Full Review

16 May 2008 - With games pouring out in the FPS and RTS genres, it is not often that thrillers get the same attention. Overclocked sells itself as a psychological thriller. But is it any good? We get probing to find out.

The name suggests that it is either a game about PC modding or cage fighting, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The game opens with you playing as David McNamara, a forensic psychiatrist called in to investigate mysterious happenings. It’s not every day you get to play a forensic psychiatrist and it doesn’t leap out as a solid foundation for gaming.

However, thinking back to classic adventure games, it’s all about the story that unfolds, and as the psychiatrist you get to gather information, uncover facts and move on. The psychiatrist is, in this sense, and interesting narrative device; you could say the profession is immaterial – it is the approach that is important.

Sticking with the narrative approach, when you reach particular stages in your work, you flip over to play as one of your "patients", so you then see the evidence and reconstruct the lost memories by playing as that character, which makes for an interesting approach, and brings to mind traditional adventure games, rather than graphics-orientated gore fests that are now so common.

Graphically, Overclocked is nothing special, perhaps evident in the rather low specs needed to run the game – regular notebook users can run this at the highest settings. That said, it is a heavy install at 5GB.

Acting on gathered facts is what the game is all about and in that sense things are laid out in a fairly linear fashion, so you have to figure things out and move on. Locations are also rather linear, so you are presented with places to go, and you wander from scene to scene, not in a responsive 3D environment – you can’t swivel the camera and look around, you just have to go to a point and click on things.

Gameplay can get frustrating in this sense and you have to be prepared to get stuck in for the long haul, more like reading a novel. And there-in lie the frustrations, you don’t seem to be able to progress without meeting particular conditions, which feels a little archaic, but is perhaps part of this genre.

As a thriller it does get into your head, not in the way that Silent Hill does, this isn’t all out horror, but it does get you thinking and elements are certainly eerie, and we don’t just mean the discursive nurse you meet. The story is incredibly depressing; early on it becomes apparent that the psychiatrist has enough problems of his own and it feels as though you are totally isolated.

VERDICT
We have issues with the size of the install as it seems unnecessary considering the fairly basic graphic interface. At times it does get frustrating when you just can’t find the things you need to make progress through the game.

That said, there is something intriguing about Overclocked, and that something could quite happily see you gaming away for some time as the misery unfolds around you.