Background/Summary:

Our hero, Patrick Galloway

Clive Barker's Undying is a brand new first person shooter from Electronic Arts. The game is based on a slightly enhanced Unreal Tournament engine, while the story was written by the horror writer Clive Barker (some of his best work is done in books and movies including Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and the classic Rawhead Rex). Mr. Barker, was actually involved with the development quite extensively. He saw and observed what the game was going to be like, and didn't let the developers do all the work; he wanted to be a part of the process too. With Barker being a true part of the game development, this led to one of the most freaky experiences I have encountered in PC entertainment since Resident Evil.

Undying takes place shortly after World War I in the countryside of Britain. You play as Patrick Galloway, a man who is indebted to Jeremiah Covenant for saving his live during the war. Patrick had always dealt with the supernatural, and his old friend Jeremiah needs his expertise to help solve a family curse. Patrick is reluctant to go, but since Jeremiah saved his life, Patrick feels he needs to help his old friend. I’ll spare the details, since most of the rest is pleasantly brought forth through the course of the game. This is a "will scare the crap out of you" game folks. Try it at night all alone, turn all the lights off with the sound jacked up, and you'll almost certainly have nightmares. Undying takes elements from a series of different games like the Resident Evil series and really does a good job in utilizing them to enhance the spooky factor.

Gameplay:

Excuse me Miss...Wrong room!

After the opener, you’ll arrive outside the mansion on the Covenant Estate. There is a tremendous thunderstorm in progress complete with lightning, rain and scurrying rats that will bite you if you stand around too long. Your weapons are not the standard fare in this game. You have a pistol, and will collect a few other conventional weapons, but most of the goodies are fairly exotic. The interesting thing is that you are fully ambidextrous in Undying. You carry weapons in your left hand, and cast spells with your right. On top of this, you usually have to use a lot of items between the two main actions. Sometimes it feels like you need an extra hand since you constantly need to switch between weapon and spell combos, AND have to cycle through the inventory to select your health. Undying manages to make this easier on the user by not only allowing you to scroll through weapons and spells, but also has an easy to use graphical interface to select them. There are 2 momentary keys that you can hold down, and select your spell/weapon with a mouse cursor by highlighting the easy to distinguish icons that represent each spell/weapon. A big kudos to the Undying team for this feature. I would have liked to see the same for inventory items, but since there are so many, I can see why it was left out.

Nope...Can't shoot him, damn!

As you make your way around the grounds, many of the interns that take care of the huge castle fall victim to the very evil you are after. Be careful yourself, as this game contains some of the toughest baddies around. Howlers chill your bones with a haunting cry, and will at most times attack in groups with their huge claws. Another beautiful trait of this game is that when you get hit by say a howler swinging his claw in front of your face, the view follows through like you really got smacked, with some blood on the screen. Scarrows are just creepy looking, kind of like a snake body with arms, and a squid for a head. Flicking stalkers fly at you with great speed, hit you, then retreat to the darkness with only their eyes glowing until they are ready to attack. The end bosses are rather unique as well, although the last one was very hard to beat (aren't they all?).

With spells and weapons in your arsenal, how do you choose which to use? There are only 8 weapons total, and you start with your trusty (6 shot) revolver from the war. While the first few weapons are very slow and don't cause much damage, the weapons that you will acquire later on in the game are fast and very deadly. There are also different spells available in the game, and they play different functions: with some of them you can attack your enemies, while others can remove magical barriers on your way. However my personal favorite spell is Scrye. It shows you what you can't normally see with the naked eye, whatever it may be. Invisible enemies, dark areas, but the best part is that it can let you see events from the past, and alternative dimensions... So in some parts of the game when you hear the voices in your head say "Look... See..." etc... you should cast your Scyre spell in order to see (or hear) something spectacular.

Before Scrye spell	After Scrye spell

Ghosts can't read books! Can they??!?!

Get lots of bullets, new weapons, and try to stay alive as the mystery of the curse unravels. The quests are fairly straight forward, but a few are quite tedious in my mind and detract from the horror experience a tad. The final quest comes to mind here. None of it was creepy, and involved just hacking through a bunch of tribesmen. It became much more like a task than an adventure. The level design is exquisite and each is quite large in their layouts. Rather than load levels like many other games do, Undying takes the Half-Life approach and loads segments of levels. Though it seemingly annoyed me at times, I can just imagine how long it would take to load the huge areas with all these textures, so it was a good choice by the development team. Travel safely, and beware for the many creatures of the undead lining your path.

Graphics/Sound:

Hey Buddy...Got a light?!

Undying uses a modified version of the Unreal Tournament engine (Rumor is that it’s a beta of the Unreal II engine) and does quite the good job of it. The visuals and textures of Undying are outstanding for this engine! Some of the effects like shadows and the characters hair moving is very unique for this type of game, and quite effective in adding to that spook factor we spoke of earlier. I thought the architecture in particular was very well textured but I as impressed with the character models, mostly revolving around the facial features. That's probably the only letdown in terms of graphics in this game. Well, except for it being set at night and being a little hard to see at times, but this only adds to the creepiness. There is also some neat use of "residue" effects: When you walk through a pool of blood on the floor, you will leave a trail of bloody footsteps. This is great fun when you want to cover a room in bloody foot prints!

As for the music, it is excellently played out. The eerie sounds of creepy church music inhabits the game quite well, and it is not only good, but the timing of it all is awesome! It just makes everything feel so important and scary as hell, creating one hell of an environment during play. The music does not play all of the time, so you know something scary is about to happen when you hear it. The voice acting is done well, and the character Ambrose is even done by Clive Barker himself.

Multiplayer/Devices:

Don't "fall" for this one

Undying is a single player game, and as a result, there are no multiplayer aspects unfortunately.

Game Commander 2 and SideWinder Game Voice both performed for voice control equally well, letting me assign some of the more mundane inventory and journal screens to voice command. I also tried using the Sidewinder Dual Strike and Strategic Commander for play. I found it much easier to control movement using the keyboard and mouse, so I don't recommend wasting time with a controller, the game is simple enough in it's command set.

The Wrap-up:

If you are craving for a spooky game that really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you should TRULY check Undying out.

Wanna see something REALLY scary?

Incredible graphics, capable of resolutions up to 1600x1200, amazing music and sound, and the controls are solid. Did I mention you'll pee your pants everytime you play it? It's not often you see a shooter with a story this deep, although it might deter some from not playing it. The only other games I can compare this to are Half Life and Resident Evil, which have the scare factor and deep storyline. An excellent game Mr. Barker, I cannot wait to see what you delve into next for the PC gaming world. Electronic Arts has definitely come a long way this year. It used to be that they really only released sports titles, and now we have been treated to both Undying and Alice in under a years time. I don’t have a clue where EA got the people whom developed this game. Even though there is a hidden shooting gallery in the game, I am quite sure that they weren't working on any sports titles before undertaking Mr. Barker's works. Excellent game, now where is my sequel!?!