Overclocked: A History of Violence

Adventure 2007 Windows Nordic Games Action Indie Detective mystery

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While certainly not up to the standards of adventures like The Longest Journey, Overclocked is an intriguing, if not entirely successful, game which starts out well enough but which soon loses its way. It's got a very well told and interesting narrative, but it's less effective at implementing meaningful interactivity into the story, so unless you only care about this latter aspect, you may want to steer clear. The game throws you into modern New York as a violent storm kicks off above the city. You play the part of a specialized psychiatrist who's called in to advise on a case involving some very disturbed individuals. As you proceed through the game, you'll switch between several characters and it's not long before a chilling game of psychological horror unfolds. The basic gameplay involves exploring several different locations while speaking with the various shady and disturbed characters in the hospital, while attempting to tease out the story. However, there's just a little too much listening to extensive and fairly repetitive expository dialogue for this to actually be much fun. The story and characters are certainly interesting enough, and are well written, making it easy to get sucked into things, but the over reliance of wading through the dialogue which you've already heard slows things down to a snail's pace. A curious issue is that the story actually gets less interesting the more you uncover, while a subplot involving the main character also takes away from the overall impact. The puzzles aren't all that great either, so when combined with the other issues, it makes it hard to really recommend this one.

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