Clock Tower (Game Series)
| Clock tower | |
|---|---|
| developer | Human Entertainment , Capcom |
| Publisher | ASCII Entertainment , Capcom |
| First title | Clock Tower - The First Fear (1995) |
| Last title | Clock Tower 3 (2003) |
| Platform (s) | Windows , SNES , PlayStation , WonderSwan , PlayStation 2 |
| Genre (s) | Action adventure , survival horror |
Clock Tower is a video game series by ASCII Entertainment . Since the first part was published in 1997, a total of three other parts and several spiritual successors have appeared.
Clock Tower - The First Fear
Clock Tower - The First Fear was released by ASCII Entertainment in 1995 for PC, SNES and PlayStation . The game was officially only released in Japan. There is now also a German version for the WonderSwan with the title "WonderSwan Clock Tower" (different cover than the actual clock tower).
action
Jennifer Simpson and her friends, Lotte, Laura and Ann are adopted by Mary Barrows from the Granite Orphanage. You will be taken to a villa that will be your new home. On the way to Simon Barrows, Mary's husband, Mary disappears without a trace. Jennifer goes after to check, but when she comes back her friends are gone. The real goal of the game is to survive and escape. Around ten different alternative game ends are possible.
Clock Tower (in Japan: Clock Tower 2)
Clock Tower was released in 1997 by ASCII Entertainment for the PlayStation . The game was developed by Human Entertainment .
action
Jennifer Simpson survived the drama at the Barrows family home and is now in psychiatric treatment. Besides her, the little boy Edward, who has lost his memory, was able to leave the house alive. The media is raging over the Scissorman case. Meanwhile, Jennifer tries to lead a normal life again. But one night the psychopath stands in front of her again and everything seems to start all over again. The killer from back then, the behaviorally disturbed Bobby Barrow (the new "Scissorman"), is said to have long since died. However, this part is not about Bobby, but about his brother Dan, who is shown as an ugly monster in the first part. If the game ends A and B are successfully reached, it turns out that Edward is Dan Barrow.
Game flow
A specialty of Clock Tower is certainly the control. If you click on a place or object in a room with the cursor , the character goes there.
At the beginning of the game, the player controls the character of Professor Barton from the University of Oslo, who is investigating this case. Every decision the player makes affects what happens next; so the character changes during the course of the game, so that, for example, Jennifer or Helen Maxwell (their adoptive mother) are controlled. Since no weapons are used in Clock Tower , other ways and means of rescue from the recurring Scissorman (who always announces himself through a threatening musical theme) have to be found. You either switch to escape mode or panic mode. If Scissorman gets too close to the player, the player falls into panic mode and has to constantly press the panic button in order, with good luck, to switch off Scissorman for a short moment. In the escape mode, however, you either have to find a suitable object with which Scissorman can be stopped, or look for a hiding place. The latter can be taken as often as required, but does not guarantee 100% success.
In the course of the game several areas are passed and there are encounters with many people. All of these events are influenced by inconspicuous decisions made by the player, and so there are also 10 different endings. Clock Tower is not a typical shooter game , but relies more on tension and tactics (the latter mainly relates to the struggle for survival; there are not many puzzles to be solved here).
Clock Tower 2 - The Struggle Within (In Japan: Clock Tower - Ghost Head)
Clock Tower 2 was released by Agetec for the PlayStation in 1998, but was only released in Japan and the US.
action
The 16-year-old Alyssa Hale visits the family house of her friend Ashley, but has to discover that the youngest daughter of the family, the six-year-old Stephanie, has turned into a bloodthirsty, constantly laughing, zombie who tries to close everyone with a machete kill. Alyssa's job is to find a way out of her situation and to uncover the secrets of what is currently happening.
Game flow
The game play is the same as its predecessor, but has been expanded a lot. In this way, Alyssa can transform "Bates" into her second self, so that various events can take place differently. Additionally, Bates can also handle weapons to keep Alyssa's enemies from killing her. In contrast to the predecessor, there are 14 different endings, the majority of which the player does not see at the end, but instead, if the player has made a mistake, leads to an early end of the game.
Clock Tower 3
Clock Tower 3 was released by Capcom in 2003 for the PlayStation 2 .
action
14-year-old Alyssa lives in a boarding school. She receives a letter from her mother asking her to go into hiding until after her 15th birthday. Alyssa worries and wants to see that her parents' house is all right. But before she knows it, she is in an unknown place in a different time plane and experiences how a little girl is murdered. Thereupon she herself is persecuted by the psychopathic murderer, has to survive, to clarify the sudden disappearance of her mother and again and again flee from ghosts or redeem them.
Game flow
Clock Tower 3 dispenses with the point & click control from the first part and now uses some elements that are already known from adventures like Resident Evil (e.g. the permanently mounted cameras).
In this part, too, the main character has no weapons (except holy water, which is only suitable for opening doors), which is why escape is the best solution as always. So the game does not rely on “chopping”, but more on tactics and subtle tension; so, for example, the eye-games of the persecuting murderer can panic tender hearts. As a completely new element in the horror game genre, a so-called panic bar was introduced, which replaces the life energy display. If Alyssa panics, this bar fills up. If the maximum is reached, Alyssa is hardly controllable because of fear, and her field of vision is distorted, making orientation more difficult. The only remedy is lavender water, which only serves to calm you down, not to fight ghosts etc. If Alyssa looks for a hiding place and is discovered, her panic level rises again and she runs away.
This part of the clock tower series also extends over several areas, and it also plays in several times. The game lives mainly from the dense plot and the exciting atmosphere, similar to part one. However, there are not many puzzles to solve here either, which would also be fatal, since the player is busy most of the time to survive.