Title: Overclocked: A History of Violence
Platform: PC
Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive
Developer: House of Tales
ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Striking out into the docile world of the PC point-and-click adventure game Overclocked: A History of Violence is a challenge after playing through such titles as Condemned 2, Dark Sector and Devil May Cry 4. Unlike these bloody and violent titles, Overclocked first feels more like a virtual wall with still scenery than a game. It's a new frontier without the whirlwinds of twitch controls and constant movement, with nothing but the desert, the wind and the occasional lone squawking bird flapping overhead. Its characters move with the gracefulness and ease of synchronized swimmers rather than running at turbo-charged speeds. But somehow Overclocked manages to tame the beast. However, getting past a few of the game's hurtles is more than just a stroll in the valley.

The hard part about writing a review of this nature is not from conjuring the words based on new experiences, but omitting the right information to keep from unleashing potential spoilers. Overclocked depends on its plot twists to keep you hanging on until the very end, and it does so extremely well once the plot's momentum begins to pick up. Unfortunately, the game finds itself suffering from an extremely dull start - the virtual wall previously described - thus the grin-and-bear-it factor immediately comes into play. So do you stop before the humdrum events become too much to bear, or do you continue to see where the ride takes you? If you can get past that humongous hurdle, the protagonist's private life blossoms and everything gets extremely interesting.

Still, technical issues and graphical errors plague the title as well. Granted, the game looks superb in resolutions of 1440x900 and greater, but there is just no excuse for invisible liquids (drinking at the bar) and polygon collision errors (walking through furniture). At times the animation feels retro, wonky and robotic in a way, as if the developer rushed the scene through production. Then there are other times - especially when the camera zooms in on central characters - that the virtual actors feel believable with identifiable facial expressions and body movement. Dramatic camera angles and split-screen scene compositions bring the somewhat mechanical characters to life as well.

Overclocked blends classic point-and-click adventure gameplay with a psychological thriller storyline and setting.

But the biggest technical problem the game faces are long transitions between in-game scenes and pre-rendered videos located on the disk, thus interrupting the flow of the story. Why aren't these installed on the hard drive? The game takes up almost 5 GB of hard drive space, yet the DVD thrashes in its tray.

Still, the visual presentation does extremely well by pulling the gamer into its gloomy and gritty world, offering detailed stages and great weather effects. New York City comes across as a depressing and dangerous city laced with shadowy figures and murky alleyways.

There's nothing about Overclocked that feels overdramatic; every foreboding scene feels as if it were ripped straight from the very fabric of reality. And while it's entirely possible Hollywood could generate a decent film based on the Overclocked story and atmosphere, it's also hard to look past the game's theatrical feel. The visuals are impressive indeed, but the game lacks diversity in its limited stages, locking the player in three scenarios throughout the entire story.

The Overclocked plot concerns David McNamara, an ex-U.S. Army psychiatrist sent up from Washington DC to investigate - or rather treat in this case - five young adults locked away in the Straten Island hospital. Something drove these five people mad, sending them screaming into Times Square waving guns. Hired by the New York Police Department, McNamara digs into their memories, locked away behind iron bars and blank eyes, revealing bits and pieces of the events prior to their rampage through hypnosis. Rather than taking a linear route, the story instead goes backwards, in bits and pieces like a good episode of "Lost," keeping the gamer hooked until the final big reveal.

But as McNamara pursues the hidden events, he is confronted by different flavors of adversaries. The biggest threat to the investigation is himself, which adds an incredible depth to a rather stale analysis. Facing a possible divorce while stranded in New York City, McNamara struggles to deal with his personal demons that come to haunt him in the present. Throw in the fact that the hospital's chief resident, Doctor Young, doesn't want McNamara there to begin with, and the air slowly grows tense as each of the five chapters unfolds.

Unfortunately, there are many plot progression points that just didn't make sense or are left unresolved by the game's end. Some of the dialogue doesn't make sense as well and often feels extremely rushed and pasted together, adding to the confusion. The dialogue problems may stem from the fact that Overclocked started out as a German game. Perhaps something was lost in the translation to English. Bad voice acting doesn't help matters either (you can tell that one actor voiced multiple characters), nor does the sketchy voice synchronization offer any additional realism. The end result produces questionable dialogue spoken by robotic mannequins with sub-par acting skills. Granted, a few characters pull off the illusion rather well (McNamara, Doctor Young and the quirky hotel porter), but the bad outweighs the few good eggs.

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