Customer Reviews

Overclocked

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a huge adventure game fan. I love the games where you get to meet characters, have a mystery to solve and get to use your mind to get to the end of the game, rather then gunplay. What I found different about this game is the character development and backstories. Very well thought out and the characters have depth to them. The plot was a lot of fun and you wanted to see what came next, but like I said the characters are what really drew me into this one! It was like reading a good book you couldn't put down! Highly recommended for any adventure player!

Interesting game, bit straightforward with little surprises and not that difficult to finish. For the experienced adventurer it's a few hours' gameplay. The cinematics are nice, the environments nicely detailed. An overall interesting game, though a bit short and easy.

Overclocked definitely has some flaws, but I still enjoyed this game quite a bit. As some other reviewers have mentioned, the puzzles are generally easy. As psychiatrist David McNamara, most of the gameplay lies in playing audio clips of patients' sessions in order to stimulate the other patients' memories. It's usually pretty easy to figure out what clip you need to play, and to whom, but the clips are all short so it's not a big inconvenience if you accidentally pick the wrong one. Once you stimulate the patient's memory, you go into his or her memory and actually play as the patient, which is a pretty cool device. The flashback puzzles are more varied, but they're still pretty easy. In most cases, your location and inventory are so limited that you can't help but figure out what to do. I have to give credit, though, because the puzzles are all pretty logical and use real-world objects, so don't worry about having to open any antique puzzle boxes or anything like that.

The backstory of what happened to the patients is okay, but a bit hackneyed. It won't take most people long to figure out what happened to the kids. I could forgive that if the characters were a little more interesting, but sadly, the patients are all pretty bland. That makes sense when you first meet them in the mental hospital, but as you go into the backstory (the flashbacks unfold in reverse chronology, "Memento"-style), the characters should have become more distinct, and they just didn't.

What saved the game for me, though, was David McNamara. He's easily the best adventure game character I've come across in a long time, and the side plot about David's personal demons and imploding marriage was far more interesting than what happened at the hospital. David isn't always a nice guy, but that's part of what makes him such a good character. There were a couple of times when I cringed at his actions, and one point where I flat-out tried to stop him from doing something (without success), but he is definitely the most interesting part of the game.

Despite the game's subtitle, there's not as much violence as you might expect. There are a few murders, although you only see one of them happen. There is one disturbing part of the game where you're forced to commit an act of violence, and even though it made sense, I still had a hard time going through with it. Still, unless you're very sensitive, that shouldn't stop you from playing this game.

Overall, I enjoyed Overclocked. The gameplay was logical, and the story ranged from "okay" to "compelling." Most of the voice acting was quite good, and the backgrounds were sparse but appropriately gloomy. The ending was mostly satisfactory, although there were a few loose ends, and the very last scene was a big "huh?" moment. Still, if you enjoy adventure games, I'd say this one is worth picking up.

This game started out with an interesting and mysterious premise as to why several young adults seemingly went crazy and ended up in a sanitarium. But the middle of the game then became bogged down with alot of repetative interviewing of the patients. Part of the puzzle solving was to figure out which recordings to replay on the PDA in order to trigger each patient to have flashbacks. While some may find this process challenging, I found it became repetative and tedious after awhile. The flashbacks themselves were more interesting since they take place in other locations and added some variety to the gameplay. There was also an interesting side story involving the main character's spouse. While the main mystery does get solved, there were some loose ends that did not get explained, and the final cutscene was also vague. It's an ok game to pass the time but I've played much better.

This is a straightforward point and click game with an initially interesting premise that kind of gets bogged down and leaves an unsatisfying ending - like many other adventure games.

Gameplay is easy and intuitive for anyone who has played classic point and click games. Graphics are nice, ran smoothly even on a laptop with a 1.4ghz celeron processor and an ATI Radeon Express 200M integrated graphics card. (If you aren't particualrly hardware savvy that means I played it with no problems on a fairly low spec machine)

The central character is very interesting, a psychiatrist who is brilliant with his patients but almost totally dysfunctional when interacting with amyone else. He isn't entirely sympathetic which is unusual for the 'hero'in a game like this but unfortunately you don't get to find out exactly why he is the way he is, just one of the loose ends that were mentioned in another review.

The backstory progresses by means of triggering memories in each of the 5 patients by playing them recordings of what other patients have revealed. This can get pretty tedious once you have built up a store of recordings and sometimes you just have to go through all of them to get a response. The backstory however IS intriguing, right up until you actually solve the final puzzle where the game just kind of fizzles out and leaves you hanging as to what you have actually achieved.

Despite my reservations I actually enjoyed this game which is why it gets 4 stars. The character of Macnamara is one of the best created in recent years and the plot draws you along as it is revealed in tiny increments after each flashback. The missing star is due to the ending and also the fact that there is one point in the game where you cannot progress if you have not performed a very minor action earlier on in the game - dead ends should be a thing of the past in these kind of games.

You can not install the graphic files of this game onto your hard drive. That means all the movies and cut scenes have to be loaded from the DVD drive. With a very high end computer, I waited from 30 seconds to 3 minutes every time one had to load. And there are a lot of cut scenes to load.

The graphics were below average even for the date this came out, and the voice acting is horrible. Chunks of dialog didn't even make it into the game, so at various times you'll hear a character reply to a question or statement that was never spoken.

You can tell that the voices were also recorded at different times under different conditions, so not only will different characters have different sound quality and volume levels, but in some long speeches (there are a lot of those) the actor's voice goes from loud to soft or from deep to tinny.

Half of the things you make the characters do don't make sense, or aren't supported by the story. Even after you wrap your mind around the concept that you have to find things and solve little puzzles for character that are having flashbacks to what they already did.

For the main character, sometimes you'll hear a memory that you can know should be tied to another specific patient. Most of the time you just have to keep playing various parts of the session recordings of one patient to all the others, and almost every session has at least 3 parts, only one of which is needed. Sometimes you don't have to play anything. Sometimes you have to do something else. It's up to you to figure out which is called for and when... or more to the point, to go back and forth between all of the characters clicking on them and playing recordings until you're the one that needs to be in a mental hospital.

Many times the main character Has to do something unrelated to the main plot in order for the story to progress. He might have to go outside the hospital, or call his wife or lawyer or the detective on the case, for no apparent reason, and often in the middle of what should be patient session time.

The best part of this game was the ending. Partly because it was one of the few decent movies in the game, and largely because it meant the game was over and could be uninstalled.

I haven't played too many games within the Adventure genre. This game is one of the few, and that was in large part due to the reviews that I had read on this site and some popular gaming sites. Upon completion of the game, I have to say that it was worth my time...largely because it didn't take up much of my time. I completed it in probably under 20 hours.
The strength of the game lies in its story and atmosphere as well as the seeming complexity of the main character. However, the weaknesses lie, in large part, in its editing of the story.
Reviewing this game is sorta difficult for me actually, because while I ultimately liked the game, I really don't know how to back it up. Because for every positive aspect, there's something else detracting from it. For example, I think the story was rather intriguing, although the editing seemed pretty poor as each of the parts of the story weren't exactly cohesive and left alot of questions at the end. It sort of left you feeling that some events in the story were simply contrived in order to move the game along rather than to move the story along convincingly, if that makes sense. The "Memento" style layout helped to cover up these fallacies however. Furthermore, as the game began to speed to a close, I couldn't help but feel that the developers were probably crunched for time as the plot began spiraling down even faster, and in some cases left several details of the story way behind. A few of the character conversations even began to get a little quirky and not make a whole lot of sense probably because they were edited at the last moment in order to shorten up the story. In fact, when the story ended, it actually left me scratching my head at one aspect, thinking "What? Why? That makes no sense."
One interesting aspect about this game was the game play. This game was actually more of an interactive story than a deeply challenging game of puzzles. But I have to say, I didn't mind it. In fact, I rather enjoyed that aspect as that helped the focus remain on the story and helped keep it moving at a good manageable pace. The puzzles that were available were not that difficult. I only used a walk-through a few times and that was only to help keep the story moving as I didn't want to spend too much time working them out.
Now, based on my critiques of the game, it seems as though I didn't like it, but ironically...I did. Furthermore, I'm glad I played it. And I think you should to....

Pros:
- Intriguing story.
- Strong atmosphere.
- Mysterious main character.
- Good pace.
- Game play (if you don't mind easy puzzles and very few at that)
Cons:
- Poor editing.
- Story sometimes lacked cohesion and will leave you asking quite a few questions that shouldn't have to be asked at the end.
- Game play (if you like lots of challenging puzzles)

This is no doubt a five star game. An engrossing (but not super original) story will draw you in the game and force you to come back to it day after day. It may be shortish but who cares what is important is the quality of the narration and the crisp graphics. Finally some puzzles that make sense. I hope we will see more like this. For once well done House of Tales

This is a very engaging and enjoyable game by the makers of "The Moment of Silence". The focus really is on story rather than puzzles so it won't be for everyone. But once I started I could not put it down. It isn't an extremely long game FYI but for $20 it's great entertainment.

I really enjoyed the game. I am an amatuer so I really needed the walkthrough when it got to the end. It had some interesting twists and very "smart" game. I highly recommend if you like suspence.