Clive Barker's Undying

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
Patrick Galloway started investigating the occult as an easy way of making a profit out of superstitious and gullible rich people. In Ireland, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was a fine business.
However, the more Patrick delved into the occult, the more he started to believe there are things beyond our understanding. Things no sane human mind should be in contact with.

Then the great war started, and Patrick was called to serve. He almost dies in an incident against the vicious Trsanti, but Jeremiah Covenant, captain of his unit, saved his life and left him at a hospital.

Years passed, and one day Patrick received word from Jeremiah, asking for his help to restore order in his estate. Patrick owed his life to this man so he wouldn't even think about declining.

At the fastuous manor of the Covenant family, the air is thick with premonitions. At the entrance, Patrick receives a vision, one of the Trsanti corsairs has been hanged from one of the nearby light posts, at some point in the past.
In the middle of the manor, a black tower with the appearance of an edifice older than time itself, rises defying. Mysterious lights flash on top of it.
Something evil can be sensed all over the place, lurking in the shadows, hiding inside the walls, watching from the other side of the windows.
Inside the manor, Patrick receives another vision. A ghostly man, dressed as a rich gentleman greets him. Suddenly he disappears and some hideous creature whose skin seems totally peeled-off, with chains hooked all over his body, stares at Patrick.
There is death in the air.

Jeremiah is no longer the strong and determined man he was at the war. He looks —and sounds— like a pathetic shell of a man, waiting for death to come for him... before something even worse beats it.
His words for Patrick are eloquent enough: "My siblings are dead, Patrick... but I don't think they're gone..."
***
Five Covenant siblings. One ancient damnation. There is work for the spook-hunter.

Despite the rather compelling STORYLINE —one to be expected from a product with the signature of Clive Barker all over it— backed up with a sheer amount of text and dialogues, Undying is nothing more than a first-person shooter (FPS).
Along with a number of more-or-less typical weapons you get to use some magic spells (both offensive and deffensive), each of which can be progressively enhanced, but the game is still far from a RPG or anything like that.
The story is more of a cosmetic resource to glue the levels together than anything else. Patrick will talk with the characters himself with no choices to make for the player, and the whole journey is a pretty linear ride. Even in the manor with all its labyrinthic structure, the only doors that will open are the ones you need to get through.
Soon enough, you will notice the game has an unspoken structure: you can tell there are several different levels, each one of which is ruled by one of the demonic Covenant siblings.
Anyway, don't take me wrong. We are talking positive here: the game HAS a pretty compelling story. I specially enjoyed the storytelling, the way the story is presented. Every time you start a level you will definitely know who you're up against, but along the way you will be fed information on someone else, letting you know for sure that there's much more to come. Along the way, through conversations and all kinds of text fragments, you will be fed information about the secret that hides behind the Covenant family, the manor, a circle of stones in an island nearby, an ancient monastery, and even a connection with Patrick's own past...

One of the strongest points of the game lays among the INTANGIBLES: it's the atmosphere. Every single one of the locations where the game takes place is conveniently horrifying.
The sheer-sized manor is of course a haunting place —specially with all those lightnings during night storms. So are the catacombs underneath the family mausoleum. Then you reach some surreal and twisted otherworld which looks just as haunting. Then you get back to the manor, and you go out, and even the daylight looks eerie somehow. Then you go to the ancient monastery, which has been abbandoned for centuries, yet not unhabited...
You get the picture.
Every now and then a cutscene suddenly fires off, the camera pans with long shots that really take their toll on your nerves, and then something happens.

CHARACTER GRAPHICS are pretty good, as it's the concept behind them.
The regular monsters are the most neatly designed creatures I ever saw in a video game. All the unhuman creatures are incredibly well done. They are gross, they are ugly, and they REALLY look menacing.
As for the Covenants, every single one of them has a strong personality and will introduce him/herself in a way that will make you think it twice before running heads first towards he/she. Even the poor Jeremiah will have his good 15 seconds. Every one of the siblings deserve being the main villain in their own story.

BACKGROUND GRAPHICS are a mixed bag: For one thing, the texture resolution is pretty low, so you can see clear texture blurs when you come close enough to a wall, a window, and what all not. On the other hand, not only the atmosphere isn't ruined at all by this, but also the design of the locations is really good. Both the real (such as the manor) and the unreal (like the wacky dreamland of Oneiros) places show a great work from the designer's part. Fine art and rich imagination, full force ahead.
On top of this, there are LOTS of fancy effects to enhance the atmosphere: foggy corridors, heavy-pouring rain, thunders that crack illuminating the manor with creepy flashes and deafening sound, et cetera. Later in the game, there is a given breed of creatures that stings and poisons Patrick, distorting his perceptions for a few seconds... you have to see the way the world looks for those five seconds. And try to aim and shoot while thus stunned, too.

The SOUND is very good. I'm not much of a soundscape freak —hell, I need walkthroughs to pass even the most silly sound-related puzzles— but this is one of those games in which the sound is definitely above average. Even I can tell so.
Both music and background sound effects enhance the suspense atmosphere to unbelievable levels. Several times I found myself ACTUALLY SCARED while slowly sneaking through certain lonely levels, with the background sounds, the eerie music, the distant howling, and what all not.
There is a given level in which, while navigating some dark catacombs, you will hear, somewhere in the distance, a harsh voice which can only come out of a corpse humming a lullaby. Enough said.
Voice acting is very good, each actor fits their character perfectly, they sound convincing enough and they all have a nice Irish accent: "Aeh owed hem meh life, though...", or something. Neat.

GAMEPLAY-wise, there is not much to say. Like I mentioned, the game is a typical FPS, based on the Unreal Tournament engine. This last bit, for one thing, assures smooth gameplay alright.
It's worth to mention that the combination of the traditional weapons and the magic spells (Patrick fires weapons with his left hand and casts spells with his right hand) can turn quite interesting sometimes, enhancing gameplay slightly. Not only you can use two different attack modes at once, but there are a few possible ways to combine magic and weapons so they complement one another. One of the coolest combinations is to charge the crossbow's arrows with the lightning spell, so whenever someone is hit in an open area with such arrows, he/she is immediatly struck by a thunderbolt coming down from the skies.
The effects of some of the spells are very imaginative, and amusing to watch, like the scrye spell, which distorts reality and shows things that are hidden to the human eye. Whenever there's something plausible to be scryed, you'll hear a spooky voice whispering "scryyyye", "seeeeee", "look aroouuund", or something like that. Brrrr.
Of course, among all the fancy spells, there is the always-praised resurrect spell, which brings dead enemies back to life to happily join our noble cause.

Finally, the game has a REPLAYABILITY ingredient in the form of bonus stuff that you can uncover through console commands, or by performing certain special actions in certain places.
Among others, you get to enter a shooting gallery, watch a disco coreography starring some of the game's characters (including a few monsters), get a huge scary monster to join sides with you through the whole game, witness a gigantic sheep coming out of a barn... go look around in the net for the cheat codes, some of these joke levels are really worth seeing.

The Bad
Like I said, Undying is just a FPS. Moreover, this is yet another game which at first sight makes you believe you got a lot of choices to make, but at some point —earlier than I'd have liked— reveals itself as the most linear thing. You will see lots of doors, but the only ones that will open are the ones that you need to go through in order to advance in the game.
In outdoor areas, a little wandering around will soon show you that these areas are not as 'open' as they looked like.
The game is indeed yet another FPS, and nothing more.
Even though it looks like there is much more inside at first sight, soon enough you end up finding out that it would be the same if all those cinematics, the diary notes, the kilometers worth of text, and the dialogues just weren't there. The game itself consists of running through that door that opened, kill everything that moves towards you, run through the next door that opens, kill some more stuff, run through yet another door, and eventually meet a boss character, and whack the beejezus out of him/her.
Rewind and start over. And over again until you see the credits roll.

The game deserved more from the developers. The strong storyline, the appealing characters, the haunting atmosphere —everything was there to make a way more ambitious project out of this.
I'd have loved Undying to be some sort of the early-1900's horror-story version of Deus Ex, so to say.

The Bottom Line
I think Undying is a great game.
If you enjoy horrors, and you can live with the fact that this is yet another FPS with little to none interactivity with either characters or background (unless you count beating up as interactivity, that is), you won't be disappointed by it.
I don't think you can possibly get bored with a game with such a strong atmosphere as this one. Every time you might think the ride seems to get too long, something will happen that will keep you interested.
And as a FPS, it's a funny game too.

I said the game deserved more work from the developers, but I also think it deserved more attention from the public. Apparently it wasn't well received, and official word is that the sequel (which the ending lets open doors for) will never see the light.
Another shameful unfair chapter in videogaming history, and counting.

The Good
The first thing that got my attention was the atmosphere. While it starts with the cliche dreary night in an old mansion, I got the feeling that this wasn't the average cheesy horror flick as soon as I saw the howling beast prowling just outside the manor gates. The period architecture and design with curtains fluttering in open windows, dark musty catacombs, and wind swept ruins are both fitting and fighting. What truly gives the gameplay its depth is the superb direction. Rarely has any game kept me in suspense and not alone truly made me jump in my set as Undying has.

The plot slowly begins to unfold when you meet an old friend, Jeremiah. The story, which in itself is a rarity in FPS, is an intriguing and horrifying mystery of a cursed family with twist befitting a novel. Most of it unfolds as you talk to the mansion's inhabitants or read lost journals and letters. While it's not entirely original it does add a great bit of depth to an otherwise ordinary FPS.

The monsters and beast in the game are fairly good, but not exceptional. The roster includes some that are rather typical for a horror game, and most are not original either. The others though are really inspired. Most of them are by far not weak and are sometimes surprisingly conning. Also most are quite viscous in close quarters. To make matters worse, for the player that is, some tend to be in groups, making encounters all the more challenging. This is somewhat balanced by the stronger weapons and spells that are acquired later in the game, but many are rather slow to reload or recharge, making some encounters a real fight for survival.

As for some of the more technical aspects, the graphics and textures are average and sometimes poor, but still fit nicely with the setting and architecture. The map architecture on the other hand is great, much better than Unreal, which used the same engine. The models and animation are somewhat mixed. Some are good, but others have too few polygons and wooden movements. The facial texture animation, however, at times was surprisingly well done, with realistic expressions. While these seem like minor gripes the game still fairs well for its time.

The Bad
My biggest gripe with the game is how torturous dying in the game is. While watching the various fatalities that the enemies preform are interesting, they grow old quickly, yet for some reason you cannot skip past them. You are forced to watch them again and again and again. The same holds true for most cutscenes during the game. After that, instead of loading your last saved game, it loads a secret saved game that is created each time you enter a new section of the game. While this maybe be typical for a console game, it is simply inexcusable for one on the PC. So if your not fast enough to reload when you die, you have have to watch the enemies brutally deal its finishing blow and wait for the game to restart back to the beginning of the section before you can load your own saved game.

Also, the gameplay seems somewhat unbalanced. You have to travel a great deal before you meet the first boss, but the bosses and major beast become much more frequently during the second half. It's seems as if the ran out of ideas and started rushing the game to a conclusion, which is a merely a rather cheesy setup for a sequel.

Some of my other gripes are the game's linearity. While this is somewhat common in a FPS it is to the point of being ridiculous. The mansion is full of doors that seem to be stuck, even though the door might have opened before and some of them are even ajar, yet fail to budge. The conversations are also linear has they simply play out from beginning to end without any interaction whatsoever. Also the games creators seem to believe that there were silver bullets lying around a monastery in the 1200's!

The Bottom Line
Undying is among the best action games in the horror genre with a great story, settings and plot that will keep you hooked to the very end. I've played many and this is by far the one only one that has successfully made me jump or wince time and time again. This game is not for the faint of heart, but if you're game for a good scare then I recommend Undying.