He, as usual, desired power, for which he was banished to Al-Kali – a city outside of time and space. The problem is that the Firstborn does not want to sit still and periodically bites off pieces of our reality.

And now, in the present day, Al-Kali has resurfaced, this time in the middle of the desert. The government has assembled the Jericho Squad, a motley crew of fighters with superpowers and a taste for unconventional clothing. They greet their enemies with an indifferent “oh well” and immediately resort to magic and machine guns.

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Barker conceived Al-Kali as an endless labyrinth of eras and suffering – sounds intriguing, right? Something like Prey immediately comes to mind, only without space and with even more horror. Alas, in reality, everything is limited to straightforward levels in which you run through World War II, the Middle Ages, Ancient Rome and Mesopotamia. But don’t expect historical detail – the architecture is formal, the setting hardly changes. The only thing that is paid attention to here is torment and pain. Barker does not miss a single chance to show a severed heel or fresh intestines in the frame.

Jericho Inside Out: Tactics, Mysticism, and Teamfight

Jericho is a shooter with a serious tactical bent and an unusual concept. You have six special forces fighters at your disposal, each with their own unique abilities. However, they are revealed so slowly that you can really use them closer to the end. The squad leader gets into such a mess at the very beginning of the story that he then acts more like a ghost – moving from one fighter to another, helping to manage the situation on the battlefield.

Switching between heroes is possible in two ways: through an overloaded and not the most user-friendly interface (get ready – by the time you find the right one, someone will have already managed to bite you on the heel), or by quickly pressing the “space” if you are aiming at the right partner. The squad is divided into two mini-groups of three people, and each can be given the simplest orders – “stand” or “attack”. Each hero has his own weapon, you cannot take someone else’s. But all the guns have alternative firing modes, which is nice. An interesting detail – there are no usual first aid kits and cartridges here. Ammunition is replenished automatically, and health works according to a completely different logic.

When the screen starts flashing red, it means that the soldier you are controlling will soon move to a horizontal position. If this happens, you immediately “possess” the nearest living member of the squad. Wounded soldiers do not die completely – they just lie there until one of their comrades runs up and revives them with a special button. The end of the game comes only when the entire squad is simultaneously knocked out.

Now to the abilities. There are many of them, but only a few will be truly useful. In battle, you will most likely use the following:

• Fire Serpent – bursts out of your hand and sets enemies on fire;
• Mini Black Hole – temporarily immobilizes everyone within range;
• Fire Anomaly – creates an area that roasts everyone inside;
• Ranged Healing – allows you to raise allies from a distance.

In principle, this is already enough to create colorful madness and keep enemies under control.

Why Jericho Failed to Live Up to Her Own Ambitions

The main problem with Jericho is that this entire ambitious and cumbersome structure constantly stalls. The most annoying thing is that many of the “unique abilities” were clearly not invented for the player, but to please the game designers themselves. Enemies can be controlled from a distance, but only to reach the right lever. Telekinesis seems to be there, but it only works on strictly defined objects: you can’t open a door, you can’t move a stone unless the game itself wants you to. After BioShock, all this feels like a step back. A shooter in which there is no room for maneuver, and even with crooked mechanics, is almost physically unpleasant.

The situation is aggravated by the fact that the game claims to be serious. And this makes what is happening even sadder. While you alone kill a monster with a couple of bursts, your partners can barely cope with one carcass. The levels are built on the principle of “lock the hero in the arena and send a wave of monsters” – a typical technique from Serious Sam, only without the self-irony. As soon as the last creature falls, the door suddenly swings open. Add to this stubborn teammates who carry out commands as they please: they can stand still, but they can only move on until they stumble upon a pre-written trigger.

All this comes down to a fairly obvious set of problems:

• Special abilities work selectively and often not for the player, but for the sake of the plot.
• The AI ​​of the partners is unstable and inadequate in combat.
• The level design is primitive and monotonous – clear the arena, wait for the door to open.
• Tactical elements are implemented formally and rarely bring pleasure.
• The atmosphere is often destroyed by gameplay absurdities.

Honestly, the strongest moments in Jericho are those where the game stops trying to be a tactical shooter and just lets you immerse yourself in a dark slaughter. The monsters here are truly sinister and atmospheric: shield-bearing centurions, children on stakes, a Roman ruler hanging on a hook – the visuals are impressive. Just when you start enjoying yourself – and again this pseudo-tactics with a command that works every other time.

The most annoying thing is that sometimes it does work – the gears mesh, and the system comes to life. Usually this happens in more open locations, where the AI ​​finally starts doing what it was created for. One partner activates a “black hole”, another sets a crowd of demons on fire, a third heals a fallen sniper in time – this is where a glimmer of real tactics flashes through. But, perhaps, the main advantage of Jericho is its ability to give out dozens of bright game moments in a minute. Clive Barker, no matter how you look at it, knows how to stage scenes. Yes, most of them are written in advance, but the effect from them is strong: the moment when a rotting knight falls on the heroine’s head, or the first soul transplant – it really gets under your skin.

So Jericho has potential, and for its sake you can close your eyes to many things. For example, the lack of normal physics: except for barrels, nothing is destroyed here. Or the fact that none of the team can jump. By the way, in SWAT 4 no one jumped either, but there it was logical – the level of design corresponded. The irony is that SWAT 4 was made by Irrational Games – the same ones that later gave us BioShock, and unwittingly set the bar that Jericho simply could not cope with.

Pros and Cons of Clive Barker’s Jericho

Despite all the obvious downsides, Jericho can still be considered the main event of the release. Why? Firstly, it is at least an attempt to change something. Yes, it turned out to be crooked and not entirely successful, but the vector itself is correct. Secondly, the game is simply gorgeous visually. The depth of field, the blood splattering the “camera”, the abundance of effects – all this produces an almost hypnotic impression. Well, and most importantly – Jericho is definitely not about the banal “zombie in the hallway”. There is a clear author’s vision behind the project. Barker works in his signature dark aesthetics, recognizable and unique. Did he manage to create a masterpiece? Unlikely. But the atmosphere and strange, catchy charm of the game cannot be taken away. So, despite all the flaws, Barker as a developer still arouses genuine interest in the editors of “Igromania”.

Pros:

• An attempt to bring something new to the genre
• The right vector of development, despite the implementation
• A very strong visual component
• The effect of depth of field, blood on the “lens”, an abundance of special effects
• A clearly expressed author’s vision
• The unique, dark aesthetics of Clive Barker
• Atmosphere and its own special charm

Cons:

• The implementation of the idea turned out to be awkward and uneven
• Unsuccessful game decisions
• The game may seem too strange and difficult to perceive
• The plot and gameplay do not reach the visual level

Clive Barker’s Jericho System Requirements

How to play Clive Barker’s Jericho for free on Steam via VpeSports

Are you drawn to the dark and twisted world of Clive Barker’s Jericho, but don’t want to pay for the game? There is a way to go into this nightmare for free — and it’s easier than you think.

On the VpeSports website, you can access Jericho absolutely free through special free steam account. All you need is a quick registration and go to the desired section. There you will find the game, and along with it — instructions on how to launch everything. No complications, no dancing with a tambourine: just follow the steps and get ready to join the team of elite fighters fighting an ancient evil that has escaped from beyond time. Jericho is not just a shooter, it is a real immersion into hell, where every decision matters, and every second can be your last. If you have long wanted to try, but did not dare — here is your chance.

When you figure out how to launch and go through at least the first portion of the nightmare — take a look at the reviews page. There you can share your impressions, tell us what caught your attention, what scared you, what surprised you. All comments are moderated, so don’t be alarmed if yours doesn’t appear right away – sometimes you need to slightly correct the text. After that, an email with login details will be sent to your email.

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