Overclocked: A History of Violence is a point and click psychological adventure game.  You play a military psychiatrist David McNamara, you have been flown to New York City to investigate cases of five young men and women who were found scattered across New York City, all carrying guns but with no memory of what happened and how they got there.

McNamara explores the minds of the five traumatised patients through the use of hypnosis.  Once hypnotised the patients relive their past events in reverse chronological order.  When you first talk to the patients and manage to get them to recall what happened in their recent past, they will only remember the last few moments before they arrived in New York.

During each therapy session you will take control of the patients actions during the flashback, this multiple perspectives on a common event mixed with the reverse chronological order really draws you in as nothing can be taken on first impressions.  For example just because a man is brandishing a blood soaked knife while standing over a dead body doesn’t mean he killed the victim, these kind of scenarios are what each hypnosis session will present.  Each session McNamara takes is recorded on his trusty PDA.  These recordings are used to prompt further flashback from other patients who up until that point have been unresponsive.  The issue with this method is that you have no real direction as to which patient you are to play which therapy session too.  So as a result you can find yourself going from patient to patient playing each session in an attempt to trigger the next flashback.

Apart from the flashbacks the game sticks closely to the formulaic point and click rules.  The mouse cursor will change when something can be looked at, picked up or pressed.  On occasions, as with all point and click games you will find yourself aimlessly panning the mouse left and right hoping to blindly stumble onto an item to progress the storyline, this annoyingly happens fairly frequently as objectives aren’t always clear.  Puzzles are well laid out but never challenging, it is the way that the puzzles are worked into the flashbacks is the real challenge.  On times you will need to put an item in X location in one flashback for a further flashback with another patient to even be triggered.  Even with this to-and-fro action the story is painfully linear from start to finish.

Despite the linear nature of the game and the primary focus on the storyline surrounding the patients a secondary storyline is also interweaved throughout the game.  David himself is just as troubled as the patients he is investigating.  He is plagued by disturbing dreams and experiencing erratic bursts of violent behaviour.  Relationships with friends are at breaking point, his career is seemingly on the brink of destruction while his marriage is on the rocks.  David has to fight his own demons as well as discover the root cause of his mentally unstable patients’ problems.

You view all actions via a third person aspect, each location has a cinematic locked camera angle reminiscent of early resident evil games.  Locations are graphically impressive as gloomy skies hang over the New York City skyline and a persistent driving rain is omnipresent.  It is disappointing that such loving attention to detail is missing from character animations and from most facial animations.  Walking and running animations are bizarrely unnatural or not befitting of the character.  This is most noticeable when in control of the two female characters.  Walking animations are overly feminine as they both walk with a Jessica Rabbit styled provocative swagger and while running actions have a comic catch me catch me horror film damsel in distress look to them, which is totally inappropriate for the situations they find themselves in.

Facial animations are horrendous, characters display only the most extreme of emotions.  So if a character only slightly raises their voice expressions are somewhat blank whereas if they go off into a rage character will display realistic flaring of the nostrils, widening of the eyes and a change to an aggressive posture.  There is just no midpoint, so a cycle of calm – aggressive – calm is like switching on a light its either light or dark.  But one of biggest issue is the ghastly lip synchronisation.  This is mainly due to the game initially being a French language game and being translated into English.  If you are interested the game is playable in the major European languages but unless you are fluent in French lip sync problems will be persist.

Apart from the inconsistent quality with the speech other sound effects are good.  There is a persistent tension provided through a haunting soundtrack but some moments are accompanied by a totally inappropriate high tempo beat which manages to destroy any tension and immersion generated to that point.
Overclocked has an interesting flashback mechanic but it leans heavily upon this premise.  However the premise alone is not enough to sustain interest levels throughout the 8 to 10 hours of game play.  A fascinating storyline is let down by erratic voice acting and emotionless facial animations but the biggest disappointment is the unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise gripping story.

It would be difficult to recommend this game to all bar the most diehard of point and click adventure fans or someone who is willing to overlook its shortcomings and enjoy the game for its intense physiological themes.

Mark Craven

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