Clive Barker's Undying

The Good
Story is just awesome. Journal entries was written by Clive Barker himself. It's intriguing, and finale is quite surprising. Game is really fearful. Especially when you play it first time. Rooms of the manor are so dark and creepy that you will shit bricks from every noise). Another cool feature is several different death models for every monster.

The Bad
Nothing, really.

The Bottom Line
This horror shooter will scare you to your bones. Sound, graphics and story is just perfect. What does make this game so special? It's style. There is something from Lovecraft and Poe, and there is a lot of text that create this gothic, dark atmosphere of unspoken horror.

The Good
Hard as it is for me to single out anything spectacular about this game, there must be some reason why I played it so rigourously all the way to the end. I normally don't blitz on games at all in that way. I did with Max Payne, but I don't know what kept my attention on that one either.

It's probably because both games are incredibly easy to get into, fun, and not especially challenging. Undying grabs your attention pretty early on, and even though the control system leaves something to be desired, keeps you playing without much of a hitch. All the elements of a solid game are here: the graphics are good, the sound is good, the story is good, the gameplay is good, and the length is good. Nothing special, just good.

The animation though, is very good. The enemies really move nicely, especially the howlers and skeletons. There is also a fair amount of variety in the enemies I think, but some people admittingly don't think there is. Also, this game has brought back the tradition of boss creatures to fight, which deserves much thanks in my opinion. The spells are good. The weapons are ok. That's it really. Sometimes you get whisked off to a totally different environment for no real reason other than to provide a change, but that's ok because every FPS does that. Half-Life did it. System Shock 2 did it. I don't mind.

The Bad
Still, this game, even in an optimised condition, is never going to be like Valve's trailblazing debut. It's an FPS, it's a good FPS, but it doesn't try anything different. There's nothing to make Undying stand out from the crowd other than the addition of bosses and the funky 'scrye' spell. Serious Sam stands out by being so wonderfully excessive, but that's one of the few around that do. But anyway, it's unfair to compare every shooter to Half-Life. So on with the more niggling complaints: Firstly, the story gives off a slightly false impression. The stage is set for something deep and mystifying: Your war-buddy calls you to his house to unravel the secrets contained within the Standing Stones (which his father spent most of his life trying to figure out), and to find out about the curse that has plagued his family, what has become of his siblings, and what all these monsters are doing here. I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone who is thinking of buying this game but you find out very little. It turns out the plot doesn't really mean anything anyway, and it never moves on until the end like so many other games.

Secondly, why are all the bosses so easy? I admit I played this game on 'easy' because I'm a wuss, but I rarely got hit anyway so it didn't matter. The first boss is easy, the second is ridiculously easy. There are more but they're not really worth saying much about. In fact, one of the normal enemies I found tougher than any of the bosses in the game. The whole game is still not hard though. At one point I was carrying 60 health packs. The bosses aren't much fun to play again either because they...oh I don't have the room to describe it. All I can say is that ideally, bosses should have the pressure on you ALL the time. Metal Gear Solid 2 did it right when I played it. In that game I fought a guy on a rooftop who seemed to be constantly coming up with ideas of how to kill me, and who would actually try to corner me. Fighting bosses should be like fighting a guy in a boxing ring. It should be that intense.

Thirdly, why are there doors that jam for no reason at all and prevent your access? I've never known a house to have so many. I suspect the reason is probably because...

Fourthly, the game loads every time you go into a new area. Other than annoying you, this makes navigation of big places very difficult.

Fifthly, the sound in this game is good. But what makes it nowhere near System Shock's league is that many of the sounds aren't real. You can hear howlers when there aren't any around, they're just in the general vicinity. It's scripted sound and it doesn't work because it doesn't tell you anything. All FPS developers take note: ambient sound is at it's most tense and frightening when it is from real activity. What makes SS2 a work of genius is that when you hear a monkey, you KNOW there is a monkey near you for certain, and the volume and direction of the sound will tell you where it is. That's when you panic because you know the speakers aren't lying. So even when it's silent you're filling you're pants because you sit there praying you won't hear anything. Ocassionally SS2 does use music and sounds to heighten the tension. The moment you enter the cargo bays where currently dormant but evil robots are pressed against the sides of a very thin corridor which you must walk down, and you hear that soft hum and tiny rush of air sound, every hair stands up on the back of your neck. That is how it should be done. Less sound, more meaning.

Sixthly, the thought that servants would continue to work in a house where people are being eaten alive is laughable, let alone that they should be as nonchalant as ever about it.

The Bottom Line
A good game. It has faults sure, but it's still fun. Few of the faults are major, they just stop the game from being a really good regular game like Medal of Honour, instead of a good regular game. (Stop me if I'm confusing you ;O)) Either way, the game would never have been anything other than regular. Easily it's biggest fault is that it doesn't try hard enough.

The Good
This is the hardest part, figuring out where to start. Undying had me by the balls within moments of starting it up, and didnt really let up until way later near the ending during a rare dull stretch. The storyline, crafted in part by Clive i've-quit-doing-horror Barker, centers on a family decimated by a curse unwittingly unleashed on them by one of the children, and its subsequent demise. The player joins the last surviving member of the family, Jeremiah Covenant, as he attempts to gather up the threads of his ruined family and make sense of it all, and finally to put a stop to the curse. Jeremiah is sickly and dying, and the player, taking the part of an old war buddy who has had more than a slight run-in with the occult, offers to repay a wartime favor by searching the Covenant estate for clues. Shortly after his arrival however, he learns that a rival from his youth is also present at the manor, and seriously messed up stuff start happening.

The plot basically takes you chasing down the spirits of Jeremiahs siblings as they go after his life. You learn the way the family unravelled and you trace the evil that has tainted their blood back to the very source. During the game you visit some truly interesting locales; EA must have paid their level designers way too much for this one. The Covenant estate, complete with lighthouses, pirate caves, cathedrals and underground tombs is amazingly detailed, and the other two dimensions you visit truly feel.. different. It's hard to explain, but whoever came up with these ideas, EA best not fire them. The gameplay however is fairly basic. The plot can be seen as a simple reason for the player to shoot his various guns and things at a varied list of monsters in lots of different locales, as well as use some spells to blow up stuff and solve some puzzles while looking for the occational switch or key. Mind you, i'm not complaining. Hell no.

Some feel the gameplay was overly simplistic for the subject matter, or rather, that that quality of the subject matter was too good for a shooter. To me however, Undying represents what any action fps should strive for; total game world immersion that doesnt catch onto annoying quirks of game logic, lets you simply play the game and poses you with a storyline that doesn't make you feel like an idiot. Undying is relentless, frightening, intriguing, moving and at times, astonishingly impressive.

Impressive. Undying was the first game in a very long time to make my jaw drop. There are certain key moments to the game that really made my day. To this date i still have saves right before these points so i can show my friends. Some moments are technically impressive, others are just impressive in their brilliance. Here are some highlights:

A well filled with water. When an incantation is invoked an Abyss-style water tentacle forms a bridge between two platforms. I have never seen water behave like this in any other game.

Invisible floors. In the demon dimension of Oneiros, certain parts of the game force you to take leaps of faith over yawning chasms to segments of floor that materialise out of thin air. This needs to be seen.

A certain spell you'll use quite heavily is the Scrye spell, a spell letting you take a glimpse beyond time and space, or rather at what is, what was, and what can be. The game uses this spell to show you some truly grisly things. At the very beginning, scrying at a lamp post will show you a man hung, rats drinking from the pool of blood gathering at his feet. Other places paintings on the walls will take on a demonic quality: A man in a chair appears surrounded by hungry demons, a horse on green hills becomes a horse on dying burning fields in twilight. A moment that really struck out for me was scrying a statue, having the statue tear his chest open and display his beating heart, begging you to kill it. Savage stuff.

The moon door. Seeing the reflection of a run down cathedral in a pool of water change to its image hundreds of years earlier, in full splendor. Again this needs to be seen. I couldnt believeit.

One of the siblings is a mad painter. Upon uncovering his barnyard studio, he gives you a demonstration of his skills. He paints an image on a wall in front of you. Slowly you realise its a picture of you - with a huge tentacled demon behind you. You turn around, and there it is. The game sets you up in ways that can be truly chilling.

The tomb. As you crawl through cramped dusty fogged corridors, with the rattling of bones all around you, visibility is near none. And somewhere in far distance you hear deranged singing, coming closer and closer. This is one of the defining moments of the game for me.

The design team behind Undying have every ounce of my respect. What they have done with the setting is truly amazing. Clive Barker needs proper credit for the aspect of the game he really touched on, and that's character and monster design. This guy should be on EA's permanent payroll. What he's done here is magic. The many creatures you encounter in the game are truly menacing. Not one of them made me laugh, which is rare for a horror game. Blood drinking cloaked and tentacled sorcerors, horned head eating half-men, waving squid faced cthulhu-style assassins that literally come out of shadows.. This is gold. Another thing well worth noting is the death sequences. Every time you die the camera pulls back to give you a full view of the offending monster giving you the coup de grace. Some of these animations are truly gruesome and often i found myself deliberately dying just to see them all.

I think one of the truly crowning aspects of the game is the sound. There isn't much else to say than point out the fact that next to the Thief and System shock games, no other game i've played has even nearly touched on the brilliance of Undying. The voice acting is bearable to brilliant, the music is always fantastic (Bill Brown working his magic), and the creature effects are mindboggling. Apparently the sound of a certain creature slithering was a mixture of a vacuum cleaner and a banana being peeled or something. Another cue on the ingenuity of these people.

The Bad
Sadly, there are problems, although i never thought they were PROBLEMS in the first place, merely issues that could have been adressed to enhance the experience. The story loses its drive at times, particularly when the player leaves the manor and the previous wealth of visual cues and hints at the family demise give way to weird alien constructions and landscapes. Oneiros and Eternal autumn, both realms featuring heavily near the end of the game, are fairly straightforward shooting segments, and its been noted that these segments lifts the veil from the players eyes somewhat and belie the actual simplicty of the gameplay. A while after this revelation, the gameplay can seem rather samey, although, i must say, i truly enjoyed just drinking in the atmosphere of it all.

Another issue, strangely enough for a single player game, is related to game balance. At a certain point in the game you acquire a melee weapon known as the scythe of the celts, and from there on there is little reason to use any other weapon. This is a weapon that kills most things in one or two strikes, and actually heals you. The pure strength of the thing is pretty depressive, considering the varied and interesting weaponry you can get your hands on.

A third niggle has to to with the final boss fight of the game. Suffice to say, i thought the game could have been a little cleverer here rather than just pit you against a huge monster that takes a ton of damage. The other boss fights had been superb events, and the last fight simply came off as slightly... Lame. The ending however, chillingly, left room for a sequel. However, now we know there will be none. I'm going to lament this fact for a very long time, as Undying represents some of the best horror FPS action i have ever seen, and probably ever will.

The Bottom Line
A fast paced, deeply disturbing trek through the true heart of hard core horror fiction. Dreadfully impressive, and downright intimidating in it's amount of polish.