Clive Barker's Undying

As a GREAT fan of horror adventure and RPG games, a friend of mine recommended this game. Maybe it was the hype or supposedly Lovecraft mentioning, I installed the game and waited for nirvana. The menus were poor, but it had some eerie feeling so I said let's play this. Intro was OK and the mansion itself is maybe one of the few great things in this game (I remember many of those paintings on the wall), but as the game progressed that eerie feeling started to slip away and the "Lovecraft horror game" showed it's real face. This is a mediocre shooter with no real spooky scenes and it gets boring along the way. So for all of you shooter lovers, stick with "Clive Barker : Jericho" or "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" and if you're a fan of REAL horror adventure games, you have to try out "Phantasmagoria", "Gabriel Knight : The beast within" or a classic like "Dark seed". Anyway, play games and enjoy !

One of my all time favorite games.

There isn't too much to say about Undying if you're already in the FPS and Horror game circles, but if you are somehow not, then you owe it to yourself to try this game out in its entirety. With a focused narrative, solid gameplay and shooting mechanics, loads of secrets and optional areas and great example of cosmic horror story, Undying has become a regular of my annually played games and still gets me hours of solid fun. Even if the pacing issues of the last level are apparent and can be slightly confusing and the final boss can be spongy and time-consuming, it makes up for it by a solid overall experience. Visually, the graphical fidelity of the Unreal Engine can be jarring, but after getting immersed, you'd find that it's very easy to look passed or even enjoy the stylised visuals. I always found the art style overall to be charming and adds character to the game and its atmosphere.

Clive Barker spins a great tale. This comes out solidly in the game itself (it's one from the age when games used to have a story, then built a game around that story to tell a tale, instead of saying "Ooo, look at what shiny things we can put on a screen. What's a story by the way?"). I got this originally at release, when the graphics were state of the art, and was absolutely blown away by the atmosphere; there are well crafted story points that draw you in, not so much by what they show you, as by what's intimated and you don't see. At the price listed, if you want good, horror entertainment, this is a must have. If you're not sure I'm right in my estimation, for the price of a coffee at the local coffee shop (well, less actually) you can have hours of amusement. If I'm wrong, then it'll still last longer than that coffee..

This game needs a remake, a well done remake... Really. Take my money now.