VideoGame (SNES game review) What Uncharted does for pulp adventure, this game did for slasher horror
Most video games have a theme: fantasy, comedic, horror, sci-fi, and so on. And there are games that try to recreate an experience, such as Madden NFL, which tries to feel like a playable version of a football game on TV, or Uncharted, which tries to be a pulp adventure movie in game form.
The original Clock Tower for the SNES is, quite ambitiously for its time, an attempt to be the playable version of a horror movie. And even with the limited tech it was designed on, it works.
The story is pretty much just in the background and can be summed up in one sentence. But once Jennifer is separated from her friends, the only thing you need to worry about is trying to survive.
The pacing is excellent. You can explore the mansion at your leisure, but at any time, threats - in the form of both the supernatural, and a very persistent killer - may show up. At any point, the game could suddenly switch from exploring, to running and hiding or trying to escape. Once you're safe, you can explore again.
Threats and scares are randomized. The first time I examined a certain mirror, hands came out of it and strangled me. Most other times I examined that mirror, nothing happened. Sometimes you turn on a faucet and blood comes out. Or maggots come out instead. Usually, it's just water. The unexpected scares not only startle you since you're not expecting them, but they also add replay value to the game. And it makes it as unpredictable as a good horror movie. Notice I said a "good" one.
What's more, the game is rather open-ended. There's 9 endings to get, all based on actions you take and things that happen. Besides that, your actions can affect many things in the mansion. Which of Jennifer's friends will die? Or will any be alive to help her? How about that man locked in a cage - if Jennifer gets locked in with him, will he go insane and kill her, or can she help him?
The main problem with the game is its length. 9 endings and randomization do what they can to add replay value, but once you've experienced it all, there's not much to come back to gameplay-wise. And, while this is the only SNES game to actually be unsettling to me at times and make me jump, once I learned all its tricks, it stopped being scary.
Even while it's imperfect, this game is still very innovative for its time, and worth checking out.
VideoGame Clock Tower 3
Clock Tower 3 is a Survival Horror game for the Play Station 2 released in 2003 by Capcom. The Player Character is Alyssa, a British school girl who receives a Distress Call from her mother on the eve of her 15th birthday. Instead of going into hiding as warned, she returns home only to find a mysterious man who tells her that her mother won't be coming back. The events that follow lead to her being pursued by supernatural Serial Killers and uncovering dark secrets about her bloodline.
First and foremost, fans of the previous games might be disappointed in the changes made to the series formula, such as the lack of Multiple Endings. It's also worth mentioning that the plot is Made of Stupid, starting off sane enough only to take a dive into complete idiocy about halfway through. The gameplay is mostly centered around running away from the aforementioned supernatural Serial Killers, called Subordinates. While they're menacing at first, each new foe is sillier than the last, making it increasingly hard to take them seriously even when they're threatening to cut you up. In between chases you will most likely be doing yet another Fetch Quest, handfuls of which are scattered throughout each stage. At the end of each level is a Boss Battle; since you spend the majority of the game fleeing instead of fighting, it can difficult to adjust to the sudden change at first. The Final Boss is also beyond frustrating.
On the other hand, the cutscenes, directed by the late Kinji Fukasaku, are top-notch. A handful of the deaths in said cutscenes, despite not being outright gorn, can be quite gruesome, making you want to save the restless souls and give them a happy ending. The music, while nothing notable, does a decent job, adding tension to chase scenes and otherwise tranquil exploration alike. The chase scenes can also be quite tense when unexpected, though this is less true in consecutive playthroughs due to them not being very varied.
In short, it's So Okay It's Average. You might want to rent this if you're a Survival Horror enthusiast with a free evening, otherwise I recommend Haunting Ground, a similar game executed much more competently. This Something Awful Let's Play is also arguably better than the game itself.
VideoGame Clock Tower: A bit of what horror games need right now.
You know why horror games like F Na F are often received so poorly? Other than the giant amounts of Fandumb, F Na F and many modern horror games rely heavily on jump scares. While effective temporarily, they also makes the games' replay value drop DRAMATICALLY(they don't work twice and get annoying after a while). So why the hell do they STILL work in Clock Tower? Because that isn't the only horror the series offers, and it just complements the bigger picture.
Clock Tower(concretely the first two games, as Struggle Within is executed questionably and the less we speak about CT 3 the better) is like playing a good old slasher film. It focuses on creating a sense of tension and the fear of being discovered by establishing your character as powerless against the odds of an unstoppable murderer and the need of using your wits to survive and get through. The main fear in the series is the one of being discovered when you're the most vulnerable. It's not a character driven series as it plays with primal fear through it's gameplay, and still manages to be elegant about it.
Said gameplay is simple yet a tad tricky to get used to. It controls like a point and click adventure, meaning you move your character(good ol' Jennifer Conne...I mean, Simpson) by moving the cursor on the screen and making click in the desired direction. This can make the chasing you face in the game frustrating, but more than all it makes it thrilling. It gives the player the sense of not being in control yet STILL manages to be perfectly playable via alternate command controls(left and right are mapped to the trigger buttons of the respective console, which allows for smooth running). Hiding also plays a HUGE part on the game, as finding places to get out of sight or setting traps is vital to(temporarily) get rid of the stalkers the series puts on your toes.
That praise given, the games aren't without their flaws. Between short playing times, the occasional annoyance to figure out the most obscure puzzles and the fact some of the spawning spots for the stalkers and traps to be set border on Looney Toons logic, there are issues that makes this quite an acquired taste.
Still, while I can't say the series is for everyone, Clock Tower offers so much with so little, it's hard to ignore what can be learned from it when creating a horror game.