Game:

Clive Barker's Undying (2001)

Duration: 1:41:23

69,414 views

354

I love gothic horror and Lovecraft! This game does not necessarily qualify as a horror game, but it shrouds itself in a lot of mystery and I love that more subtle approach. The storyline was written by the British writer Clive Barker and even though the graphics are quite dated, it still creates tense atmosphere. This game would be amazing if it used the Amnesia engine. Still, it is one of the best games noone has played.

You are Patrick Galloway, a war buddy of Jeremiah Covenant. Jeremiah's family is cursed and Patrick is asked to look into the matter. You explore the world - which initialy only consists of a huge mansion - in a first-person perspective. The game is in its roots a first-person shooter, but it is actually more based on exploration. Unfortunately, exploration means trying to open doors and hear "jammed" or "it won't budge" way too often which makes the game actually quite linear with only a few rooms to explore off the rails.

As you progress you will also visit other locations such as a monastery in the present and past or a pirate's cove. Each of these locations is themed to one of the family members. You also have a choice of many weapons (pistol, shotgun, molotov cocktails, tibetan war cannon...) and spells (offensive, defensive, dispell etc) which can be upgraded. The Scrye spell lets you see hidden things or events of the past which adds nice little details.

The graphics are really, really dated by now. While the pixel art of even older games like Monkey Island still has its charme, the low resolution of textures and the lack of polygons especially on character models makes the game look pretty bad and the basic lighting that was available in the Unreal engine back then is nothing to write home about either. However, the good thing about it is that you don't have to sit 5 cm in front of your screen to actually see something like in other spooky games and the mansion itself is done really well. I'm not sure if the rooms actually add up to something that resembles a house, though. If anyone has firgured that out, please let me know.

There is not much to say about the music since it mostly uses ambient sounds and most of the time you will only hear the sound of your tibetan war cannon anyway. The voice acting, in my opinion, is decent. I find the audio quality lacking and the character animation is also basic as the technology wasn't there back then, but it conveys the story nicely.

The gameplay is well balanced even though the game is a bit easy. I like the variety of weapons and spells, but you will only use a few of them anyway. The scythe is pretty awesome for example, but the tibetan war cannon is so much more useful. A particular thing I hate, though, is that you get stuck on the geometry while walking way too often. Nowadays, you have invisible walls around such geometry so that this doesn't happen, but if you are shooting while walking backwards you will often get stuck on something that you feel your character should go around by himself.

If you like the theme of the game and can live with the dated graphics, Clive Barker's Undying is a game you shouldn't miss. You can still buy it on Amazon I think.

Other Statistics