Developer: EALA Publisher: EA Games
Reviewed by Delirium on 6/26/01

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Warning: may contain spoilers.

First Impressions:

It's gothic. It's pretty. It's ugly. And it's scary. Really.

Graphics:

The game runs on the Unreal Tournament graphics engine. I did say it was dark, and it is, literally. Both the horror and the difficulty of the game are enhanced by shadows and darkened rooms. I tried to play on the default light setting, but I finally had to crank it to maximum brightness to avoid running into walls and possibly succumbing to claustrophobia. Once I took care of the light, though, I found a beautifully and realistically rendered world that shows great attention to detail. Detail like a snowfall with every flake continuously flaky down to the ground -- or to your face, if you look up. The movement of your surroundings and your enemies is seamless. Your own movement is melded with the actions you are performing. When you go downstairs, the picture bobs up and down just a little bit in time with your footsteps. And the blood . . . ah, blood flows as blood should except when it occasionally drips upward. When it's all gotten out of its host and spent enough time on the floor to make you ill, it softly fades and vanishes (along with the corpse, if present) to make you wonder whether you truly just did battle with that thing, or if it was it all in your mind? Proportion, perspective, texture: all are excellent. You are in this world.

The enemies are not carbon copies of each other in either appearance or movement. The first monsters you meet, the howlers, seem to come in three or four colors simply for variety. Enemies don't all die with the same visual sequence as their fellows; for instance, if you're going after the skeletons with a scythe, some of them don't drop dead (drop undead?), but only lose whatever extremity you lopped off of them.

The spell called Scrye allows you to see things in an alternate reality. Painted portraits change from stiffly-posed relatives into angry, blood-smeared demons. The sights and sounds of past violence appear where they had not been, starting in the very beginning with the guy someone hanged years ago from the family gallows out front. These apparitions are seen in the spell's purple glow, which is also handy for temporarily lighting up the many shadowed corners and dark alcoves (and, sometimes, entire monster-stuffed halls) which can't otherwise be seen.

And there are the settings themselves, which are lovely and creepy. There are halls with white curtains billowing gently in the breeze. Behind them are the howlers, of course, but what a pretty battlefield! Lush rooms are filled with expensive-looking furnishings. Dusty crypts hide mouldering things: I found a corpse surrounded by buzzing flies; I could almost smell him. Eeech. There are breathtaking vistas from high cliffs; just don't fall off the edge.

Sound/Music:

The sound effects are suitably unsettling, from the chilling howls of distant monsters fast approaching to the ghostly whispers insisting that you "see...look around..." with your Scrye spell. There is no constant background music; instead there is wind, thunder, the creak of doors opening and the click of them closing, and the occasional maniacal laugh from some spectre you cannot see...or one you can. When there is music, it makes you jump and wield your weapon, for it tends to herald something new and unpleasant.

The sounds of your movement are as detailed as the corresponding graphics. For instance, when you walk through a pool of blood, your footsteps go from tapping on the floor to ....squishing. Then you turn around and find that you've left a trail of red footprints on the floor behind you. And the voice acting is excellent, as well as the effects of distance and location of sound. For my part, I jumped at a lot of noises, even ones my character made, and often whipped around to point my gun at what would turn out to be nothing -- nothing near at the time, anyhow. The sound did occasionally stutter during cut scenes, but I didn't notice any hitches during actual play.

Gameplay:

The game has ten different realms, some of which are the Covenant mansion; the family mausoleum; a world consisting of little rock islands, bits of crumbled architecture and old crypts floating in an endless red-clouded sky; and a green hilly landscape that contains a monastery in which we battle both in the present and in the past. Each realm has multiple areas within it, and the game stops to load them. This can be a little annoying when you go through a door, wait for the load, then decide you don't want to go there yet, turn around and go back through the door, and wait for the place you just came from to load again.

There are eight weapons, starting with a simple revolver and including handheld cannons, Molotov cocktails, and the much-admired Scythe of the Celt, and eight spells, including the aforementioned Scrye spell, a spell to throw ectoplasm, and one that reanimates dead enemies to temporarily fight on your side. And since the weapons and spells are triggered with the left and right mouse buttons respectively, you can use both at once. A combination of ectoplasm and the eerily alive Tibetan War Cannon takes out howlers nicely; if your shot hits a non-lethal place, the ectoplasm will finish them off before they recover. (I prefer a revolver shot to the head for howlers, but the cannon doesn't have to be reloaded.)

It always detracts from your ability to battle fast, strong or multiple enemies in a game when you have to take your eyes off the screen to hunt for hotkeys. This game does as much as it can to remedy this by putting most of the action you need over on the right side of the keyboard near the arrows. A tap of the Delete or End key brings up a circular menu of weapons or spells respectively, to be chosen from with mouse movement. There are scroll-through options, too, though they're out in the alphabet keys and cause you to have to look away for longer to find them. They're useful for review of options in the hush before moving forward into the next area.

The viewpoint character movement is superbly wedded to the graphics. Sometimes you have to jump into a chest to acquire its contents, and then you must remember to jump back out. If you fall into the water, you are under the water, all right, complete with slower reactions and a tendency to drown if you stay under too long. It's the jumping, though, that was one of my biggest problems. I don't know whether it's difficult for anyone playing the game or if I myself have a problem with the timing, but there is a considerable amount of jumping from surface to surface. Missing your mark can mean that you have to scale the pile again, or find the stairs again, and if there is a sheer cliff or a red-clouded void underneath, you will fall and you will die. Dying means you have to start the area (not the whole region) over again. Saving the game often is a good idea.

The enemies are smart. They use different weapons for different situations, just like you do. Some monsters claw, spit corrosives, chomp, or any two, or all three. Humans choose from their arsenals, and attack you harder while you're reloading -- they actually say to each other, "He's reloading! Shoot him! Now!" They know when you're weakest, and strike.

Dying in the game is always interesting. There are so many ways to do it, and there is a set of cut scenes for every way to die. Each enemy has a different way of killing you: beheading, goring, pulling you eagerly down through the floor with them, shooting you and frisking your body for weapons as you bleed out, et cetera. The ones who can speak have a choice of mocking phrases. Lizbeth, the youngest sibling, coos to you: "Too bad...you were cute." One thing I do wish, though, is that cut scenes could be skipped. There is a long one each time you start a new game, and every time you have to repeat a conversation, and it gets old. I have not yet found a way to skip them, and the manual makes no mention of it.

I have found one bug: a door in the manor that opens but will not always let you through, which requires that you start the area over from a saved game. It's happened to me twice. It is possible to play the game and never have it happen. But do use caution and save, in case there are more bugs. There is a patch out to fix texture issues; this reviewer has not yet installed it.

Enjoyment:

It's been a long time since I played a shooter. I had, for much too long, a computer system that was far less than optimal for high-graphic applications, and no means to upgrade. Undying is my first foray into the genre for years. I'm so happy to be back! As I played, I felt a familiar expression steal across my face: the set jaw, fixed gaze, and slight grin of bloodlust as my awareness fell swiftly into the world of sneak, hunt, kill. I felt my head and shoulders move with the perspective of my character as I peeked around corners and ducked into holes. And at times my sense of humor took over. For instance, the game is full of things you can shoot and get a result. Bullets either bounce off things and leave sparks, or make cracks in glass. The Trsanti have livestock; you can shoot them dead, poor things. Different actions have different consequences. Try new things. Don't be shy. There are a lot of playing hours in this game. Personally, I find the Easy setting hard; I tremble to think about the other two (Medium and Nightmare). But though the challenges are frustrating, they are surmountable even to someone as out of practice as myself, with time and effort. In fact, I must admit that at this writing I have not finished the game. Not that this bothers me in the least; I have a lot to look forward to...

Multiplayer:

I keep reading on different sites that there is going to be a patch for the game that adds multiplayer capabilities. I don't see any mention of it on the official site, and can find no estimate as to when this would be coming out.

Overall Impression:

This game is one of the best I have ever played, and is brilliantly done. The challenges are well plotted, the enemies are well crafted, and the storyline is intriguing. It is not absolutely necessary to know the story and read all of the letters and journal fragments you find scattered along the way: sometimes it is less confusing if you just blow everything away until you find something useful to snarf up and then worry about what it's for. However, for immersion in this world (which I feel is essential for the best experience of the game), read everything you find.

The atmosphere makes the game. It's difficult to scare me with an entertainment medium, whether book, screen or game, but it can be done, and this game makes my neck hairs tingle. Even after completion, you'll want to go back and best the monsters again, or try a harder level, or just go in and look around at the scenery. I recommend it to anyone who is into horror, death, dark beauty, dripping blood, and the destruction of things from beyond this world -- all the gothic things in life -- or even anyone who just likes blowing away worthy targets.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

None that I can see. The viewpoint character is male. The generic house staff members that move about and occasionally offer a clue are both male and female, and some of the human warriors are recognizably female. Two of the four evil siblings, Lizbeth and Bethany, are female, and Bethany is the most powerful among them. So women aren't ignored, they're just not the good guys.

Additional Links:

Official site