The added supernatural factor makes for more interesting creatures too. Sometimes it feels like you are playing against a far superior intelligence, as werewolves split into two groups, so you can’t just lob a bomb into their midst. If you’ve played Unreal Tournament, you will know how good the AI is and Undying hasn’t changed this: enemies duck, dive and circle you. This may not keep many players interest up, but a desire to scrye all the areas and learn about the house certainly enhances the game’s longevity. The game has multiple difficulty levels of easy, medium and nightmare, which basically varies the strength of enemy creatures. It’s a linear movement through the game, but involving nonetheless. As you progress, you discover more information and find keys to locked doors that allow you to move on and learn more about the house of horrors and its surrounding area. It would have been nice if the spell showed off the history of every room, with sub-stories working through the main plot, but only certain rooms are scrye-able. As you discover things about the household and the surrounding area, the scare factor increases exponentially – especially in the nursery, where the sound of children playing rapidly turns into screams. At the start, Jeremiah has the ability to “scrye:” look back into the past to see events that have gone before. Pretty soon you are a walking mass of hot steel and arcane knowledge ready to deal death to the already dead. You can also increase the power of your spells by picking up amplifiers. Weapons and spells are picked up along the way as you progress through the levels. As well as the standard revolver, and some supernatural weapons, you also have a litany of spells you can collect to do damage or discover information. The weaponry is second-to-none, and twofold, in Undying. When you add the surround-sound audio effects such as wolves howling, thunderstorms and screams, you have a deeply spooky game that, especially when played with the lights off, may just scare the pants off you.
Overlaid with these graphics is a wonderful visceral soundtrack that creeps and crawls its way through the game. Curtains waft in the wind, doors creak closed and the rooms of the house and the outside areas are very spooky – especially the caves below the cemetery. The graphics are gorgeous and the detail in the levels is of a high standard.
As previously stated, the game is a first-person shooter based on the highly-regarded Unreal Tournament engine. Magnus offers to help his old friend and it’s from here that you take control of the adventure.
Death, however, has not affected their spirit and they still roam the Irish manor house intent on disposing of their younger sibling. This family strife is complicated due to Jeremiah’s relations all being dead. Jeremiah, who is dying, is under threat from his family. It also turns out that these two are no strangers to the supernatural they were both part of a squadron that battled supernatural beings, including undead soldiers, during World War I.
Set in the 1920s, Undying has you playing the role of a Curtis Stigers look-a-like called Magnus who has been asked by an old war buddy, Jeremiah, to investigate strange happenings at his ancestral home. Games based on his films, such as Nightbreed, may not have been great hits, but he is certainly making up for it now with this first-person shooter. Spooky and kooky There are some scary games in this world: Realms of the Haunting, Alien vs Predator, Silent Hill on the PlayStation and that hideous Big Brother game. Clive Barker’s Undying is from the mind of the great horror author himself, who is no stranger to trying out new mediums for his work.