If all your game has going for it is your name on the cover, you should probably just pack it in.

So, Jericho.

First off let me start out by saying I generally steer clear of games with the artist named stamped on it like, "American McGee's Alice," because that generally means some arrogant twat bossed around the people that actually made the game, which generally means the game is garbage (I'm looking at you Itagaki), but from what I heard the game was piss easy and not THAT bad, so I figured what the hell, easy achievements, it's not like I'm gonna buy the thing.

Is it THAT bad? I'm sorry to say, but yes, it really is.

First off, the writing is god awful. I'd blame Clive Barker and his blood 'n guts but no plot mentality but I'm not convinced he had anything to do with this mess of a plotline. The game literally plays out like a goth obsessed fan fiction writing highschooler's notebook full of a bunch of shit he thought was awesome. It's shallow, yet murky, contradictory and for lack of a better word, pants on head retarded. For what it's worth there's a lot of backstory about all the characters that you unlock via the achievements, but most of it is complete and utter tripe that just ends up making you hate the horribly unlikeable characters even more. Trust me, if you don't hate them in the beginning, by the time you hear them gurgle their completely out of place macho cornball one liners for the thousandth time, you damn well will.

The only saving grace of their horrible presence is that half of them get brutally murdered in the final few minutes, which is good, because the ending is just BAM, bad guy is dead here's a nice ocean scene. I mean it's a pretty nice water texture, but by no means is it any sort of CLOSURE or RESOLUTION. I kept waiting for something that would make the ending less rediculously bad, but it never came.

Combat is repetetive, piss easy and mundane. Switching between your squad mates via your own spectral presence is a neat mechanic and would lead to some interesting puzzle possibilities, if the game didn't hold your hand the entire way through like a toddler. Explain to me what the point of a puzzle even is if they walk you through it step by step as it is happening? I guess if you couldn't read it would be a challenge. To top it off aside from every now and then when you get seperated there is almost no reason to use anyone besides the squad mate with the rifle/grenade launcher.

The piss easy difficulty doesn't make the repetetive respawning enemies any more interesting either, which makes me boggle at the fact that cheat codes were a pre-order incentive. When a hundred or so enemies filter 1-3 at a time out of 1-3 holes in the ground and wait for you to clear a room before spawning more, that's not a challenge, that's a test of your endurance to bad gameplay design.

There's no health and no ammo really. I mean there is health, but it regenerates if you don't get hit and you get respanwed if you die, and there is ammo, but one of your squad buddies is constantly replenishing it, so it makes you wonder why they even bothered with either of the mechanics. Just give the player infinite ammo from the get go (with mags that need to be reloaded) spawn tons of enemies (all at once) and let him have at it with his 10 or so squad mates. NOW THAT IS A GAME.

Oh, the game is also short, but in this case that is almost a mercy. You can only walk through so many brown bloody cooridoors before they all start to blend together. Fighting the same four or five monster types ad nauseam from start to finish.

Oh did I mention the quicktime events? OHHH BOY, these fuckers are the icing on the shit sundae. Don't think God of War, think more along the lines of Dragon's Lair, that horrible quarter eating monstrosity of a game. Zero reaction time and out of nowhere when you least expect them. If they're going to be there, at least make them a stable part of gameplay, instead of just a dick move every now and then to kill you over and over until you get it right. If there was any flow or atmosphere to the game, crap like this would destroy it utterly.

Is it worth a rental despite the horrible game design? Maybe if you're an achievement whore or you love Clive Barker's narrative abortions. I'm the former if you hadn't guessed.

But I mean hell, Twighlight was crap and it still found a niche market, so someone out there will probably like this too.

Hal