Clive Barker’s UNDYING

[60Demerits]

I hope that they do a Blood Remake. But here is a good game to tide you over in the meantime. It is fun like Blood, and there are all kinds of supernatural monsters, some are very Lovecraftian, others are very demonic. Some good firearms like a pearl-handled revolver that can use regular bullets, or more powerful silver bullets, and a double barreled sawed-off shotgun that can use 12guage shell or special incendiary shells. Molotov Cocktails are also in the arsenal, along with a Scythe that can be used to decapitate enemies, or slice them in half. Paranormal spells can also be cast from the player. The game is filled with good long levels, with puzzle solving and eerie creepy environments, like sun-set moors, crypts, mausoleums, graveyards and cemeteries, a dark frightening manor mansion, to a hellish dimension and even a prehistoric netherworld. If you’re a fan of Blood, I believe that you will like Clive Barkers Undying.

[Blood of Nightmares]

I think you should have posted this at the Public Storage.

[Daedalus]

Magic!

[Daedolon]

It's one of those games I always wanted to own (to play) but I never got the opportunity. I have seen a friend play it through but I'd still like the experience myself as well.

[Panoptic Blur]

It's a decent game, and an interesting study of horror game-making from a design viewpoint. Engine wise, it runs on the Unreal Engine (so there's some slight texture repetition issues at long distances) but the game itself is aesthetically gorgeous.

Enemies: It has a relatively narrow selection of enemies, and some of them occupy largely overlapping functions, which is a bit of a shame. However, the ones that it does get right are very intimidating. Howlers and the skeletons are especially unnerving. The first boss fight (Lizbeth) is very impressive. Later ones are not so much: Ambrose is time-dependent, not player-action dependent, and Aaron is over very quickly in a very constrained arena. Bethany is just plain weird - there are mobility issues because that fight is in full 3D with vertical movement too. The final end of game boss is a rushed job, and it quickly becomes tedious.

Magic: The magic system works by having you collect certain scrolls which open up the spell in your collection. Then you need to spend Amplifiers to boost that spell, which usually decreases mana cost and increases effectiveness. As with the enemies, the spell design isn't perfect - some spells are pretty weedy even at full Amplification, and others are so powerful there's little reason not to use them whenever possible. Lightning is very weak (except when used in connection with the Spear Thrower), Skull Storm is very strong, Ectoplasm is decent until you get Skull Storm, and Shield is essential - there's almost no reason not to increase it to max ASAP. Recall is probably the most flexible of the spells: it lays undead to rest, but also raises recently-killed enemies as your undead servants for a while. If cast on living humans, it drives them suicidally insane!

Weapons: Good balance of realworld weapons, but then the fantastical ones are a mixed bag. Pistol is an accurate long-distance needler. Shotgun is a standard short range bruiser. Scythe is pretty dominant - its standard attack usually kills most things in a few hits, and its secondary attack has "life leech" style healing properties when you kill an enemy. Tibetan War Cannon slows down enemies, which I never really found that useful. Molotov Cocktails and TNT are a potentially decent indirect fire weapon, but they are so rare and you can carry so few of them that it's often better to save them for overcoming level geometry obstacles instead of fighting enemies. Spearthrower is a slow firing sniper rifle, and the Phoenix's Eggs are an expensive folly - I've never found a satisfactory use for them apart from maybe some round-the-corner snooping. They're too unwieldy to be much use as a weapon.

The level design is amazing though. The Earth locales are solid and convincing, but what really blew me away were the otherworld levels in Oneiros and Eternal Autumn. They did a great job of capturing a dreamlike nightmare world, with avian psionic enemies and weird gravity effects for Oneiros. Likewise, the lush, deadly jungles of Eternal Autumn and its two warring tribes of native humanoids struck me as a beautiful setting, evoking a forgotten devolved past.

My favorite moments in level design: Lizbeth's mausoleum. Keisinger's Ziggurat (and in fact the whole damn Oneiros section). Ambrose's seaside caves, with underwater passageways. The waterfall cliffs in Eternal Autumn. Later on, the primitive village in Eternal Autumn.

[Bruce777999]

Spooky and excellent.
Played it on a C450 + TNT.

[Panoptic Blur]

I can't get my copy working in Windows 7. I can only get it working on the Windows XP hard drive partition.