Preview Overclocked Developer: House of Tales Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive Anaconda Genre: Adventure Release Date: May 2, 2008 Platform: Preview by Randy Sluganski February 4, 2008

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A young, bloodied woman, clad only in her bra and panties, splashes through the pouring rain in midtown Manhattan stopping only to vacuously empty her pistol into the air. A new episode of Law & Order SVU or just another typical New York day? Neither, for Overclocked: A History of Violence  is the new psychological adventure/drama from German developer House-of-Tales (Moment of Silence, The Mystery of the Druids)

The version played for purposes of this preview was in the original German but with English subtitles for us privileged reviewers (la dee dah).  So as such, it is expected some changes will be made before the finished version is released to the finicky North American adventure community.

Overclocked: A History of Violence (OHV) is a 3rd person, point-and-click psychological adventure with a unique twist.   For much of the story you play as psychologist David McNamara, but once your patients are hypnotized – hypnosis being, I believe, a first in an adventure game – the game then switches to the patient’s point-of-view as he or she then relives the episode that had them committed. 

And the patients?  Five of them total, all approximately the same age, all with amnesia and all five found wandering the city streets, bloody and disorientated. 

House-of-Tales strong point has always been strong plots and characters and OHV is no different.  David McNamara is a troubled man with a past that figures strongly into the game and the gradual unveiling of his and the patient’s histories reminded me much of the television series Lost.  I’ll not spoil what little I’ve so far uncovered, but the plot and characters are intriguing with a maturity not usually sustained in many games and in fact, OHV is in some ways reminiscent of Fahrenheit. 

Another of House-of-Tales strong points has always been extremely detailed, realistic environments and again, they are at the top of their game with OHV. New York City (question: why do European developers always set their games in New York? Don’t they realize that there are other cities in the U.S. such as Pittsburgh or even (shudder) Cleveland?) is well served and the peeling paint and sparse rooms of the Staten Island asylum create the perfect atmosphere. 

The interface is a sparse and non-intrusive as any I’ve ever seen.  When an inventory item or hot spot is clicked on, another icon appears offering choices to use, look at an object, etc. and you must then click on the secondary item.  It takes some getting used to, but is actually quite novel.  My favorite innovation though is a split screens that, when it used, adds a sense of urgency to the game and provides a sort of you-are-there feeling to the gameplay.

So what’s not to look forward to?  Well, I am going to take it upon myself to play the part of the Ugly American and suggest a change to enhance the gaming experience.  If House-of-Tales has one negative that has haunted them throughout their existence, it is that streets and towns and buildings that should be teeming with people always appear to be devoid of life.  Most likely this can be attributed to budgetary constraints and to their credit, they have taken steps to overcome this problem in OHV by the simple addition of rain. 

While adventure gamers will accept lapses in common sense when it comes to puzzles (you all know what I mean, ‘cut the cat’s hair and then glue the hair to the photo’), we won’t accept lapses in common sense when it comes to common everyday things.  Here’s my beef – as the game begins it is pouring down rain outside.  It is raining so hard that the Brooklyn Bridge has had to be closed down.  So when McNamara speaks to the concierge and informs him of his concerns about the rain as he has left his raincoat back home in DC and he has to travel across town to the ferry, what does the concierge suggest?    Does he offer advice on where one might purchase a raincoat?  No.  Does he offer him an umbrella, maybe one left behind by a previous guest.  No.  Instead, he tells McNamara to stay dry by walking close to buildings.  WTF?   Even stranger is that when McNamara finally leaves the hotel and goes to the ferry, even though it is pouring down rain, not one single person, - not one – is carrying an umbrella or wearing a raincoat.  Nor does anyone appear to be dripping wet.  But most frustrating at all is that once McNamara arrives at the  asylum, there is an unused umbrella in the main office.  Does he ever ask to borrow the damn thing?  No.  Does anyone ever offer it to him knowing he is going back out into the rain?  No.  Did this make me want to scream at my computer at the top of my lungs (or in my case, lung)?  Yes.

So maybe all of you (and I’m sure the developers) are wondering, what does this have to do with the story?  Actually, nothing so far as I know and maybe it is a big plot twist and I’ll be made to look like an ass.  But it did serve to totally disassociate me from the ‘realism’ of the story.  House-of-Tales games are right on that precipice between common, unmemorable games and classics that live on in a gamers memory and it is the attention to small details that are usually the deciding factor .