
	Platform PC Genre Adventure Publisher Lighthouse Interactive Developer House of Tales ESRB M (Mature) Released March 31, 2008

- Mature point-and-click fans will be immediately at home in this traditional adventure game

- Localization work is spotty - Strange technical glitches - Patient is a virtue and it'll get quite a workout here

Review: Indigo Prophecy (PC) Review: Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (PC) Review: Sam & Max 205: What's New, Beezlebub? (PC)
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Overclocked: A History of Violence

Score: 6.5 / 10

As a gamer, I'm such a suck for adventure games, particularly good ones, and though there are some technical issues surrounding the overall execution and the pacing is frustratingly slow, Overclocked actually feels satisfying at its conclusion but you'll need to be a dyed-in-the-wool fan of adventure games to reach that point.

You play as "former forensic psychiatrist for the U.S. Army" David McNamara investigating a case which involves five nut bars found wandering New York City, all of them suffering from, what else, amnesia. These are all shattered people

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and it's up to McNamara to delve into their psyches (via flashbacks as you play through their eyes), as bloody and twisted as they are, and piece together what brought them to their current mental state, which actually made me think of LOST.

Maybe it's the the cover art, but Overclocked actually reminded me a bit of Gabriel Knight, with it's very dark themes but is much gorier. Blood is slathered over most of

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everything you do, which is often done very slowly.

Unlike many adventure games, Overclocked features very little in the way of backtracking because the game restricts you to very specific exploration and item goals in order to proceed. If you're stuck, it's often a case of slowly exploring each screen in order to proceed. Thanks to the rather stark art design it usually becomes very apparent as to what you're supposed to do next if the story doesn't point you in the right direction.

Where Overclocked stumbles are the technical issues out of the box. The install size runs to 5GB, but there's still stuttering all over the place and long delays between the in-game action and cut scenes. There are ways around the problem of the transition delays, but why should I have to do something the developers should have done?

At any rate, Overclocked: A History of Violence has a good story going for it, you just have to know that will only come after some "digging."

- D.D. Nunavut

(June 2, 2008)


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