Most first person shooters rely on a high kill factor and a few puzzles to keep us interested, however there has been a recent trend to attach rather good storylines to these simplistic blasters, such as Bioshock. Thankfully Jericho falls in the latter category, and due to this, makes an OK game a great game.
In Jericho you take control of a 7 person team who investigate the more paranormal threats that the government can’t deal with, each member of the squad is trained in their own specialist field of magic and weapons.
Following a major disturbance in the Middle-eastern city of Al-Khali, the Jericho team are flown in to investigate, and this soon turns into a fight to save their lives and the rest of the world from a timeless being of immense power.
As mentioned above, each character has their own unique weapons set and magical powers. Weapons come in primary and secondary and range from machine pistol and sword, sniper rifle and grenade launcher, gatling gun and dual pistols. Each characters special ability will also assist in your progress, and rather than being an add on for more carnage, these powers are essential to play through the game.
Lt. Abigail Black is able to move items with telekinesis and also control the direction of her bullets with the rather cool special move called Ghost Bullet. Sgt. Frank Delgado is a pyromancer and can project a fire shield and also uses a fire spirit that will attack nearby enemies. Sgt. Church is a blood scribe, using her own blood to slow down the attack of oncoming enemies and also drain their health. Cprl. Cole is able to slow time for a short period, allowing him to sneak behind enemies for a fatal attack. Cpt. Jones is able to project himself and control other people for short periods of time and finally Father Rawlings, who is an exorcist and is able to heal the team during battle. Most of the teams special powers are helpful during battle, although Cpt Jones is used more to solve puzzles.
Having up to 7 characters on the screen battling it out at once is good change to the norm and taking out some of the larger enemies side by side with the computer can be fun, however, at times they are a bit dumb and tend to get shot down, but instead of game over, you are able to approach your fallen comrade and revive them, keeping you in the game and allowing a bit more firepower. Early on in the game you are given the ability to control all of the other characters, utilising their special powers and weapons, this is done by looking at the player and pressing the A button. You are also able to command you team with the D-Pad to take certain positions, Jericho is split into Alpha and Omega teams and at any point you can order either one to fall back, take position or follow you.
There are a few niggling areas of this game that have to be mentioned, at certain parts of the game you need to be in control of a certain character to proceed, however the game will not always tell you this, if you are lucky, another character will talk to you and tell you who, but they will refer to them by their first name, and the squad selection screen only uses surnames, so you will have to switch between each player until you get the right one. Also the character AI is a bit slow, they do not use their special abilities enough, relying on you to control them and at certain parts of the game you are therefore spending more time reviving the team than actually fighting.
Back to the good points, the varying amount of enemies is impressive, they range from quick melee attackers, machine gun toting monsters, rocket launching mothers and flying bat things that are really hard to shoot down. Finally worth a mention is the story, to go into too much detail would spoil the game but suffice to say it really works and feels like you are achieving something rather than just killing things in a corridor.
