Clive Barker's Undying

The Good
Undying is a great shooter, packed with a great pace, and lots of imagination. The levels and enemies are original and truly scary, and they are all rendered via the Quake3 engine, which means they all look impressive too.

At it's worst, Undying is merely a decent, plot-based shooter. But at it's best Undying is a truly scary experience. I have never in any other shooter experienced the kind of terror that this game provides, which comes in the form of "jack in the box" scares as well as some clever creature and level designs. More than once I found myself screaming as a howler sneaked on me from behind, or as I frantically tried to shoot a pack of enemies that dodged all my attacks. And this is were Undying nails it, when it puts you in desperate nerve-wrecking situations, thus you find yourself in some situations clearly out of survival-horror titles, were you find that you are outnumbered, outmatched, and out of ammo, and where you just have to hold on to your hat and run for it!

I haven't felt a feeling of desperation like this in a game for a looong time, but as always, it is so nerve-wrecking that sometimes you have to take a break from it, and sometimes you need to work up the courage to face the game again. This is, of course, excellent. Nothing deserves my admiration more than a game that doesn't pull it's punches, and Undying goes at it with gusto.

The Bad
Even though the entire interface, menus and music, etc. are all specially themed for the game, I found the in-game interface to be quite off the mark. In game, you have a series of brightly-colored "user friendly" icons representing your spells, weapons, etc. and... well, it sort of kills the mood sometimes! I don't understand how this ended up as this since the other menus and screens in the game are very moody and inspired.

But well, that's minor nagging really, the thing that really kills this game is the lack of value. One can't help but feel a "Now what?" sense of emptiness after finishing the game. Sure, it's a great experience, with a good storyline, and great moments, but it's totally linear, and though that could also be said of Half-Life, that game had multiplayer and user-made mods support. Undying has nothing! Not even alternate game modes, (a thing which has helped other horror games, like Resident Evil, extend their longevity) so in all I can't really see how EA expects one to dish so much cash for a game that has so little to offer.

The Bottom Line
Undying is an excellent horror plot-based shooter. It deserves all of my praises and recommendations, but I'm not sure if it deserves my cash. Other games offer much more extensive and lasting experiences for the same price. EA figured that since they were the only horror-oriented fps in town, they could get away with doing a half-assed effort, and well... let's just hope you learned the lesson EA, because I would really like a fully-loaded Undying 2, or even an Undying "Gold" or GOTY update.

The Good
First of all, the production values of this game are high. It uses the Unreal engine and to great effect with very nice graphics and lightning. Outside environments has weather effects like rain and snow which adds greatly to the atmosphere. Especially in one place where you are entering a monestary while the snowflakes fall around you in the cold air and the fullmoon shines in the dark sky. All the while gregorian chants are heard in the distance. Highly atmospheric to me at least.

The sound is one of the best I've heard in a computer game and suits this game perfectly. All the weird noises and spooky sounds made my heart beat very fast when I played the first levels of this game, and I played with headphones in the middle of the night in a dark room which added much to that. Even the main menu screen has some really powerful creepy music that chills you. This is the most scary game I have played, more so than f.ex system shock 2.

In the game you play as Patrick Galloway, an Irish veteran of world war one and an occult scholar who has been invited by his friend and warbuddy Jeremiah Covenant to his family's old mansion on an island outside the Irish coast. It seems like some old family curse is haunting the manor, with strange goings on and with most of the servants having fled the place and his own health deteriorating. So of course he asks you to investigate, and rather soon you encounter some nasty creatures that wanna rip your throat out. In fact, every different creature kills you in a different way, with some gruesome cutscenes showing your character being "finished off". But, at your disposal to fight these nasties you have a range of weapons and also spells since you're an occultist. You begin the game with a revolver and an artifact called the Gel'ziabar Stone. Later on you get more weapons like a shotgun and also magical weapons like a tibetan war cannon shaped as a dragons head. The inventory is a simple list of equipment like ammo for your guns and medical packs to restore health. Some weapons like the gun and shotgun can use special ammo like the silver bullets which does more damage.

The left mouse button controls the firing of the physical weapon and the right mouse button the spell you have ready. This way you can have two attacks in quick succession, by having a weapon in one hand and an attack spell in the other. Or you can have a defensive spell instead and fire with the weapon with the left mouse button and heal f.ex with the right. The different spells you learn along the way can be upgraded in power by "amplifier stones" which raises the power of them up from one to a maximum of five. Here you have to choose which to upgrade and which to not because there is a limited number of amplifier stones you come across. One cool spell that you can cast, is a group of screaming chattering skulls you hurl at the enemy and is rather deadly at higher power levels. To cast spells there is a mana indicator which gets drained when you cast a spell but automatically starts to replenish itself afterwards. So after a spell is cast you must wait some often valuable seconds to raise your mana level back so it can be used again.

The artifact known as the Gel'ziabar stone has two functions. One of them lets you use it as a temporary amplifier stone, which increases the power of your spell by one but at the same time takes up your weapon hand. The other use is to "scrye". At some points in the game you can use this to see things as they truly are which is often not a pleasent sight or to look back in to the past to see what has happened at the location.

To help keep notes on things there is a journal that gets updated everytime some new information is gathered or the story is advanced. Scattered across the mansion are also journals to read to find out what is going on.

The monsters and creatures are well done. I was impressed by some of the bosses, especially the second one.

Undying has great and beautiful locations, like Oneiros, a dimension connected to the house with strange beings and islands floating in empty space. Having played Realms of the haunting I can see that they got some inspiration from that game. Overall, this game is very well made and the level design and worlds are great and imaginative. And that makes it such a pleasure to play.

The Bad
The linearity. When you move around the huge mansion all doors except the one you must follow won't either budge or is stuck fast, annoying. Again from ROTH. I understand this is not an rpg but I would have loved to be able to examine the whole mansion the way i wanted. The journals you find and read are only flavour put there. It doesn't feel like I am investigating a haunted house on my own which is a shame because it would have made the game much more interesting. Now you're railroaded through the house and fighting monsters. I would have loved to be able to gather clues and evidence by my own and let me solve things the way I wanted. A game a little more open ended where you solved the puzzle bit by bit. Another "flaw" is the last world levels which are a little bit repetetive.

The Bottom Line
The game is more like a horror-action game similar to Dark corners of the world than a roleplaying game since it is kind of linear and doesn't have any rpg elements in it like f.ex System shock. Though not nearly as linear as DCOTW. Still, one of the best FPS's out there.

The Good
The story line is fantastic, but who would expect anything less than something overseen by Clive Barker. From my understanding, the story was already worked out before Clive came on board, but I do know that he was responsible for redesigning the main character, Patrick, as well as providing the voice of one of the villains and designing some of the monsters.

The game starts off very strong, you are quickly pulled into the mystery of the Covenant family and their curse. The atmosphere is creepy and stifling - you feel like you can't escape the horrors that lurk in the Covenant mansion.

The game is powered by the Unreal Tournament engine, contrary to a previous review of this game which stated it was a quake 3 engine. It has been heavily modified to handle the shadows and characters and it really shows. The level design is, for the most part quite good and the monsters are unique and well designed.

I found the music and sound to be fantastic. No complaints here, I often listen to the soundtrack just to get into the mood!

The Bad
There was no cooperative multi player, something I always look for in a single player title. However I do think that Undying plays just fine alone, in fact it probably increases the fear and tension throughout the game.

I did not like the UT powered engine. The game struggles in many areas to perform, and brought my beefy machine to it's knees in many situations (single digit framerates). Also, the sound often popped/crackled, which for me destroyed a lot of the mood created.

I also was quite disappointed by the last 1/3 of the game, it moved away from the mansion setting and moved towards some bizarre areas, which I was not too impressed with. Lastly, the ending was vague and I found the story to be inadequately explained. I like open endings but this ending was so open the earth could have fallen through it.

Lastly I did not like the frustrating slowness of the save/load mechanism. It took too long and became a great hindrance to my enjoyment. I read that the game was being developed for a release on the PS2 (which was canned) - due to memory restrictions, the game has an increased amount of 'loading' screens, which gets quite annoying after a while and breaks the tempo. While I understand why they did this, it still is annoying and unrequired for the PC version.

The Bottom Line
A good title, worth your time and money and is guaranteed to scare your pants off in many parts. There are some great elements to this game, so don't let my negative comments discourage you!