Saturday Morning Gaming: Clive Barker’s Undying
Clive Barker really messed with my head in the 1980s. Hellraiser was one terrifying and Hellraiser 2 somehow managed to creep me out even more. So, of course, I did my best to watch all of his stuff.
In 2001, he came out with a *VIDEO GAME*. I think it maybe took me three days to pick it up and I played it obsessively. Unfortunately, this means that I also played it at night… which was a mistake.
FPS Horror is probably the best horror genre. The game can hide stuff from you, give you jump scares, force your eyes to a particular part of the room… and then WHAMMO. Have a grotesque thing jump out at you.
Well, this runs with that and this time it’s Clive Barker messing with you.
In Undying, you are Patrick Galloway, a professional debunker of superstitious nonsense. However, in your travels (and in the Great War), you’ve encountered a handful of things that *MIGHT* be real. One of which resulted in your life being saved by Jeremiah Covenant. Jeremiah Covenant is now dying and he has asked you to help him at his estate where his four younger siblings have already passed before he did but now, it seems, their ghosts are making a great deal of trouble.
And… go. You’re off and playing a first person shooter where you’re playing through a Clive Barker story about the four ghosts and figuring out how screwed up everything was, is, and is going to be.
There are some fun weapons (ice, fire, lightning) and some creepy scenes that you can watch whenever you use your Gel’ziabar Stone.
And the game is, as a game, exceptionally solid. If you’ve played Duke Nukem 3D or Unreal, you’re already intimately familiar with how Undying is going to play.
Run around, jump around, scream in horror, shoot wildly. You’ll recognize health packs and ammo cases and you’ll interact with the occasional mirror.
And GOG.com has it for a buck-fifty.
If you don’t mind older games and you’ve never played this one, you’ll be charmed by it and google whether it has a sequel (it doesn’t… didn’t sell well, I guess).
Well, *I* thought it was a great game that deserved better. It was a Clive Barker FPS shooter and I couldn’t be happier to play it again.
So… what are you playing?
