Clock Tower 3 Review (no fat)

Game Description

You are Alyssa, a little girl who receives an odd letter from her mom telling her to hide herself after her 15th birthday. Confused, the girl rushes to her home to find her parents gone and the house occupied by a strange man. Not knowing that she is the only one who has power to destroy the evil that came on Earth, now she has to find out what happened and why her mother told her to hide. Clock Tower 3 is a mature rated game though, so don’t even think of buying it for your kids.

Clock Tower 3 Gameplay

At first glance you will notice that this game resembles Alone in the Dark quite a bit; the gameplay is almost the same, however, you will have some difficulties at first because the camera is not in your control and it may sometimes in the wrong direction.

The game is structured in chapters, and each chapter ends when you have fulfilled your goal: taking care of different criminals with the aid of the people they murdered. There is no actual combat involved as that wouldn't go down too well with the image of a 14 year old girl. Nevertheless, you will encounter friendly ghosts as well as some not so friendly murderers. Hiding and throwing holy water on your enemies to survive is the way to go. Complicating things is the panic meter; when it goes up you get hysterical and it’s not easy to stay control of your character.

Running from murderers may get your adrenaline pumping for a bit, but that gets a tad annoying when the pattern is repeated so often. When fighting at the end of the chapter you will be equipped with a holy bow and you will have to shoot the murderer with it but don’t think this is an easy job because it can get very frustrating because you will be paralyzed whenever you charge your bow.

The game itself is pretty simple if you get to manage your fear properly and also the puzzles are easy to unravel and even the hidden items are not hidden too deep. Overall the game ends up as linear and you won’t really get stuck. Sometimes you hide and he comes searching for you in the room and you pray from your dark corner that he won’t find you. Just think about that! Impressive...huh?

Making no combat and bringing the little girl in the game really was revolutionary and really gives the scariest feeling of them all: you have no power and all you have to do is to hide. So the game turns out to be more realistic than others where you get to kill hundreds of enemies without getting a scratch.

Clock Tower 3 Sound

What would a horror game be without proper sound to raise the hair on the back of your neck? Clock Tower has an unforgettable soundtrack, quite scary as it is. Actually this soundtrack will haunt you even when you aren’t playing the game because it really has a big impact on players and every time a killer is near you the music will play making you feel the danger.

The audio has his low points as well and it ruins the overall impact a bit when sometimes the voices get repetitive and you will hear the same thing a little too often, but then again you will be well occupied otherwise in trying to save your life so some may even overlook this bit.

Clock Tower 3 Graphics

There are no excellent graphics to back the gameplay, but the game manages to be scary regardless and that says something about the gameplay even while leaving us to think how good it could have been with some effort in this department.

Overall the graphics are good; they carry the scary, strange and dark atmosphere without looking fake. The characters are well made and they really look scary, also Alyssa looks so innocent and powerless that intensifies the experience. The disturbing aspect is the camera control: it gets really annoying sometimes and the angles won’t be any help when you try to hide from the enemies.

Clock Tower 3 Overall

This game has it all: scary even without combat, music is enough to give you chills, and whoever said you outgrew nightmares. The problem is that Clock Tower 3 can be too violent for some people because some sequences are just disturbing and painful to look at, however, this will be loved by the horror fans.

A decision on purchase depends on how well you can put up with extreme shock every 3 seconds. For avid horror fans, this can be a bit of an overdose but if you’re really into the genre this should be a treat.

Clock Tower 3 Price

The game currently retails for $5.84