Is Clive Barker's Undying a good game? I don't get it

level1900 · Post by **level1900** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 12:12 pm

I'm not a picky fellow, I played and finished some shooters that most people won't even touch, but Clive Barker's Undying seems to venture beyond my suckiness treshold.
Maybe it's because I've just finished the excellent horror flick that's Call of Chtulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and I'm still inspired, but Undying is a complete letdown in every possible way, I don't know how it managed to score 90 and up on most magazines.

First: the good things I found: the sound is great, with creepy music that is just bone-chilling and good voice acting. I especially liked the sound of the bonepiles when you walk over them, quite a unique feature. I also like the idea of the 'alternate vision' to see invisible things like ghosts and reveal some hidden images.

Now, the bad aspects: for starters, the graphics are awful, I know they have been defined 'amazing' and 'incredible' when it came out (?!), but eww, Unreal and Half-Life looked better than this. The models are blocky and poorly animated and the levels are bland and scarcely detailed, you'll stop to look at some objects wondering what the heck they are. There is no dynamic light map, although Unreal had it in 1998 and this is a 2001 game.

The gameplay is a chore, with enemies constantly spawning behind you, forcing you to hit the quickload button all too often (mister 'quickload' takes about 30 seconds, by the way). 90% of the time, when you enter a room you have to go through a 10-15 seconds loading screen (I can't imagine how long it took when the game came out). There is no learning curve: the enemies will swarm you from the first time you'll meet them and the weapons are worthless and inaccurate, forcing you to rely on weak spells to defend your skin. By the way, for some reason the character holds the weapons with his left hand, making it confusing. Every time you die you're forced to watch a 20 seconds unskippable cutscene with the monsters eating your head or heart (it's supposed to be scary but it's just stupid) and the game autoloads the start of the level (why?).
The enemies are too strong, some can leap twenty meters towards you dealing tremendous amounts of damage (also, when you get hit the screen fills with blood/slime and you go blind for a few seconds). All enemies take forever to kill and will often get stuck in doors and stairwells. Sometimes they will die normally, but mysteriouly come back to life as you turn your back, slashing your unaware buttocks (at that point you might as well quickload).
As I said, you can use a special vision to see the invisible (the game lets you know when you can do it) but most of the time, as you're busy doing this, the game just spawns a monster behind you who slashes you to bits (what's the point?!). It's not even scary, it's infuriating.

The controls are poorly calibrated: you jump just barely high enough to get on top of obstacles, so climbing some rocks becomes a tiresome spacebar-bashing. The collision detection sometimes acts up so you can't hit enemies and end up getting clobbered. Some weapons punish you for using them, like the tibetan 'cannon' shaped like a dragon that every 30 seconds emits a growl that sounds like an enemy is nearby, startling you.

Whew... Maybe this game is really good and I'm just too dumb to get it, but I think it's tremendously overrated. Yeah, it's an old game, but 2001 was the year Aliens vs. Predator 2, Operation Flashpoint, Red Faction and Serious Sam came out, and some 1998 titles are way better, so this game has no excuse, despite the good ratings it got for some reason.

Thanks for reading my rant. Post your thoughts if you like.

neo_viral · Post by **neo_viral** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 4:55 pm

I guess to each their own XD I really liked it for some reason,not sure WHY,cant put a finger on it,maybe it was the sort of epic story ? (a FPS with a story back then ? No way! - ok well untill Half life and such came along)

I still have the manuals and that brown diary/booklet thing that came in the box,written by Barker or w/e.I have hardly watched his movies but...*shrugs*.Like you said the loading and interface is a bit meh,and the graphics a bit...different ? But then again when it comes to looks theres a lot worse out there (almost anything using that lithotech engine imho...:/).It got good reviews in general from what ive seen but they never put in any MP and that sort of sealed its fate as well as a game that few really played.So sort of a cultist favorite ? I still want to play Call of Cthulhu sometime though,and from what ive heard its obviously way more advanced in looks,gameplay and such than Undying was,but it IS a newer game ; )

Still i hope to replay it soon but first i want to replay Unreal,Doom,and SOF and RTCW

Post by **hfric** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 7:32 pm

they say this game gets better after 5 levels ... but for me it wasn't any better it was worse ... killed the vampire lady , traveled back in time , visited other islands and still ... NOTHING

when you play the demo this game is great , its like a hardcore doom horror shooter with gore and blood but the full game was .... a shock when they changed the whole game concept to this boring , weak designed maps crap fest - for me it was kinda like this

... checked the box , checked if i had the right game and ... *screamed* "they stole my money for this crap"

i may add the demo was way better then the final product

go play first the DEMO and then this FINAL product and you get why i was friking mad

Post by **Trey** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:24 pm

Gee, I kinda liked it.

Post by **hfric** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 10:30 pm

burn in hell

Post by **Trey** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 1:33 am

hfric wrote:burn in hell

I guess I already have.

Post by **Trey** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 4:59 am

Just to experience the suckyness, I installed Undying on this computer. It wouldn't run though, appearantly there is a incompatablity between Ac3d/Realtek audio drivers and the Unreal engine. It won't run if those drivers are installed, it gives you an error like this

glxDetectOutput <- UGalaxyAudioSubsystem::Init <- UEngine::InitAudio

. The way to get it to run is to disable the direct sound by editting the shortcut (editing the .ini didn't seem to work), you just add "-nodsound" and *poof* problem solved.

level1900 · Post by **level1900** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:45 am

hfric wrote: i may add the demo was way better then the final product

go play first the DEMO and then this FINAL product and you get why i was friking mad

I did play the demo first and I couldn't make it past the first few rooms because the enemies were so strong and the flipped gun confused the living daylights outta me. Guess I never learn... so I downloaded the full game.

About Call of Cthulhu DCotE, I think it's the best horror game I've played in a loooong time. Better than F.E.A.R., better than Doom 3. A few months and we'll be entitled to upp it

Post by **hfric** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:08 pm

this game was SO great that the makers of it bankrupted ...

freakboy · Post by **freakboy** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:12 pm

Dunno, to me it did not seem hard, annoying or boring, but it was ok. Though I got stuck in graveyard and uninstalled it. Far from the worst games ever.

Post by **Scaryfun** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 11:40 pm

hfric wrote:this game was SO great that the makers of it bankrupted ...

That's obviously not a sign of whether a developer made good games or not. Plenty of companies that made good games didn't sell enough to stay alive.

level1900 · Post by **level1900** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:51 am

Scaryfun wrote:
hfric wrote:this game was SO great that the makers of it bankrupted ...
That's obviously not a sign of whether a developer made good games or not. Plenty of companies that made good games didn't sell enough to stay alive.

True. Even the studio who made overly mentioned CoC:DCotE is gone

Let me bash Undying a little bit more. Since when do evil ghosts from hell attack by throwing stones at you? Reminds me of primary school courtyard mayhem more than a horror story. Also, why do the enemies keep coming?! This is just bad design: there's this section when some Naga-like creatures spawn from the ground (actually, through the carpets). Now: they always spawn right behind you and as you kill one, another one instantly spawns behind your back! You can't run away because they'll spawn even more if you try and they'll swarm you as you try to open a door (which leaves you defenseless for about 5 full seconds).

Another section I just got to: there's this dark room where the ceiling crumbled, conveniently creating a climbable pile of rubble. Now, after you spacebar-bash your way up (remember: bad jumping), you get swarmed by 5 leaping monsters in a small room, so the only way is to go back down and fight them in a bigger room. Ok, so after killing them I bash my way up again and they're back! Argh! I go back down and fight them again, bash my way up and they are back! I repeated the process ten times and they still come back, in greater numbers no less. Awful game design right there. I usually set quickload to the F5 key and it's starting to discolor with this game!

level1900 · Post by **level1900** » Thu Dec 25, 2008 3:37 pm

Ok, I've just finished the game and I have to say it gets way better after the first 3 hours, when you get more powers and weapons and the enemies become fewer and less irritating. It's a strange fact that enemies in this game keep swarming you endlessly in the early levels when you're weak and stop doing this when you're stronger and more able to face them.

Some powers are a little too strong, like the shield spell that makes you virtually immortal and jumping puzzles remain a chore, but all in all the second two thirds of the game are quite enjoyable. A pity it starts off so bad.

Post by **dead-meat** » Thu Dec 25, 2008 6:58 pm

Sorry, I'm a bit lazy now so I've just read most of the first post and then just every 2nd post or so...

I just stopped by to tell I really enjoyed playing the game. It was back in 2004 when I last saw the game (at least I think so) and it was cool. I remember something about that quicksaving thing you mentioned.. and you're most probably right with it being annoying. Though I finished the game and really liked the athmosphere and stuff. Good first person shooter imo.

I really don't get why people are so picky about their games. How's it annoying to have bad graphics and stuff as long as the game's fun? I've heared/read things like that a million times now...

That's all.

level1900 · Post by **level1900** » Thu Dec 25, 2008 9:13 pm

dead-meat wrote:
I really don't get why people are so picky about their games. How's it annoying to have bad graphics and stuff as long as the game's fun? I've heared/read things like that a million times now...

That's all.

Normally I don't care about graphics at all (gameplay>graphics), but since everyone went crazy about Undying's looks back in 2001, defined them 'Amazing', 'Incredible' and so on, I wanted to point out they were nothing special, even a little shabby compared to other games such as Star Trek:Elite Force or Serious Sam.

Oh, another thing about Undying: it has one of the best sound compartments I've heard in PC gaming, the sound effects and soundtrack are really spot on.