Techtite's Macintosh Game Reviews!

"At one point you're in the room of Joseph's young sister, Lizbeth. When near a portrait of Liz, a voice from nowhere whispers, "Looook" to indicate this is a place where all is not as it seems. Using your special sight reveals a different look on the painting, of the monster Lizbeth has become. Talk about " Haunted"...!"

---from the review

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This Game is a GOLDEN OTTO Winner!

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You might also want to order : Clive Barker's Undying: Prima's Official Strategy Guide

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Sidebar :

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Some of the Best Thriller Games... Never came out for the Macintosh. It's a sad but true fact. Consider the list made for Halloween 2002, named The Top Dozen Best Thriller Games Ever Made. While Mac owners were fortunate enough to get ports of games like Alone in the Dark, we're still waiting for the translation to a single game in the Thief series. Will Thief 3 be the exception? Cross your fingers. That's one COOL game series. 

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Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted!

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Clive Barker's Undying

 Click Picture to Order this Game (Mac Version)

A Techtite Review

The road to making a multimedia "thriller" is a tricky business. Suspense is a major hurdle, as is story, and as far as making any set of mere 3D pixels look "scary"...well, that's the biggest hurdle of them all. Ever since Alone in the Dark --which was inspired by horror story veteran H. P. Lovecraft-- game designers have tried to go one better. The latest such attempt is Clive Barker's Undying, and it turns out to be one of the best "haunted house" games in a long while.

In this game, you are given the role of Patrick Galloway; a 1922 Irishman, who owes a life dept to Joseph Covenant. He gets a letter from Joseph, asking for his help; how could he refuse? Little does he know, he is being asked to protect his old friend from a family curse of sorts; one which has turned all of Joseph's siblings into monsters of some sort, each now a threat to Joseph's survival. You must protect Joseph --the last of the "mortal" members of the Covenant clan-- without getting killed yourself. Early editions of this game even include a miniature "journal" in the game box, allegedly written by Joseph, depicting the stage-by-stage process of what happened prior to Patrick's arrival; a welcome addition to a gripping thriller.

This house is, quite frankly, a marvel in macabre design. Enhancing the eeriness is Patrick's psychic ability, to "see" what is invisible to a mortal's eyes. At one point you're in the room of Joseph's young sister, Lizbeth. When near a portrait of Liz, a voice from nowhere whispers, "Looook" to indicate this is a place where all is not as it seems. Using your special sight reveals a different look on the painting, of the monster Lizbeth has become. Talk about "Haunted"...!

Not that Patrick's "look" spell is the only successfully used spookiness in this haunted house. Music, in particular, is spectacular, and either equals or exceeds the sounds heard in games like The Seventh Guest or Phantasmagoria. Furniture, blood red carpeting, and old paintings on the walls enhance the feeling of this being a classic, gothic, "haunted house" in every sense of the word. In several hallways, thin white curtains act like ghosts billowing in the wind blowing through the broken windows behind them. In one of my favorite scenes (shown here), going near a haunted swamp, while looking at the ruins of an old chapel, reveals the way the chapel looked when it was still standing. Cool!

In time, you of course meet up with Lizbeth in her undead form, as well as Joseph's other siblings: Aaron, Bethany, and Ambrose. Likewise, there is obviously a bigger force at work here, which cursed the family, and this curse must be put to an end as well. Each of these characters has their own unique powers, and defeating each requires a certain different skill. This can involve any number of normal weapons, arcane weapons, or magic spells you learn throughout your journey (my favorite being a sort of flaming skull-bomb!). What is the best way to defeat Aaron --with his super strength-- might not be the best way to defeat Lizbeth, or Ambrose. Yet each has at least one Achilles' heel which must be used against them, making boss fights far more thought provoking than a mere "trigger finger" test.

As for gameplay, imagine how cool an Alone in the Dark game would've been, if given the full freedom of movement of a game like, say, Unreal Tournament. This means even more freedom to explore, though it also means superior textures and environments, as well. Sure, the game has pretty unforgiving minimum requirements (most unforgiving: a video card like the ATI Rage 128, Radeon or NVidia GeForce series, with at least 16Meg of Video Ram). Yet the resulting game does not merely use these graphics for eye candy; it actually uses graphic features like colored lighting and intricate textures, to help set the mood. When you get your first glimpse of Patrick overlooking a boat in the moonlight, you'd almost think that you're playing a CGI game like Myst; the real-time 3D graphics are that well rendered. This is one very good-looking game.

More good news. Unlike several top notch games recently --Oni in particular-- there is an actual save game feature, that you can use at any time. Remember when this used to be a feature used in all games? Now, I find myself praising a game if it has a save game feature at all. In this game, with such tough enemies to fight, it's a welcome addition. There may be only a few save game slots offered, though they're there, and can be used at any time; even in battle.

There's very little to not like about Undying, although there are enough gripes to keep it from a flawless "Deep Impact" rating. For one thing, there are times when the action is a little too fast and furious. Consider the moment when you are fighting a monster that cannot be hurt in its ghostly form. it's a race to get to this sibling's original, now-dead, mortal corpse --which is "bound" to this monster-- which you must do away with, before this sibling's invincible specter does you in. Sure, this moment is one of many effective thrills of the game, though it's also pretty annoying. As you'd expect, the final battle isn't much better; I'd prefer it if the game ended soon after defeating the final sibling, instead of a plot twist that is a little cliché, leading to a trigger-happy final battle that is even more cliché. Having a final boss whose offenses can all lead to "instant death" is not the best way to end a game which, as a whole, was as thrilling as it was entertaining.

It also deserves mentioning that this is the type of "thriller" that is not for everyone. Keep in mind: Clive Barker is the guy who made the Hellraiser movies, which involved among other stories a murdered soul which had to kill victims in order to assemble himself back into mortal form, piece by piece. Although this game is far less gory as a bunch of 3D accelerated pixels, it's hardly less gory in its storyline.  From decapitation to zombies without flesh...even as a bunch of pixels, it can still creep out the squeamish. Walking in a puddle of blood even leaves bloody footprints as you walk away.

Regardless, there's no denying there is a serious market for gore-type thrillers these days, and for that audience, this game delivers in spades. True, as of the time this review was posted, PC owners have had the pleasure of a similar monstrous game to play, called The Thing, based on the John Carpenter film of the same name. Until Macintoshes get that far-grittier (and gorier) game --if we ever do-- Undying is a great consolation. It may not be the best such game ever made, though it is far better than any "thriller" game that has been released for the Macintosh in years. How often can you say a compliment like that?

---Techtite