There's logic in wrapping a game around the work of horror writer Clive Barker. A few years' ago, Clive Barker's Undying proved to be a genuinely unsettling romp, and it still earns a few pretty pennies on the budget market.

Clive Barker's Jericho thus allows the scribe to unleash his ideas once more on the game world, although this time the end result isn't quite as endearing. The grounding is solid enough, as you ultimately control a special forces squad under the name of Jericho, who specialise in the weird and the wonderful. So when a long-disappeared town suddenly reappears on the map, they're sent in, and that should be a solid foundation for a mix of horror and action.

The game presents itself as a first person shooter, and initially - until it introduces the ability to swap between the various squad members - you have just one added ability, that of being able to heal people. Each member of the squad, though, has a different special ability, which comes into its own as the game progresses (such as flame attacks, telekinesis and heavy weapons).

And that's a good job, because the early stages, where you're firing in darkness at dark enemies with infinite ammunition, are staggeringly routine. They fail to unnerve, instead proving to be confusing and frustrating. Long loading times don't help, either.

It's a pity, as there's quite a dense plot being explained in places, as you move to may-as-well-be cut scenes where the characters slow down and jabber on for a bit. But these elements you don't really feel a part of, and you can't help thinking it would have been more entertaining to let you at the action a bit more in the formative stages.

But things do perk up, and it's then that you realise that the powers of the individual squad members, rather than the weapons, are where the better moments lie. Granted, it's fiddly to swap between so many squad members at times, but if you can wrap your head around that, then the boss battles in particular begin to show an imagination that does reward the effort you need to put in. And while Jericho isn't in the class that's made Undying such a steady seller, it is a reasonably entertaining diversion.

Where it fails in the horror stakes, though, is in comparison to Bioshock. Despite the best efforts of Mr Barker, at no stage does Jericho feel anywhere near as unnerving and scary as Bioshock at its best, and while it's bad luck to arrive a month or two after a game that's set such a high bar, that's nonetheless what's happened.

True, Jericho is a squad-based affair rather than a straight first person shooter, but there's little question where our cash would go, as fun as Codemasters' latest sometimes is.

At times irritating and frustrating, but still fleetingly enjoyable, Jericho has its moments - particularly as the game progresses - but rarely does it excel.