Clock Tower or rather Clock Tower 2 as it was called in Japan, but since Clock Tower was never released outside of Japan, it's okay to call Clock Tower 2, Clock Tower, but only in the West obviously. Just to clear that up.
The first question people always ask is what is it? It be a point-and-click survival horror based on a 2.5D graphics engine. The object being to have your character survive by not being chopped to bits by a giant scissors wielding maniac. Which is accomplished by running away, using various items to twat him with or climbing into closet or toilet or something. Think Leisure Suit Larry meets Resident Evil.
And you know what? It sort of half works. The developer, Human, managed to give the game a very John Carpenter Halloween feel, right down to the tinkle-tinkle piano music, composed with sole intention of scaring the bile out of me.
Also like the film Halloween, the game is set in absolute normality. A normal professor, a normal research assistant placed in normal settings. It has a normal hotel, a normal house, a normal office. Plus, the whole game is set in normal Norway. The only thing being that your characters are stalked by a blood drench hunch-back loony with a four feet-long piece of razor sharp stationary equipment. This works. The game has a very chilling edge to it but with just one caveat “Only in places...”.
You see, it only half works.
Firstly, it can be cripplingly boring. It takes forever for dialogue to finish. You can find yourself trapped in a room, unable to leave because some minor trigger hasn't been triggered. You must have had every conversation and have looked at every object before the game lets you leave. It's really irritating. Especially during the prologue. At points I longed for the Scissorman to release me from the purgatory of trying to figure out what I hadn't heard or indeed seen. Also, the characters never seem to really display any meaningful sense of urgency. There are two modes of walking. There is walk slowly to a point by pressing X and if you double tap the X button your character runs a bit quicker. What was needed, in my humble opinion, was perhaps a a triple tap of the X button to indicate I'm being chased by a psychopath. Because honestly, if I was chased by madman, I'd run a bit harder than if I urgently needed to look at a blackboard.
The in-game tension comes and goes too. For instance, when Scissorman is on your tail, when the slice-slice sound of his imminent arrival is announced, the game is indeed chilling. As the frequency of the slicing sound increases, fumbling with the game-pad can be nerve racking at best, especially while you are trying to figure where you can hide. As an aside, what you must not do is corner yourself, or have no escape route. If you do manage to corner yourself, and Scissorman is near, you will crap yourself. However, once I was cornered by Scissorman, so I sprayed him with mace that happened to be at hand, and he did nothing more than bugger-off for fifteen minutes, and I was left wandering the location, completely clueless as to what I am actually supposed to be trying to accomplish.
In fact the whole “great game”, “crap game” theme is carried on through out. It's like half the development team cared and the other half really didn't. A good example is stumbling across a dead body with a spike rammed through it. Your character sees it then buckles to the floor and vomits, it's not terribly graphic, it doesn't need to be, but it's done really well. A few moments later I walked my avatar into the security guards room, and I can see someone sat at a chair. Now it was the first person I had met since the action had really started, so double-clicked on him and lo-and-behold his head falls off, to which my character responds with what was tantamount to an 'Oh!'
It ruins the flow and kills the tension. Clock Tower was a brilliant idea, it's just the execution was a little lacking. What it needed was for someone to sit down with the game just after it was made and make a few minor suggestions, the whole thing could have tightened up with almost no effort, and this game could have been an all time classic. Sadly, it's not.
3DOKid.
After Silent Hill's brilliance and Resident Evil's well-done execution of B-movie concepts done via C-movie execution, I thought Clock Tower's cheap thrills were just really stupid. Maybe I've been spoiled, but the whole "Oh, the clock stopped moving, let me stick my head out through this tight hole to LOOK AT IT with my powerful clock-fixing gaze will help" just tossed any enjoyment of the game out the window, followed by all my furniture.