Clive Barker's Undying

A Game Review

by Mighty Doom

            I read the other day that British horror writer Clive Barker and his husband, photographer David Armstrong, have adopted a daughter.  Though I have no quarrel with this on principle, I can’t help but wonder what show-and-tell at her school must be like.  “My daddy wrote a book where a zombie fucks a wound in a corpse.” Barker is responsible for a number of awful things, the aforementioned undead corpse-fucking surpassed only by Lord of Illusions, yet Doom has a soft spot for him.  The first two Hellraiser movies were interesting, and Sacrament was a remarkably gentle and astute novel, given the level of shock value he typically tries to cram into his work.  His new young-adult series Abarat looks incredible.  So, naturally, when Barker tries his hand in the video-gaming world, Doom has to take a look.

            Clive Barker’s Undying is something of a novelty: a first-person shooter set in the early 1920s.  Our protagonist, Patrick Galloway, is an investigator into the occult, debunking superstition as he finds it.  Galloway is something of a magician himself, able to light candles with his fingertips and see into the past and future by means of the Gel’ziabar stone, a keepsake from an encounter with a band of hostile gypsies during World War I.  Saved from the gypsies by his commanding officer, Jeremiah Covenant, Galloway now feels he owes his old friend a life debt – and Jeremiah has come to collect.

            Galloway receives an urgent telegram instructing him to come at once to the Covenant Estate.  Arriving in the eerie mansion to find it nearly deserted but for a few servants who remained out of loyalty, he finds Jeremiah bedridden and terrified that his family has come to kill him.  One problem with that theory: the rest of the Covenants have been dead for some time, apparently haven fallen to a curse unwittingly visited upon them during childhood, when the family read aloud, as a prank, an incantation that released an evil force buried for centuries on the island of standing stones in the middle of a nearby lake.

            As Galloway, you run around the Covenant estate and the surrounding environs, a lighthouse, the family mausoleum and a ruined monastery.  You also, on several occasions, end up in a bizarre parallel dimension known as Oneiros.  The game is loosely divided into “quests” – one for each family member.  First is Lizbeth, the youngest, now a screeching succubus who haunts the monastery and apparently spends most of her time scaring the shit out of the gardeners at the mansion.  After you’ve dealt with her, Jeremiah’s brother Ambrose, an axe-wielding pirate voiced by Clive Barker himself, sends his gypsies to kill you.  Then you have Bethany and Aaron to deal with, as well as Galloway’s nemesis, a rival magician by the name of Otto Keisinger, whose ties to the Covenant family are not immediately clear.

            Doom can say with relative confidence that Undying is the best game ever based upon the Unreal Tournament engine ever, Unreal Tournament included.  The weapons are diverse and uninteresting, and the combat system is enhanced by a variety of offensive and defensive spells you can use even when reloading your antiquated pistol and shotgun.  In addition to your standard ammunition, you also acquire such specialized firepower as silver bullets for your pistol (good for wasting the undead) and phosphorus shells for your shotgun (scatters fire as well as buckshot).  The item menu is a bit awkward to cycle through when you’re being mobbed by staff-wielding skeletons, but with a little bit of customizing you can render it usable.

            The graphics and sound are impressive, conveying effectively Undying’s looming gothic facades and haunted mansion corridors.  Curtains blow in the wind, doors slam shut behind you and donkeys…just sort of sit there, unless you shoot them.  The game never gets boring – just when you get tired of having your head ripped off and eaten by demons, you’re forced to change your tactics to deal with an outpost of armed gypsies, and there’s enough plot and characterization to keep you playing.  It’s not as fast-paced or involved as, say, Half-Life, but it’s not meant to be.

            One other thing I have to mention: there’s one scene in this game that made me laugh my ass off.  Galloway is carrying Lizbeth’s severed head up a staircase in the monastery, and the head is shouting at him and snarling and swearing, and he stops for a second and SLAPS THE FUCKING HEAD.  That entire scene is sheer brilliance.  Doom approves.

THE GOOD: Fun, non-linear, first-person action with a decent plot.

THE BAD: It’s sometimes frustratingly difficult.

THE UGLY: It’s Clive Barker, so you can expect 100% of your daily allowance of mutilated flesh.

DOOM’S FINAL JUDGMENT: B+