Clock Tower 3 review (PlayStation 2)

Clock Tower 3 is a suitably dark and moody game. The environments are all very dingy and sinister, and they manage to achieve an intangible quality of authenticity--that is, you do feel like you're crawling the damp streets of a bombed-out London in the 1940s, for instance. Character models (of which there are few) look fine and animate pretty well. The game doesn't feature a whole lot of music, but each chapter has an urgent piece that plays when a killer is on your trail. Clock Tower 3 won't blow you away with its sensory stimuli, but it certainly gets the job done, and it manages to be pretty creepy in the process.

As mentioned before, the cutscenes in the game deserve special mention. Quite simply they're some of the best that you'll find in any video game. The voice work in the game is suitably British and generally high quality, and the cinemas make brilliant use of motion capture in animating the characters. Further, it's very clear that the scenes were lit, framed, and paced by a veteran film director, because they play out exactly like, well, a movie. It's really rare to see this level of cinematic flair in a video game, and it's cool that the late, venerable Fukasaku got to add his talent to a new medium before his passing. The story and cinematics in Clock Tower 3 are actually strong enough that they make up for some of the gameplay's flaws and spur you on to keep playing.

One last note: Clock Tower 3 is disturbingly violent. This isn't a Resident Evil style of violence, where you're blowing the heads off of zombies; rather, the violence is realistic and a bit alarming. One scene depicts the hammer-wielding killer bludgeoning a young girl to death, while another has a villain gouging a man's eyes out and then plunging his elderly mother into a vat of acid. It's not really worse than you'll see in any slasher flick, but the game's personal treatment of the violence makes it hit home. The M rating is definitely earned.

Clock Tower 3 is mostly a welcome change of pace from the typical survival horror formula. It's interesting to play a game in this genre where your character basically can't fight back--you have to hide and use your wits to win instead of gaining an increasingly heavy arsenal of weapons. This powerless feeling as you flee from a pursuer adds a good bit to the scariness of the game--it's just a shame that the gameplay parts don't come together in a less awkward fashion. It's also on the short side--at just five chapters, you'll be able to finish it in roughly six to eight hours. But the grievances presented by the game's mechanics and brevity are made up for by the excellent production values and interesting storyline. In the end, the uneven parts of Clock Tower 3 add up to a pretty enjoyable whole.