PlayStation Basement #62 - Clock Tower

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on November 2nd, 2019.

It’s time again to return to the PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly, Saturday review of an obscure or odd game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!

I wasn’t going to do it, but here it is – one last horror review! This is the last horror review to ever be written, I think, because this game, Clock Tower was the last horror game to ever be made possibly. The last sentence is just a big lie, the opening to a trailer. “See the horrible Scissorman! Feel the terror in real, polygonal 3D!” Clock Tower came to a console near you (in Japan) on December 13^th, 1996, to a console near you (in North America) on October 1^st, 1997, and to viewers like you all in Europe sometime in February 1998. In a truly psychotropic nightmare of nonsense, the game is actually the second in the series; the real first Clock Tower was released on the Super Famicom in the days of yore (1995). Developer Human and publisher Ascii decided to confuse people hardcore in a villainous Halloween trick that still affects almost the entire world until this day. That’s just the beginning to this point-and-click horror story, though.

Clock Tower’s cover art is chilling in every region. The North American and European covers are basically the same (though the latter is a reversed version of the former): both show the murderous Scissorman in front of the Barrows Castle about to kill the viewer with his bloody weapon. The art is kind of amateurish, but the odd angles work fine with everything. The drawing is pretty detailed and quite eerie. The Japanese art is much more emotional and cinematic, depicting heroine Jennifer praying in the darkness while a ghostly Scissorman is depicted in the lower corner glowing with an eerie light. The Japanese cover is much cleaner, darker, and scarier. It really looks like a film poster. Both covers do showcase elements of the horror within, however.

Clock Tower isn’t the prettiest game, but it’s okay. Characters and settings look proportional and realistic. Textures are visible, and animations are actually pretty solid. Still, the colors and lighting can seem strange, and the models used don’t have a particularly high polygon count. The FMVs are much earthier in color tone, though they also aren’t really advanced either. To me though, everything looks good enough, and what you see is what was basically available at the time.

The sound of Clock Tower is pretty good at making a person unnerved. There isn’t much musick, cues occurring when being chased or during specific dialogue. For the majority of the game, you only hear ambient tracks of water, birds, insects, wind, and the like. Sometimes, there is nothing to hear but the footsteps of your character. Sound effects seem sudden at times with all of this silence. When something terrifying happens, like the Scissorman breaking down a door or emerging from a hidden place, musick will cue and sounds will play. I’ve almost jumped out of my seat! The title theme is really excellent as well. Voice acting is kind of spotty, especially during the opening FMV, so it’s not all good. The sound does an adequate job to make the player scared overall, and that’s mostly what counts.

Clock Tower is a point-and-click adventure game. You control a cursor, point to an area or an object to interact with, push a button, and your character moves to that location or interacts with that object. You have an inventory to utilize items from as well, and there is the Panic Button to mash when you are being attacked. For the majority of the game, you‘ll be pressing a button to advance dialogue or to direct your character to explore as mentioned. Eventually the Scissorman appears, and it’s time to figure out a way to get away. You can figure out places to hide or find makeshift weapons to use. Many of these weapons turn the game into a slapstick comedy. You can hit the monster with brooms, get his head stuck in a pot, or trick him into opening a door and falling off a cliff. It’s almost weird, but the comedy helps lighten the mood of a slow and serious game. It also isn’t entirely different from many slasher films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street that often have some comedy bits to make the viewer laugh uncomfortably.

Overall, Clock Tower is an interesting replication of a slasher film. The Scissorman is a frightening antagonist, and some of these sequences require sharp thinking to outwit him. I should reiterate that Clock Tower is a slow game, and the exploratory adventure gameplay won’t appeal to everyone. I enjoyed basically playing a horror film, the branching storylines, the mysterious atmosphere, and the eerie sound design. You might like it too.

Clock Tower receives a Good.

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