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Clive Barkers Undying on Windows 7 64 bit

Clive Barkers Undying is a forgotten Classic game from ten years ago. It is a first person adventure with a clever combination of weapons and magic. It features a creepy and imaginative storyline from Clive himself and really deserved to sell a lot better than it did.

The good news is that it works very well on Windows 7 64 bit without any patches.I used Windows XP sp2 compatibility mode following a recommendation from the internet but I later discovered that the game runs well enough without this. Note however that save games seem to be stored differently depending on whether or not you use compatibility mode so choose a mode and stick with it.

The biggest annoyance was a very long starting time (3 minutes on my system) but once the game was up and running everything went smoothly. I had a few crashes during game-play which is not too surprising given that this was version 1.0 unpatched.  I strongly recommend using multiple save slots though and not solely just relying on quicksave because if the game crashes while you are saving you could lose a lot of progress. 

This is a ten year old game though and the graphics are obviously primitive by modern standards even though the artwork is very atmospheric and imaginative. The game is longer than a modern shooter with a lot of different locations and enemies. Combat is also very different than a modern shooter. Enemy AI is non existent and so is cover. Enemies run at you and try to kill you so in order to stay alive you either need to shoot them first or more probably keep moving. I died several times to the very first enemies in the game while I shook off my 2011 shooter habits and re-learned to circle strafe.


Highly recommended if you can get your hands on a copy. It is a great pity Good Old Games haven't managed to include it in their catalogue.

EDIT: I somehow forgot to mention  that the game is set in Ireland in the 1920's and has the worst attempts at Irish accents I have ever heard. Suffice to say that I found the game sufficiently engrossing that I forgot all about the comedy accents.


Comments

sam said…
You note that save games are saved differently depending on compatibility mode, and I wonder if you could be more specific. I cannot find where my games are saved (along with some .ini files) and it is driving me nuts. I am running with no compatibility mode.
mbp said…
Hi Sam I still struggle with finding my way around the Windows 7 file system but my Undying save games are turning up in a few different locations depending on how I run the game. You might look in these places:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Clive Barker's Undying\Save

C:\Documents and Settings\My_Name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Clive Barker's Undying\Save

C:\Users\My_Name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Clive Barker's Undying\Save

Where "My_Name" is the name of the Windows 7 account I am logged in to.

If none of the above work try searching the computer for a file called Current.sav

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