It isn’t the first foray into the world of video games for the horror-writer whose voice sounds like a shovel being dragged down a gravel path. Clearly a man with a thing for self-promotion in his titles, Clive Barker’s Undying was released in 2001. An entertaining first person adventure/shooter, it was critically praised for its ambitious ideas and story.

Whereas Undying had its fair share of blood and gore, Jericho is awash with it. When the level’s name is "Rivers of Blood", you’d better believe it’s quite literally a riverbed filled with the stuff. And that’s just the start, because in a similar fashion to Hellraiser the emphasis is on the visual use of gore to repulse, rather than actual scares. There’s blood down the screen, blood up the walls, hooks going into things, hooks coming out of things, things being stitched together, and things just gaping wide open. It’s the video game equivalent of a super-tanker full of offal crashing into a body-art convention.

The 'Jericho' of the game's title refers to a division of the US Army's Chaplin Core: a group of individuals trained not only in conventional warfare, but also in battling with demons and the occult. Legend tells of the 'First Born': literally the first being ever created by God. Except the Lord wasn’t thinking ahead that day, and actually made the First Born too close to his own image. Too powerful for his liking, and unable to destroy it, God instead chose to seal it away and set about the task of creating mankind instead. Hundreds of thousands of years later, when things start to go a bit odd in the area of Al Khali - located somewhere in the Egyptian desert - the Jericho squad is dispatched to find out what’s going on. Unsurprisingly, the First Born is involved. Having been disturbed by a former Jericho soldier-gone-rogue, the ancient force is attempting to destroy our world; the Jericho squad must seal the breach in the fabric of time and space to stop it.

By retaining a first person viewpoint, the game doesn’t stray too far from Undying. However, unlike Undying, Jericho is a straight-forward shooter 99% of the time, with little more than rudimentary puzzles and only a slight exploration element. Some of the later levels are best described as meandering; while they do branch off, it serves no real purpose except to send the player in the wrong direction and then have them backtrack when they get to a dead end.

Early on, the leader of Jericho, Devin Ross, is fatally wounded. Except that he doesn’t quite die, and instead finds himself as a spirit, able to possess the bodies of the remaining Jericho squad. This means the player can flit between the squad members at will, using each one's weapons and talents as required. The remaining squad members can be ordered to hold position or advance. However, because the AI is more than capable of moving and shooting on its own, there’s no real need to use these commands. Furthermore, aside from some sections that require you to use just one character or their skills to advance, most of the game can be played with whoever you want. This, along with the unnecessary squad commands, reeks of lazy game design.

The six members of Jericho make up the standard array of video game characters: the heavy weapons guy, the sniper, the medic, etc; but as you might expect with a professional writer on board, things are given a more interesting twist. Along with conventional firearms and weapons - which handle and sound as they should - each character has spiritual powers, such as: Telekinesis, summoning fire demons to incinerate enemies, and bending reality to slow down time. None of the skills are anything new to video games, and some are more than a tad clichéd. However, they are presented with some visual flair and act as a subtle demonstration of the TLC the game's back-story received. Through some well-written dialogue you learn that one character is a lesbian, one a semi-autistic bed-wetter, while another is a tortured soul who is the victim of paternal sexual abuse. It’s depth like this that adds a more gritty edge to the proceedings, and makes the squad members a bit more interesting than the usual rag-tag individuals found in games.

Jericho shows flashes of inspiration in its ideas – the aforementioned She-demon exorcism being one example and the rather messy dispatch of the resulting demon, another. But these are fleeting moments in what is just another corridor-based shooter. The game feels like little more than a trek from one area to another, dispatching respawning enemies until a checkpoint is triggered, and then repeating the process all over again.

Despite having a different appearance based on their time zone, there are essentially only three main types of enemies, and dispatching them soon becomes repetitive. Ammo is plentiful and re-supplied every time a player reaches one of the numerous checkpoints. Combine this with Jericho’s Chaplin having the ability to resurrect characters, along with the player being able to use Ross' healing skill on any character, and there’s very little in the way of challenge throughout the six time zones.

It also features quick action sequences which require the correct button presses to prevent the player falling to their death. Unfortunately, these sequences are undermined because it is never clear if the player has hit the right button. Some button misses result in instant death, others seem to have no relevance to actual events. Thankfully, the decision was made to place you back at the start of the sequence if you get it wrong and so the level of frustration is limited.

Deep down, Jericho clearly has the right idea. However, the implementation - which feels half-hearted at times - really lets it down. The game suffers from being too basic, too linear and poorly refined. The over reliance on gore as a shock-tactic wears off very quickly. Without any real scares, the game is extremely pedestrian, with little to recommend it to anyone but the most die-hard Clive Barker fans.