I recently played the Clive Barker’s Jericho demo that is now available on Xbox Live. I was pretty hopeful for this game, which is billed as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. I was expecting something along the lines of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, read on to see what I got.

First, from Codemasters’ website in regards to the demo:

"Thrusting into the middle of this unique horror/FPS, the Clive Barker’s Jericho demo starts gamers off in the Crusades time slice of Al-Khali’s past. A vicious attack has cut the squad in half, leaving players in control of Sgt. Frank Delgado, Lt. Abigail Black and Sgt. Billie Church, and with the other half of the squad presumed lost. As the spirit of Cpt. Devin Ross, the fallen squad leader who’s remaining entity is able to possess and jump between surviving members of the team, players will take advantage of Delgado, Black and Church’s special weapons and paranormal talents.

Delgado, a pyromancer and heavy weapons expert, can unleash a parasitic flame spirit to incinerate nearby enemies and wields a 7.62 caliber mini-gun. Black possesses astonishing telekinetic powers, which let her guide bullets fired from her customized XM-110 sniper rifle with pinpoint accuracy through multiple targets. Church, a blood scribe, casts powerful wards, enchantments and banishments through the ritual of drawing her own blood, and also comes equipped with a customized Nodachi katana for ruthless melee attacks.

Only by combining the unique paranormal abilities of the Jericho squad will gamers survive this hellish nightmare and inch closer to discovering the truth behind the evil rooted in Al-Khali. Right from the beginning of the Clive Barker’s Jericho demo, players face a vicious onslaught from an army of grotesque crusader-era warriors. These twisted and tormented enemies, with armor fused to their rotting flesh and limbs replaced with axes and swords, are powerful, shocking realizations of monsters spawned straight from the mind of Clive Barker."

So basically you, the player, play as the spirit of Captain Devin Ross and are able to control members of the squad. I think it is annoying to have to change between characters, and the squad consists of seven people. I like the challenge of having to solve a puzzle that might require one character to stand in one spot while another pulls a lever and the other holds a door shut to keep the bad guys out, but the idea of having to run around with a group of characters that you can’t boss around (like most military squad games) just seems a bit cumbersome. In the demo, the only reason to change players was to use the agile Church to navigate a tight spot to get a door open for everyone else.

I found this game to be a linear button masher. There was not much room in the demo to experiment with the game. The flow of the demo was kill enemies, move to next area, kill the same enemies, etc. The only breaks from the repeatedness was the Simon Says, button pressing mini-game (via Resident Evil) and navigating the dark cave with a dimly lit flashlight to find how to open the above mentioned door.

I never really got emersed in this game. Sure the demo is short, but it is meant to be a first impression for the public and I was not impressed. Frankly, the game was pretty boring, linear and redundant. I did not find anything groundbreaking and even though I was playing in the dark I never got on the edge of my seat. The only nightmares I will have after this demo is that I could have been playing Halo 3.

Note: People who played the PC demo seem to be more impressed than the folks who played the console version. If you have played the PC version, post your thoughts in the comments below. Also, if you played on the console tell me what you think.