While far from the popularity of its heyday, the point and click genre is still very much alive for those who know where to look. Or perhaps, more accurately, for those with PCs. The welcome return of Sam & Max with their bite-size episodic adventures might have something to do with granting the ailing genre a new lease on life, although at the same time, there are those out there looking to do something a little different than the usual blend of witty one-liners and obscure inventory puzzles.
Enter Overclocked, a game you probably haven’t heard of from a developer about whom you likely know equally as little. The best way to describe it is probably as a point and click version of the excellent Fahrenheit, which in itself owed more than a little to the classic adventure genre. From the sombre mood to the focus on characters and interaction, this is a far cry from the Monkey Islands and Broken Swords of this world and the puzzles reflect this.
Stepping into the shoes of troubled shrink David McNamara, the player is tasked with investigating the admission of five youths to a mental facility, all of whom exhibited displays of strange and violent behaviour at the same time. McNamara’s unique brand of regression therapy means you’ll also play as the five young men and women during flashback sequences as he reconstructs the events leading up to their admission to the down-trodden Staten Island Hospital, and this is where the majority of the traditional ‘puzzles’ come into play – figuring out codes, solving basic switch puzzles and even manipulating your surroundings as the panicking quintet flee for their life from terrors unknown.
What this does mean, unfortunately, is that Overclocked can feel rather bitty at times, with control switching between kids and McNamara with alarming frequency. When you finally start to make inroads with the patients, each session is recorded to your PDA, which is the catalyst for the majority of investigatory breakthroughs – by playing snippets of one patient’s recordings to another, you can often learn more about the events that transpired. This trick is used a little too much, although the repetitive nature of the task and the somewhat grim subject matter do make you feel for the main character, whose private life turns out to be far more interesting than his day-to-day grafting albeit for all the wrong reasons.
While it starts out unbelievably slowly, McNamara’s case soon builds into an intriguing and genuinely fascinating psychological journey both for patients and doctor, even if it never really ups the pace until the last hour or so. There’s a wonderfully disjointed feeling in having McNamara descend slowly into madness while his patients work towards getting back on the right track and both aspects are handled brilliantly. Add into the mix all kinds of other questionable goings-on and you’ve got a tale that will have any thriller fan gripped.
Even presentation is helpful in painting Overclocked’s bleak take on modern life, set against the backdrop of a New York storm with no respite in sight. Popular tricks like wiping to multiple camera angles are employed to further the game’s cinematic feel and here, just as well as Fahrenheit, they work exceptionally well – while games like Lost Odyssey use these elements for nothing but style, Overclocked has enough conviction and purpose in them to more than warrant their inclusion.
So we’ve established that it’s not your traditional example of point and click adventuring but with the focus firmly on subject matter and mental intrigue, Overclocked remains an interesting proposition. You’ll never see those moments when you’re frantically scouring the screen for a tiny pick-up or furiously putting your inventory through the classic ‘use-everything-with-everything-else-just-in-case’ test – merely by listening back through recordings from the patients, you can often logically deduce what to do or who to see next. It does take a few hours to get into Overclocked’s mindset but once you do, there are some great puzzles and some even better developments in the interesting narrative, where again even the age-old trick of events unfolding backwards doesn’t feel as contrived as it does in many movies that attempt such a device.
Having been playing this alongside GTA IV, it has to be said that Overclocked makes a great counterweight to Rockstar’s opus. The gritty, murky New York here is the antithesis of Liberty City, its linear progression and dark psychological subject matter often still drawing curious parallels to the biggest game of the year. It’s 24 to GTA’s Police Squad if you will, offering a hearty feast of interesting and intellectual gaming to those with the patience to see it through. Which, unfortunately, is probably a rather small percentage of people. The sedate pace will be enough to put many off while the deadly serious tone will see off more still but despite its niche appeal and somewhat stunted size, Overclocked is an interesting example of genre renovation all the same.
