Overclocked

Rating Rating Pending Genre puzzle Publisher House of Tales Entertainment

Few games have ever made me hit the ground running quite like Overclocked. For those of you who would rather rebuild your old Commodore 64 than play a PC title, the term “overclocking” means to press your computer to hardware-straining benchmark settings and, of course, hoping the more important bits don’t melt in the process. Being the avid laptopper that I am, I couldn’t wait to see just what kind of computer-based madness would ensue.

The intro unwinds to the theme of haunting music, set against the bleak background of a massive torrential storm. This instantly sets Overclocked into more of a film noir feel rather than the boring point-and-click explorer one comes to expect of drab puzzle solvers. Through the pouring New York rain, a ragged half naked girl with a gun emerges. The young woman, covered in blood, stumbles past onlookers before she begins screaming and firing the gun in the air. After an action packed and mentally disturbing credits scene, you awaken as Dr. David McNamara, a forensic psychiatrist who specializes in memory recollection and traumatic experience therapy. Once the plot begins to thicken abit, you find yourself playing the role of Dr. McNamara attempting to reconstruct what has happened to the five teenagers who have all appeared with the same mysterious mental conditions. Through hypnotherapy and discussion the player is given a view into the mysterious past events each patient has undergone. As each memory brings David closer and closer to the true the more dangerous the situation gets.

I have a penchant for puzzle-solving games, which is possibly a simple masochistic tendency to push oneself beyond the imposed limitations of our fathers, brought about by latent subconscious desires to … apparently psychobabble is contagious. One huge factor that gets taken into account when checking out pre-release titles is the immersion factor. How and how well does the game make the player feel like the character he or she portrays? In this aspect, Overclocked bats a thousand. The game play feels more like an interactive movie than any game since Indigo Prophecy. Split screen scenes, demanding action shots, and of course the amazingly accurate mood-setting soundtrack all add up to create the brilliant atmosphere witnessed here.

Overclocked comes off as a bit to open-ended instead of being a concise adventure game. Time spent wandering the streets and empty depressing halls, while upsetting, can add to the experience as a whole. Some puzzles are low level easy, while others seem more obtuse, providing little or sometimes no clue as to how to proceed. Even more, some puzzles require the player to attempt the same trick multiple times until it works. Some of these problems will undoubtedly be fixed in the full English translated version as well as in the more fully polished non-press release version.

Perhaps the most comparable thing to compare this title to is the movie Memento, the film composed entirely of snippets of film played from last to first in order to fully reveal the entire intricacy of the plot. Overclocked takes the same style and gives it a new twist by making the main character coax this information from his patients. If searching for a solid PC title with a truly inspired soundtrack, challenging puzzles and situations, as well as perhaps the most stylistically composed story ever put to the PC, then check House of Tales Entertainment’s Overclocked.