Clive Barker's Undying (PC) - Guest Post

This menu is the most dramatic menu ever. It's got Latin and everything. Listenit. (YouTube link)

Patrick Galloway, Irish adventurer.

He's made a name for himself as an investigator into superstition and the supernatural. Right now, he's feeling a little nervous about being roped into a first person shooter.

He tells us the story of when he used to be a silhouette in the Great War, setting things straight when the unexplained occurred. He was mission to deal with an unruly group of pirate/gypsy/barbarian/nomads, but he and his men were ambushed. Patrick was hit by Crazy Magic Powers and would have died, if it were not for his commanding officer, Jeremiah. Jeremiah saved the day, completed the mission and gave Patrick a magic rock. Huzzah.

Now Patrick reluctantly travels to a spooky house somewhere in Ireland to assist Jeremiah, who is on his deathbed.

There's lots of nice sound effects standing out here. Wind, rain, thunder and rats eating my feet and taking off loads of health.

The servant fills Patrick in about what's happened so far. Blah blah blah. Can't skip the cutscene.

They both walk off looking like robots to Jeremiah's quarters.

I'm walking down the corridor... and whoa! It's gone dark!

It's a nasty evil rotting zombie ghost monster man with a big chain-scythe! I can't move or attack!

It's scary. SCAAAAAAARY. ARE YOU SCARED YET?

Jeremiah's dying from a war wound, and his family is also cursed. Bogus. I can skip this cutscene, but not the last one.

Before he can go into detail into what exactly he needs Patrick to do, there's a scream, a howl and the sound of shattered glass. Patrick whips out the revolver and starts pointing it everywhere.

Something's attacked one of the servants! I've gotta check! Could it be a scary monster?!

Well, I can't see any scary monsters...

A ginger haired spooky ghost laughs at me and floats through one of the doors on the ground floor.

"Can you describe what you can only see? As the bonds of flesh are broken, the world becomes a parrot."

He may have said 'apparent'. No subtitles, so who can say for sure?

I think he's giving me a subtle hint that I should use Patrick's secret power. Patrick has the ability to 'Scrye', to see things beyond the mortal world. So far all I've been using it for is to see in the dark.

Sometimes when you Scrye and look at a painting, you'll see HORRORS. In this room, all it's showing me is exactly what I could see anyway: some hills, a tree and some seagulls.

Usually when there's something interesting to see, the rock lights up and whispers 'Look...'. I'm getting nothing here.

Ack! Monsters!

These guys love to leap onto your face and tear it off.

A few revolver blasts show them who's in charge. I've Scryed again so I can see where I'm going, but it has the added bonus that it makes the enemies glow purple.

Vast spiral staircases are very nice. Octopus on the ceiling not as nice.

Looks like there's no more enemies around. There's a load whirring noise like somebody's left a washing machine on somewhere... what's this?

It's a secret passage hidden behind a bookcase! Marvellous!

I have no idea how I ended up back in Jeremiah's room. I must've done a complete lap of the mansion. I wish he'd given me a map.

Jeremiah tells us a story about how he gathered his family at a set of standing stones and read from a mysterious book. He suspects that this action may be somewhat related to the fact that his family is now cursed and his mansion is crawling with monsters. He wants Patrick to investigate these stones because they're probably bad.

Patrick gobbles up the scroll given to him by Jeremiah, giving him a new magic spell: Ectoplasm!

I'd have suggested a bit more caution, but hey, it's magic! Who can say no to magic?

Eat magic, you bastards!

You can simultaneously use a weapon in the left hand and a spell in the right hand. Yep, Bioshock 2 totally ripped this off.

I'm using the magic rock as the weapon. It makes a shockwave that stuns enemies and throws them away from you. Very useful against these guys who can only claw at you. Even better, it doesn't use mana and it never runs out.

In the right hand, I'm using the Ectoplasm spell. Patrick waves his hand about in a floaty manner and a flurry of deadly purple magic beams fly everywhere. It doesn't kill them as fast as the revolver, but the mana recharges pretty quickly so I don't have to use my bullets. Using the magic rock as the primary weapon increases the potency and decreases the mana cost of any spell, too. Magic for everyone!

One of the servants took a hit in the fracas and he's bleeding great big blobs of blood from his arm.

In my attempt to help him, I forget that right mouse button is the spell button and not the 'Talk' button (there isn't one) and accidentally blast him dead. Game over. Don't do that.

"Scrye...."

What's that you say, rocko? You want me to Scrye?

Ahh, ees super scary!

While I'm distracted, bouncing up and down on the spot trying to get a good angle on the picture for the above, I get attacked and decapitated by monsters. Never mind.

I'm having so much fun blasting things with magic powers that I care not.

Hold on a second. When I played Undying for the first time years ago, I got annoyed that the health packs were automatically used when you got to low health. I didn't like that I couldn't keep an eye on exactly how many health packs I had and when I used them. That didn't happen this time.

My research is showing that health packs are only automatically used on Easy difficulty and not Normal. That's... exactly how it should be! Damn. If I'd have known that, I wouldn't stopped playing!

Well, I probably would have still stopped playing a little later on when the game dumps you in a mansion full of 'Loading' barriers with absolutely no clue whatsoever where you're supposed to go. Are you an incredibly patient person who likes blasting demons? This is your game!