Retro Blog: Clock Tower

Survival horror is dying out. What a tremendous amount of shame. Let's hope that independent hits such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent will revive the genre once again for larger developers, because stop letting me believe that because the mainstream demands action horror games these days(Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, even Dead Space), it doesn't mean that horror must completely go extinct, or in favor of action first.

As we await the next successful horror game to be released, let's turn the clock back to the past for now, to a certain building which is central towards a franchise that hasn't seen much light be shined onto it these days, except for a peculiar remake called Remothered coming soon, as well as an even more eccentric movie being announced.

I'm talking about Clock Tower, a Japanese stealth adventure series based on survival horror, where helpless characters must run away and hide from insane people. Created by Human Entertainment, a defunct developer, currently there are four titles in the series, as well as a considerable spiritual sequel called Haunting Ground. Seeing as I have only beaten the first game on the SNES so far, let's talk about that.

The first one is a true hidden horror gem, really. As it is without a doubt the scariest game to experience on the console, Clock Tower's design has a sense of a genuine effective scary mood, where you must explore the orphanage mansion, solve puzzles and search for your fellow orphanages while trying to avoid the insidious Scissorman, a diminutive male with gray hair and a wrinkled face.

Gameplay wise, it plays slow, but this adds to the horror. It is similar to PC point and click adventure games, however, you have to use a controller here instead. You will also collect a few items which are useful for solving the few puzzles in the game, but perhaps it's most original feature is Panic Mode.

Repeatedly tapping the B button will allow you to overcome sudden danger and thus escape. While it is always helpful to use, do not forget to look at Jennifer's mood, who is the character you control. If her background is red, then you better get her more comfortable before going further on.

And do not think that this is a linear game. No, surprisingly, Clock Tower's rooms are random layered whenever you start over, which means that if you want to obtain the best ending out of the 9 possible ones, you will have to get a bit lucky and remain sharp with memorizing anything helpful.

The sound effects accompanying most scares are very well done, because they even let me jump up a few times. And while you are constantly sitting on the edge of your seat, either Scissorman pops up, or someone or something else scares you unexpected, such as a dead corpse in the taxidermic laboratory, which is probably the scariest occurance for me.

Although I must appraise the immersion, it's graphics, sounds and the setting, I am not fully content with the slow gameplay combined with a point and click structure. Perhaps if the latter was scratched, and you would only be able to to navigate further by the use of naturally walking towards locations or objects, perhaps then would I be more impressed aside from the horror it provides.

Last but not least is about the similarities the Italian horror movie called Phenomena(1985, directed by Dario Argento) and Clock Tower have towards each other, such as both featuring deranged mothers. Check it out: Phenomena and Clock Tower Similarities

And while you decide to try out Clock Tower, be sure to check Sweet Home by Capcom for the Famicom as well, another milestone in the survival horror genre, and it doubles as an inspiration source for the early Resident Evil games.

Rating: 7.4

The Last Story

Mistwalker's The Last Story is a hybrid combination of an action, stealth, strategy and first person shooting RPG, allowing for interesting battles to emerge. The nature of most of them happen to be fast paced though, resulting into a feeling of hastiness throughout the struggles. Fortunately, my worries about this faded away as I got more used towards this and understood the gameplay more.

Directed and designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is pretty much responsible for the majority of Final Fantasy, he pulled the same move again of using an ironic title for a video game. Top it off with songs composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and you've got a great duo working together once again on something that has plenty of potential with the combat system, but lacks in other factors.

Let me explain. The basic story involves a group of mercenaries having a rough life but they do their best to support and protect others. Soon enough, the house of Arganan recognizes their tactical strategies and courage, and starts enlisting them into the aid of defeating the Gurak once and for all, who are an invading army of monsters.

These characters's personalities and behaviours might have been affected a bit negatively because of the voice acting which has been provided for the western audience. British, Scottish and Irish(feel free to correct me) voices are used here to enlarge your stay at Lazulis Island mainly. While a Japanese option has been left out, and some of the actors just did not feel right, I can't say that I didn't enjoy this unusual decision in a market where JRPG's are usually translated into the obvious language of American instead.

Although the game starts out strong with it's presentation and linear direction, the further I got, the more I felt that more effort could had been made with things such as dungeon design, the amount of abilities available plus it's eventual breakdown of the storyline. It's a very predictable plot, except for a twist at the end.

It does feel like a brother or a sister towards latter Final Fantasies. It's got a fantasy setting alright, with a typical protagonist group and an antagonist, plenty of cut scenes and dialogue, pretty graphics(I was especially impressed with the lightning effects in some areas) and traditional RPG elements such as shops, save points and leveling up.

However, The Last Story is also a new take for the RPG genre in many ways, and the best example to use is by looking at it's combat system. There is a variety usage of overcoming situations and defeating enemies. In some battles, you can at first take down a few enemies by sneaking upon them, or by sniping them out at a distance. Most of the time you will be controlling Zael as the main character while you will soon be able to command the others in their way of fighting.

While this sounds entertaining(and it is), the full potential of the combat system has not been used in here yet, as there are so many more ways of playing around with it in my opinion. One point that I should remind to say is that there weren't many abilities available, and while some of the terrain design being used to fight on was fun, battlefields like those should had been more common! It needed more challenge towards the gamers and more creativity and balance between assault, stealth and defensive types of fights!

Speaking of the terrain, the game implements a terrain advantage system linked with the spells being used onto the ground, allowing Zael the power to diffuse these circles of mysticism and grant helpful side effects. More importantly, he is also infused with the Gathering ability, which will draw the attention of enemies nearby towards him, so that his allies will have time and space as their advantage, a huge help essential into winning the boss battles during the final chapters. It's an easy game until these happen.

Zael would sometimes also have to forcefully look around for a certain object in order to continue, much like I experienced with Metroid: Other M, a dissapointing title, but here it isn't as obnoxious. And oddly enough, you can also bump into about 95% of the people you encounter, and while they might say something about it, you can do this basically forever for no reason. Weird Japanese programming...

The inventory system was managed uninspiring and dull with it's available equipment and items. I did not even feel motivated to use this. The same goes for any side quests I might have missed while wandering around Lazulis City. The location isn't terrible, especially when looking at it's visuals and how "alive" it sometimes seems, but I just wanted to move on with the main story.

And ultimately, none of the characters where outstanding or memorable enough. While The Last Story offers an interesting varied style of gameplay with some impressive scenery and music, it is not a great game. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement in it's storyline, characters, depth and creativity.

Rating: 7.7

Cocktail Recipes

To celebrate another successful birthday, I will share some more recipes, 1 from the internet and two of my own:

Ebola Virus

40 ml Vodka (red)

30 ml Blue Curacao
20 ml Grenadine
20 ml Pisang Ambon Guarana Lime

Guardian Angel

30 ml Whisky
30 ml Tequila Gold
30 ml Banana Liquor
30 ml Pineapple Juice

Red Death

20 ml Vodka (red)

20 ml Whisky

20 ml Peach Liquor
10 ml Triple Sec
10 ml Grenadine
10 ml Lime Juice
10 ml Orange Juice

Ebola Virus's got a cool purple surface hidden beneath what seems to be at first a blue cocktail, Guardian Angel looks more like light beer than what the title says and Red Death, which I borrowed, is a delicious combination of alcohols and fruits.

Until next time! Also, if you ever stumble upon beautiful, tasty or weird cocktails, let me know!