Clock Tower

CLOCK TOWER

SLUS-00539-8540
Copyright © 1997 HUMAN Corporation / ASCII Entertainment
Sony PlayStation, 1 Player
CD ROM
Mature 17+
$49.99

—by Maria M. Rider

Beware the Scissorman, he is coming to get you! One year ago, Jennifer Simpson climbed up a steep cliff to escape the evil Scissorman at the Barrows Mansion. Just as she thinks she's safe, the Scissorman is back!.
ASCII Entertainment's CLOCK TOWER, sequel to the original CLOCK TOWER in Japan, puts the player in the role of two protagonists: Jennifer Simpson or Helen Maxwell. The goal of the game is to guide the characters closer to the dark secret of Scissorman and not get killed in the process. There are ten different endings, five for each character, that the player must complete to finish the game.
The player also takes different roles in certain parts of the game, such as the nosy news reporter, Nolan Campbell, or the professor of criminal psychology, Samuel Burton. It makes the game a lot more diverse, instead of having just a single character to control. There are also different modes of play in the game. There is Normal mode, where the player is free to search the room she is in at her leisure or until Scissorman finds her; Panic mode, where the character's life is threatened and the cursor blinks red; and Escape mode, when the Scissorman comes to chase the character. In Escape mode, only certain points are clickable, where the player can hide, fight, or merely walk into the next room.

If the player gets in a tough situation and is stuck in Panic mode, click quickly on Scissorman and the character will fight him hand to hand and escape. The player can only do this three times consecutively without eventually getting killed. If the player rests up, the health of the character will go from red to yellow and then white, when he will be ready to encounter Scissorman at full strength.
The player can also make the character pick up items, and these come in handy later. CLOCK TOWER plays better with the mouse, as you must click and drag in a good portion of the game. So if you have a Sony PlayStation mouse, I'd suggest you use it.
There are four scenarios, including the prologue, and the game flows from prologue to scenario, to save screen, to intermission, to the next scenario. The player must complete each scenario successfully, depending on how he guides the character throughout the game.
CLOCK TOWER also contains a Pamphlet screen where you can find the hints that are in the game itself. These hints are slightly helpful in some respects, but sometimes they aren't helpful at all.
Although the animation, graphics, and story are well done, the basic gameplay starts to get very old after spending a long while in the third scenario. The player can trick Scissorman quite easily time and time again with the same trick. But being a horror fan myself, I enjoyed the frightening killer maniac genre and the initial story.
I would like to have played the original CLOCK TOWER instead of its sequel, but you can't have everything your way. Some of the load times are long, but this gives the player some time to collect her thoughts for the next scenario. All in all, this is a solid game. If you liked playing the popular "D" game or Sega Saturn's LUNACY, get this game. It can be challenging to a point, but like I said before, it gets old quickly.

Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)