I remember buying American McGee’s Alice the day it came out. I got it when I left my high school and drove to EB Games at the local mall during our lunch break. I installed it that night and played the unholy hell out of it for several months.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Clive Barker’s Undying, am I right? Well, the reason I bring up Alice is because it came with a trailer for Undying and that’s how I was introduced to the title.

Now, I was already a fan of Clive Barker and had been for many years. I remember in elementary not eating at school for a week because I was storing away my lunch money to buy a copy of “The Thief of Always” through the Scholastic book program. I was a big fan of the first two Hellraiser films and damn near obsessed with the director’s cut of Lord of Illusions. I had several of his books on my shelf and was working my way through them at a steady pace (sometimes, you have to admit, he’s not an easy read).

So when I saw that he was behind a video game, I knew that I had to get it. In fact, if I recall correctly, I pre-ordered it within a week of seeing the trailer. And when I got it, I played it nonstop until I beat it. Then I played it again. Then again.

Over the several years that I owned a PC, I probably played through Undying a dozen times, most likely more. Recently, I found myself thinking about the game and I actually watched a longplay of it on YouTube. Well, to be honest I put it on as background noise and popped in every now and again to check out specific parts that I distinctly remembered. However, that didn’t change the fact that just having the game audio in the background seriously creeped me out.

So, join me as I write a bit about my love of this game because it absolutely deserves it.

First of all, let’s start with the story of the game, shall we? You play as Patrick Galloway, an Irish paranormal investigator who has a healthy sense of skepticism, even though he himself admits that doing the job for a while has begun to convince him that there is more to this world than we can see.

Patrick is called upon by Jeremiah Covenant, an old friend and his old commanding officer when Galloway was in the military. Jeremiah has called him to the Covenant Estate because of an old family curse that seems to be coming true. This curse was caused when Jeremiah and his four siblings, Ambrose (who is voiced by Clive Barker himself), Bethany, Aaron, and Lisbeth, all found a strange occult book in the estate library as children. Sneaking away, the performed the ritual on a small island and this led evil spirits to haunt them, changing them fundamentally. As Jeremiah slowly withers away due to sickness, he wants to make sure that his family also finds peace, all of whom have come back from death to haunt and terrorize him.

And so begins the quest of Galloway, who goes through basically one fucking horrifying place after another to honor his friend’s wishes, even if it means risking his own sanity…and his own life.

The first thing you’ll notice about this game is that it absolutely oozes atmosphere. Utilizing incredible locations – such as a crumbling Monastery that you visit when it was still whole and intact, the family mausoleum, graveyards, tribal villages, sewers, the outdoors themselves, and the Covenant estate itself – this game manages to remain terrifying every step of the way. Nothing feels safe, even when you know you’re completely alone.

Even though Undying was hampered by frequent and sometimes lengthy loading times, the game tried to utilize large areas to explore so that it didn’t seem like you were waiting for too long when those loads did occur. And these environments were rich with detail and encouraged exploration, so you always took your time really investigating your surroundings. While the game was pretty linear, it didn’t hold your hand the whole way through. You really had to look around on your own to find the pieces in order to move on.

At the time, I remember thinking that the graphics were pretty amazing. There were all these little things that the game did that just “wowed” me. For instance, there was a moment when Patrick wakes up in a side closet with a dead body at his feet. The body was slowly dripping blood upwards to the ceiling, creating a pool of crimson. Or there was that sequence when Patrick had to leap into seemingly thin air in Oneiros, “the dream city of forgotten souls”, only to have stone blocks appear out of nowhere. And when the game couldn’t do amazingly well with the graphics, it smartly knew to use lighting to its advantage, putting certain areas in the dark and forcing you to enter the shadows, even if every fiber of your being shrieked at you to pull away.

The music, which was composed by Bill Brown, is just fantastic. It has this delightful gothic epic quality about it and I’ve always wanted to own a physical copy of the soundtrack, something that was never manufactured. I highly recommend giving the score a shot by listening here.

Additionally, the sound design was one of the main reasons that this game hit levels of “shit your pants terrifying”. It’s the ultimate reason why I never once felt safe in the game. There were constant howls and unearthly moans that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the earth around you, making it feel like anything could come after you at any time.

However, you had a really cool way of protecting yourself from the wealth of enemies that were after your blood. In Patrick’s left hand he would wield a weapon of some sort, be it a revolver, a shotgun, a scythe (yup), or some other physical weapon. In his right hand, he’d utilize one of many magical spells, including a personal favorite that raised skulls and shot them at your enemies whereupon they would explode on contact. If that’s not some badass shit right there, I don’t know what to tell you.

In conclusion, Clive Barker’s Undying offers a rich and compelling story that is married to a wonderful and still very scary horror FPS. If you can find a way to run it, I highly recommend picking up a copy and giving it a shot.