One of the most amazing horror games on any next gen system to date!
Story:
The games strong point, obviously, considering this game was created by horror writer Clive Barker who many know created the Hellraiser movies and the game Undying which was rated very highly. The game starts out with the story of the gods first human creation, the first born. The first born was said to be created in the image of god but do to his evil intentions and god locked the first born away. When you start the game the first born has gotten free from his prison due to the help of a man/demon named Leach and threatens to destroy the world. You play as the Jericho squad, a secret group that deals with paranormal phenomenons. Its up to the Jericho squad to close the breach in Al Khali and put the first born back were it belongs. Soon after they reach Al Khali, Ross, the leader of the Jericho squad is killed and the Jericho team is sent to "The Box", which is the first born's pergatory he created out of bordom. It contains dimensions that are based on historical time periods such as World War 2 and The Crusades. The stroy as you can see is very solid indeed, but many critisize the game for having a bad ending. The ending is a cliffhanger so its obvious that there will be a second game coming out. So all in all the story in this game will have you sucked in untill the very end.
Graphics:
Another of the games strong points. To put it in simple terms, the game looks amazing. Everything from the characters and the monsters, to the lighting effects is simply jawdropping. The main thing this game has going for it is atmosphere and enviroment which is detailed so richly. You'll notice quickly that this is one dark game, literaly and figurativly. Every place you go is littered with mutilated corpses and piles of guts and blood. The detail is so nice that its enough to make your stomach turn. You will see rivers of blood, piles of guts, grounds made of human corpses and much more. The monsters are some of the most disturbing and unique monsters ever seen in a horror game. They are all mutilated and horribly disfigured which adds to the dark atmosphere of the game. Due to the rich detail in charater design and lighting this game is arguably one of the best looking games out to date.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is the weakest point of the game, but not necessarily in a bad way. At the beginning of the game your main character you start out as, Ross, is killed. This brings in the main element of the gameplay. Ross is basically a spirit and has the ability to take control of any of the six Jericho team members: Cole, Delgado, Black, Church, Rawlings and Jones. Each character has a special psychic or magical ability.
Cole has the ability to slow down time and make everyones weapons do fire damage for a limited amount of time, she weilds a sub machinegun and gernads, Delgado, the heavy weapons guy, has the ability to conjur up a fire spirit from one of his arms which can set several monsters at once ablazeand has a fire sheild that protects him from fire damage, he weilds a huge pistol and gatling gun, Church has the ablility to paralyze monsers with a spell and set almost every monster in the area on fire, she also weilds a katana and machine pistol, Black is the telekenitic sniper and has the ability to control her bullets and use her powers to remove obstacles, she also has a gernade launcher attached to her sniper rifle, Rawlins, the preist, weilds dual pistols with customizable bullets and is the major healer of teamates and health drainer of enemies, and Jones is the one who can astrol project. The problem is his power is strictly used for puzzles only, but he does weild a machine gun equipped with a shotgun attatchment.
So as you can see there is much variety in who you can pick. You can switch characters at anytime during gameplay. It will be very difficult to stick with one character for too long due to the fact that every character has pros and cons but it should be easy to find a favorite quick.
Since this game is a first person shooter, there has to be some good shooting to go along with it. This game kind of falls a little short in this cateogory, but not enough to make it bad. Basicaly you will be engaged in fire fights with a lot of enemies at a time. Monsters are very strong and take a good number of bullets to go down. The game can get hard at times when your squad is over powered and you all die. Your characters have no life gage. Basicaly if you substain too much damage in a short amount of time you die. But if you run away and hide your health will regenerate. You have the ability to heal fallen teamembers to, but when your entire squad is whiped out you have to start at the last checkpoint. This can be a bit frusturating at times because your squad isn't always the smartest and you'll sometimes find yourself healing alot rather than shooting but this doesn't happen very often so its easily forgivable. There is boss battles in this game as well and they require you to use one of your squadmembers powers in order to be defeated. The game doesn't really let you figure it out for yourself though since your teamembers will almost always tell you what to do, but even then boss battles can be challenging and lengthy.
The only complaint I can really think of is sometimes the game gets a little repetitive but this is easy to get over as you will be sucked in by the story and paralyzed by the amazing visuals and gruesome enviroments.
Overall Jericho is a very underappreciated masterpiece of a horror game. If your looking for one of the most gruesome, disturbing and dark games ever, look no farther than Jericho