Bargain Bin Games Revue - Round One
by Eddie Turner on September 1, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
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….)
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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kilkennycat - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
Penumbra:Black Plague is the second game in a trilogy. The first is Penumbra: Overture, still available retail from Gamestop and on-line sources for $19.99. The game mechanics in Black Plague are a lot less awkward than in Overture. The third in the series Penumbra:Requiem has just been released in the past few days and is available as an add-on EXPANSION to Black Plague. Afaik, there will never be a retail version of the Requiem expansion, however it is available for download purchase for $9.99, currently from www.gamersgate.com. The download version will run with either a retail copy or download copy of Black Plague. Gamersgate has all parts of the trilogy separately available for download purchase and also offers Black Plague Gold Edition for $19.99, which contains both Black Plague and Requiem. This combo may also be released retail, but I have not come across any (US) sources so far. See:-http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?page=shop&...">http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?pag...what=bro...
Not affiliated in any way with Gamersgate. I have not (yet) purchased any games from them. I have retail copies of both Overture and Black Plague, knew that Requiem had just been released for download only, so came across Gamersgate yesterday in my hunt.
duderockin - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
this could also be a useful article series for those who want the more zen perspective of 20/20 hindsight.also good for those who hate spending more time on video card catch-up than actual gaming.
GTForce - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
Check out Falcon:http://home.novint.com/">http://home.novint.com/
and how Penumbra series benefits from it:
http://home.novint.com/games/games_list.php?c=0&am...">http://home.novint.com/games/games_list.php?c=0&am...
http://home.novint.com/games/games_list.php?c=0&am...">http://home.novint.com/games/games_list.php?c=0&am...
cosmotic - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
I don't really see any need to do (Ed: blah blah) notes. I presume there is an editorial process that is two way? Maybe these 'issues' should be resolved and the text of the article changed. This makes for an easier read and would help the professionalism of the articles. Thanks.JarredWalton - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
I felt most were somewhat humorous. Sorry they didn't please, since I added them. Without having Crazy Machines 2 I couldn't verify whether PhysX drivers were sufficient or not.Pottervilla - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
I agree with the humorous part.However, you guys are one of the premier hardware review sites on the web--I would expect you to know about things like drivers. Also, I would expect that if you were reviewing a game, you would have a copy of it somewhere, and maybe a couple PhysX capable graphics cards.
Overall, it was still a good thing to mention (the possibility that PhysX drivers might open up the extra levels), but I have come to expect a little more than maybes from this site--and a little communication between editor and reviewer would be nice too. :)
I hope this is constructive criticism--keep up the good work.
Nihility - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
...suck.The whole point of the titles is to make it easier to navigate a 7 page article. Sure it's fun to be random at times and be witty, but seriously give us readers a break please.
StormEffect - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
I thought they were clever. Enjoy the creativity, if you want numbers and easily searchable reviews go to google or use meta-critic.Anandtech readers can be so dry and boring sometimes. Waa waa waa.
JarredWalton - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
And here I thought the readers might enjoy some literary quotes as a change of pace. I mean, isn't the point that you actually read about the games rather than just look at a page heading and decide whether or not that's worth reading? Or you can treat it like a magazine and click through the pages; if you see the pictures and don't feel like reading, click to the next page. It takes all of 5 seconds. Besides, more page views are good for the articles - the popular stuff is more likely to get similar articles in the future, since after all we are a business the depends on advertising.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, September 2, 2008 - link
Honestly I think it's got to be a balance between something creative and something functional, I try to blend the two as much as I can whenever I write - sometimes I get it right, other times I don't.I've never been a fan of forcing pageviews on an article, my thinking is always that if an article is good enough it'll attract its own traffic, regardless of how it's structured.
Thanks for the feedback, while I can't always guarantee that we'll be perfect - we'll definitely try :)
Take care,
Anand