Featured Review
Clive Barker's Undying
*** 1/2
Interviewed by Cnet and Gamespy
prior to the release of his first computer game, Clive Barker
related that he told his designers to "make the hero
someone I want to sleep with." While Barker's preferences
in men may run towards the buff, shaggy haired, and Irish--one
must wonder what sort of misogyny would compel him to fashion
a cataclysmic battle with a giant vagina at Undying's
conclusion.
Undying, a first
person shooter set in Ireland of the 1920s, is an epic tale
of a cursed family and their country estate--or at least that
is what Barker would like us to believe. It is hard to invoke
Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" when you have
a "Tibetan War Cannon," that lobs giant balls of
ice, in your left hand while you are spewing forth streams
of "ectoplasm" from your right. Most of the "flavor
text" penned by Barker, accessible through books and
scrolls in the game, is worse than insipid and the environments
fail to live up to the H.P. Lovecraft aesthetic from which
they are drawn. What is left, however, is B movie charm and
cheap but effective scare tactics that go "boo"
when you least expect it.
While the weaponry in the
game is just antiquated versions of the usual suspects (though
it does include the best "boom-stick" since Doom
2), it is the magic system that truly sets Undying
apart from its peers. A magic stone, capable of repulsing
enemies away with a shockwave, glows in particular locations,
inviting you to use your "scry" spell, which allows
you to momentarily glimpse at the world of magic that remains
hidden to mortals. While at times the effects are trite and
predictable, there are others that are well worth the price
of admission. Though most of the spells are offensive in nature
(and even these sometimes have their use in solving puzzles),
many of the other spells have more creative uses, such as
resurrecting fallen foes to fight at your side, disenchanting
the magic of others, and putting troubled souls to rest at
long last. "Amplifiers," devices that increase the
function (both quantitatively and sometimes qualitatively)
of your spells can be used to augment your casting ability--and
in the areas that you specify, which is an attempt at including
some measure of replayability to the game. A rather poor attempt,
considering that only a few spells are worthwhile to maximize
in power and players will find themselves hoarding the amplifiers
until they truly need them: only to find that they are nearly
all yet unused at the game's final vaginal battle, which comes
all too soon.
Using the Unreal Tournament graphics engine, Undying
is often beautiful, provided that you have the hardware to
run it in 32 bit color--otherwise, you are better off smearing
mud on your monitor. The sound effects and musical score are
excellent when they do not stoop to Halloween clichés
of jingling chains and hushed whispers.
With Undying, Clive
Barker is joining the ranks of John Romero (Daikatana)
and American McGee (Alice)--game designers that promote
themselves with a strong brand of bravado, arrogance, and
ultimately, denial: as their products cannot help but fail
to deliver what they promise. But that does not mean that
Undying is not a hell of a lot of fun on a visceral
level.
By Richard Leader
