Clive Barker's Undying

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.

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!

The Good
Oooh boy, what an atmosphere! Being that horror master Clive Barker (who penned the Hellraiser series, amongst many other scary novels/movies) is at the helm of this game, you know that you’re definitely in for a frightening experience. This game is reminiscent of the System Shock series in a few ways, mainly the fact that you seem to be the only living, sane human amongst a gamut of insanity, in addition to the game being an FPS and having a somewhat RPG-styled spell system. The cold, clammy environment of Ireland + decaying old mansion = one hell of a disturbing setting. Add to this the constant presence of mutilated/disfigured apparitions, black magic, demons, rotting corpses, otherworldly dimensions, grotesque monsters, veritable lakes of blood, and even Clive Barker’s infamous “hooks n’ chains” that seem to be in everything he does. And the graphical engine, which is the Unreal Tournament engine, conveys all of this horror in beautiful detail. If you like the sound of that, and/or you’re a fan of Barker’s work, then this is the game for you.

The Bad
In spite of the wonderful and terrible carnage I mentioned above, there are some issues that need to be addressed. The only problem I really had personally, was the AI of the monsters. For some reason, even though I was in plain sight, they would just stand there (or float in some cases) and not attack me whatsoever; I could even walk right up in their face and nothing happened (of course once you attack them it’s a whole new ballgame!). This didn’t happen constantly, but enough to get annoying after awhile. There’s also A LOT of load screens throughout the area, because the game was going to ported to the PS2, but this never happened. In turn, the interface tends to be a bit console-ish, with circular inventory menus which can get irritating.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this is wonderfully twisted, gory and fear-provoking game that could have only come from the mind of Clive Barker. Even scarier than the game itself is the fact that it tanked in the market, and was quickly reduced to the cutout bins within months of release. A sequel was even planned for it (as the ending showed), as well as the aforementioned console port, but there’s a 99% chance none of this will be happening. Sad, very sad. Regardless, don’t play this with the lights turned out during a thunderstorm!

PS-I also think it would make a fantastic film, with ‘Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson’s CGI company WETA doing the monsters and other special effects, and Clive himself directing and producing. Granted, it wouldn’t be a mainstream hit, but it would definitely be cool for horror fans.