Adventure Game Overclocked Review
A Review of Dark PC Game Overclocked: A History Of Violence
Overclocked: A History Of Violence is a dark psychological thriller of a PC adventure game with some innovative features based on character switching gameplay
Overclocked: A History Of Violence is a new point and click adventure game billed as a ‘chilling interactive psycho thriller’. With a relentlessly dark and gloomy atmosphere it borrows from both film noir and modern psychological thrillers.
Dark Psychological Thriller PC Game
It’s often difficult to review adventure games of this ilk without revealing spoilers, as the story is paramount. Suffice to say the unfolding tale – falling somewhere between the movies Jacob’s Ladder and Memento – is just about inventive and gripping enough to keep you going until the end. There are some twists you can see coming a marathon’s distance away but the devil’s in the details and the plot delivers enough of the gaming equivalent of a page-turning, one-more-chapter feel to keep you clicking that mouse long after you should have been sensible and called it a night.
It opens in a suitably dramatic fashion, with a cutscene depicting a near naked girl, clearly having some sort of psychotic episode on the streets of New York and emptying a pistol clip into the rain-heavy sky. From there you’re introduced to the main protagonist, a psychiatrist named David McNamara who’s been assigned to treat five young patients, each of whom has been found in a similar condition, apparently suffering from that handy staple plot device, total amnesia. Unravelling their stories and dealing with McNamara’s own unravelling life and mental health.
Point and Click Gameplay
Anyone familiar with the adventure game genre will also be familiar with the gameplay and interface here. There’s an inventory slot that’s simplicity itself to use and then there’s the main screen – an environment that can be explored and manipulated by the simple click of a mouse. FPS-heads need not apply but adventure game addicts will enjoy the simple logic of Overclocked’s gameplay. Unlike a lot of games of similar ilk, there’s nothing requiring a MacGyver or A-Team style grasp of object combination, just commonsense actions and puzzles that might require a little thought or searching but which generally make sense within the game’s world.
Innovative Adventure Game Structure
The aspect that gives Overclocked its unique character is the handling of McNamara’s interviews with his patients. Each session is recorded on the shrink’s PDA and these can be used to nudge the disturbed kids into further recollections. It can be frustrating trying to work out which session needs to be played to which patient next in order to advance but there is a hint in the form of a thoughtful ‘Hmmm’ from McNamara when you’re on the right track.
Similarities to Fahrenheit, aka Indigo Prophecy
When successful, you’ll trigger a flashback in the relevant patient and switch to his or her perspective for the following segment, essentially giving you six player characters over the course of the game. This multi-layered approach doesn’t have the depth of the similar system used in Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy in the USA and Canada) but it does help raise Overclocked towards the bar raised over recent years by adventure games like The Moment Of Silence or The Lost Crown
Rating: 7/10
Lighthouse Ineractive have released a playable demo of Overclocked: A History Of Violence, which can be accessed on their homepage.
Click here for a review of new vampire adventure game Dracula: Origin
