by Russ Aaronson

12-10-02

I have a love/hate relationship with the creations of Clive Barker. As a horror movie aficionado, I know that Hellraiser is easily one of the all-time great gore-fests ever committed to film. The film contained images that have remained with me since my college days: in fact, I will probably never forget the moment I realized that the double pepperoni, Little Caesar’s pizza I was eating looked exactly like the flesh tossed around onscreen. Then again, I also suffered through the overbearing Nightbreed, which couldn’t even be saved by horror director David Cronenberg’s performance as a serial killer with aspirations of evil immortality.

Mr. Barker’s writing strikes me the same way. After reading The Books of Blood or The Thief of Always I just couldn’t wait to experience more of Barker’s sick imagination. Then I attempted to gum my way through bestseller “epics” like The Great and Secret Show or Imajica and realized that when it comes to modern horror fiction, I must be quite a finicky reader. Even when reading Stephen King’s works, I’ve always preferred the more personal, claustrophobic tales like Misery to bloated monoliths like The Stand. In my favorite horror books and films, character drives the story.

When I first heard of Clive Barker’s Undying, I was understandably skeptical. Every horror game I’d ever experienced was either boring or hokey, and “name brand” gaming titles usually leave me wondering if the name has simply been tacked on at the last minute as a marketing strategy; but reading about the game’s premise and characters piqued my interest. In Undying you play the role of Patrick Galloway, a “rugged adventurer” who has arrived at the estate of his World War I buddy Jeremiah Covenant to save him from the unspeakable evil resulting from Covenant’s occult dabbling years earlier.

Patrick Galloway learns a new spell.

The story seems to borrow from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher as well as a variety of works from cult horror master H.P. Lovecraft. Regardless of what you might think of Barker’s writing, there’s no denying that he knows his classics well, and Undying appears to be built upon a solid foundation. A few days later I had found yet another creative way to burn up 600mb of hard drive space.

Using the Scrye spell channels you back to a happier time before Howlers hacked away the Monks.

Undying blends an adventure game with a top-notch first person shooter interface (apparently, it’s the Unreal Tournament engine on steroids) to make for some truly freaky moments. You’ll begin with your trusty six-shooter and the ability to cast a scrye spell that illuminates areas and reveals past events. If you’re feeling particularly brave, holster your weapon and pop the Gel’Ziabar Stone in one hand for scrying clues: you’ll be rewarded with spectral images of deformed family portraits, glowing skeletons lumbering toward you, and chanting monks who haven’t been alive for centuries. This is one of the greatest pleasures of the game, and it will help you move through the levels, so do it often. But just when you’re grooving on shooting and scrying your way through the game, you’ll run into two annoying aspects of the game that destroy the mood every time they occur.

The opening minutes of the game are filled with cut scenes that elaborate on the events that have occurred prior to Galloway’s arrival. Though these moments continue the often-breathtaking scenery scattered throughout the game, I had trouble with the jaggy, blocky characters who converse with Galloway, wrecking Undying's wonderfully disturbing atmosphere . Close-ups on characters' faces are particularly unimpressive, even when viewed on a new flat panel iMac pumped to its maximum video settings.

Given this game's impressive word-of-mouth, I asked several game-savvy colleagues for their opinions, and they found the characters' appearance to be generally state of the art for modern Mac gaming. I can only conclude that 1) most gamers will be satisfied with this minimal element of the Undying experience, and 2) the effects of spending the past month playing Myst III: Exile (which uses live actors, effective blue-screen matting, and beautiful renderings) has caused me to set my standards unreasonably high. Nevertheless, I found these scenes as scary as a rubber monster suit from a fifties drive-in thriller.

To be fair, the fact that the game even operates on a Mac lacking the minimum system requirements is a testament to Aspyr's honesty. In a day and age when most developers lowball system needs and alienate customers by catering to bleeding-edge players, this game is quite accessible. Since most players don't share my dissatisfaction with this element of the game, I would strongly recommend testing the demo on your own machine -- you may be surprised to find that your unsupported Mac does a perfectly acceptable job of churning out demons after all.

As bad as the cut-scenes are, they don’t compare with the true horror in this game.

See this screen? Get used to it, because you’ll see it over, and over, and over again. Admittedly, Undying contains truly enormous maps and landscapes, but I can’t possibly explain how dreadful, and how often, this game loads new information (again, regardless of which Mac was running the game). This situation would be bad enough in most adventure games, but Undying clearly tries to keep you on edge at every moment, and “Loading” screens wreck the mood on a regular basis. Though not a game killer by itself, these loading pauses contributed to a series of events that left me frustrated and tired every time I played.

After laboring through the game for a while you’ll get more interesting weapons, and less stunning spells. Along with the ubiquitous shotgun and spear gun (which essentially works like Unreal's popular sniper rifle), I enjoyed the puffing, growling Tibetan War Cannon and the bloody Scythe of the Celt. As for spells, you’re limited to eight, but you can increase their power with amplifier stones scattered throughout the game (amplify Lightning often for a real treat!). Sometimes only one particular combination of weapon and spell will get you through a level, so it pays to experiment often.

I also noticed a wide range of scenery throughout the game. The story will often lead you beyond the Covenant Manor house and into a monastery, catacombs, waterfalls, and even a pirate cove, all with varying degrees of success. Some settings are brilliant, while others feel repetitive and bland. For my money, I found the Manor scenes best because they retained the claustrophobic, haunted house feel demanded by the story. Once you venture out into open space, the tension dissipates. Particularly disturbing are the many times when the game refuses to let you walk up a small hill to gain a better view of your surroundings. Again, this is a nitpicky complaint at first blush, but there are far too many points in this game where the action is obviously linear. Seemingly low walls can become unreachable, doors that were once open are now locked, and walls and ceilings will conveniently collapse to block a passageway. I bought into these events in the manor, but after a while it all feels way too scripted, leaving very little need for creativity on the part of the gamer to get the job done.

You're not in Myst anymore, Galloway!

While I’m on the subject of creativity, I want to bring up the issue of the game’s enemies. Though there are plenty of bizarre things to shoot, slash, invoke, and dispel in the game, you’ll spend most of your time killing one kind of evil beastie – the howler. These half-gremlin, half-monkey creatures just keep popping up in the game, and their trademark howl will scare you – at first. Once you’ve logged thirty or forty hours, the howls will invoke another form of dread – the kind that reminds you that there are more stupid Howlers to kill. Once you’ve killed the first level boss (each boss is a deformed, demented member of Covenant’s immediate family) you expect the Howlers to lessen, but they’re still there, slow and stupid as ever. This is when you think you’re playing Unreal after all, and the mood is gone.

Speaking of mood breakers, I must mention all of the journal reading you have to do here. It seems every bed, carton, and catacomb either comes with a journal page, or inspires Galloway to write one, and the writing is bland and lifeless. With a guy like Barker at the helm I expected better prose. Then again, the path through Undying is so straightforward, you could probably get through most of the game without any of the knowledge contained in the journals (and with the exception of the objectives to-do list Galloway keeps, you might as well skip them altogether).

I also found the save game system problematic. No matter where and when you save, you may not find yourself in the same place when you reload. Undying’s puzzles are always easy to solve, but many battles are hard won, so you should still save whenever you can.

Even the structure of the game seems to hobble the story at times. If this is a haunted mansion, why are there “health packs,” phosphorous shotgun shells, and amplifier stones scattered around it? Why must Galloway write a journal page when he recovers a shotgun, telling you what a shotgun is? Elements like these trouble me, especially when you have to plow through it all in order to get to fantastic characters like Lizbeth. It just seems like the action and the adventure elements of this game continually undercut each other, and they undermine the consistency of the game.

This is all pretty disappointing stuff, because there’s still plenty to recommend this game. Some of the images, sounds, and events in this game are quite disturbing. You’ll get gallons of your own blood splattered in your eyes as you’re attacked, and you’ll leave bloody footprints that recede every time you walk through a puddle of evil baddie blood. In fact, this game evidences a tremendous amount of care and detail on the part of the programmers, and even Barker himself. I simply found myself getting to the point where I wasn’t having much fun anymore, mainly because I wasn’t getting scared – just terribly frustrated and bored.

Fortunately, one of my friend’s informed me that Undying has a variety of interesting hidden features and games, so I headed to Google and searched for “Undying codes and cheats.” The result was extra hours of gameplay that were both fun and bizarre, so I urge any Undying owner who needs a break from hacking up Howlers to check these out. At least you’ll learn how to summon a donkey upon command, and they look far better than the characters that work in the manor.

Hit "Tab", then type "assall", and voila, you've made a donkey! Try it often!

In my last review I stated that people who read reviews want to know if the conclusion to a game is worth the hours of work needed to get there. This time I desperately wanted to finish, but at some point I just didn’t care anymore. The conclusion to a game is important, but the journey should be enjoyable too. I have no doubt that many horror game fans will love this title, warts and all, and will probably lose sleep and productivity going back to it again and again. I also know that Clive Barker fans (the ones who balked when I mentioned how much I disliked Imajica) will see his trademark gore, wit, and epic scope shine through in Undying. The game even shows that the Unreal game engine still has a little life left in it, and that bodes well for gamers lacking the latest, greatest graphics hardware. For these reasons alone the game deserves a better than average rating, but for me it just didn’t live up to the hype. My best advice is to download the demo: if you can play through without quitting in frustration, plunk down the cash and spend some quality time with the most dysfunctional family in computer game history.

Product	Clive Barker's Undying
Company	EA Games/Aspyr
MSRP	$29.95
Hits	Some chilling scenes and sounds, great level boss battles, fantastic hidden games and features.
Misses	Many repetitive moments, no room to explore, frequent loading pauses, cheesy cutscenes and journals, poor save system.
Rating	(5 possible)
Requirements	Mac OS 8.6, 9, X, or later, 400 mhz G3 or faster, 96mb RAM, 600MB free hard drive space, 16 MB 3D accelerator card (Rage 128 or better)
Test Systems	15 inch flat panel iMac G4/700 256MB RAM, 40Gig HD, NVidiaGeForce2MX (32MB of DDR RAM) TiBook G4/400 MHz, 384 RAM, 10 Gig HD, ATI Rage Mobility (8MB VRAM)

Russ Aaronson

English Teacher,Pompano Beach, FL