Bargain Bin Games Revue - Round One

Now let's look at our adventure title. Overclocked: A History of Violence is a fairly recent contribution to the point-and-click adventure genre by developer House of Tales. While we use the term overclocked primarily to describe the ramping up of one's CPU/GPU/PC, another definition describes a person's tendency to get a little too wound up, mentally as well as emotionally. In the game, you'll be introduced to five individuals who match the latter description. (Ed: Drat! I was hoping to find a way to ramp up my reflexes….)

In Overclocked, the character you control is Dr. David McNamara, a clinical psychologist summoned by confidant and detective of the NYPD, Joe Moretti, to assist with an unusual case. Upon arrival, the doc checks into a nice hotel and refers to his handy PDA to obtain further instructions from Moretti. The case at hand involves five teenagers found committing acts of violence in various areas of New York City, all severely traumatized by unknown events. Is there a connection between these five individuals? Could it be that their conditions are related? That's what McNamara is hired to find out.

Once you reach Staten Island by means of the ferry, you'll make your way to the home of your new patients at a rundown asylum, whose last remaining staff members include a soon-to-be retired doctor and his head nurse, both who display little interest in diagnosing the five patients. Upon first contact with the residing doctor, McNamara learns that he'll receive little cooperation from the two. So it's his show. Your first task as a psychologist in the game is to meet the five patients, with demeanors that range from unresponsive to aggressive to full-blown catatonic. Your job is to get the patients to come to life and shed some light on what put them inside this hellhole of a psyche ward. This is where the meat of the game begins. Armed only with a pendulum used for hypnosis, McNamara is able to awaken each patient to a certain extent. When this happens, the scene changes to a series of flashback sequences where you'll take control of each individual and play out the events that led up to the craziness. As the game progresses, you will use your PDA to play back previous sessions to the various patients to unlock the next scene. Goodbye inventory manipulation, hello PDA audio files…. (Yes, that's as "exciting" as it sounds.)

If you're at all familiar with adventure games, you'll know that most revolve around stories, character interactions, and puzzle solving. Overclocked is no exception to the rule. However, it seems that a bit more time and attention on behalf of the development team in regards to these aspects might have made for a much more rich adventure experience. As it stands, the voice acting is just so-so, and there seems to be an overall lack of life to the game as a whole. Also, when it comes to entertaining your intellect instead of your gun-toting loins, it takes a great deal more than Overclocked offers to keep you playing. With a limited number of characters and environments that you'll visit over and over, the game becomes quite bland. In addition, the story though interesting never seems to take off. Instead, it keeps the same pace, offering little in the way of suspense. While this doesn't necessarily make it a bad game, some gamers may find themselves having to break away for some Call of Duty 4 action way too early into the game. Sadly, adventure fans may also find the game a bit underwhelming. With that in mind, Overclocked is a tough sell that I simply cannot wholeheartedly recommend.