Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
667A playthrough of Agetec's 1999 point and click horror adventure game for the Sony PlayStation, Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within.
Clock Tower 2 is actually the third Clock Tower game (the first being an SNES game that was later ported and upgraded for other platforms) , and is the last in the famous survival horror series to use the classic PC style point-and-click interface.
The story is completely different from the first two games this time around (which would explain why this was a spin-off rather than a numbered sequel for its Japanese release), focusing on Alyssa Hale, a girl living in California (because that house looks totally American... sure) who suffers from some sort of psychological disorder giving her multiple personalities. If she is stressed enough, she "becomes" Mr. Bates, a rough, no-nonsense kind of guy who doesn't put up with anything from anybody. Alyssa carries a magical amulet that helps her suppress this manifestation, but she'll need a lot more than just that to survive.
The game starts as she's visiting the house of Mr. Tate, a friend of her fathers. Things go south pretty quickly when Mr. Tate's daughter Stephanie begins to chase Alyssa with a knife, and the events in the Tate house set an entire series of events in motion that will ultimately reveal family secrets that have been long kept secret.
It's a bit hokey, but it's a setup that has some potential. It instantly starts with the haunted house, psychological disturbances, things moving without explanation, the killing of (or being killed by) small children, people huddled in corners whimpering - Clock Tower 2 starts off pretty strong with the horror atmosphere, and keeps it up pretty well throughout.
If only things continued so positively, this might have been a sequel that matched up to the original game. It looks and sounds very similar, but this is certainly not the same game as the first US Clock Tower was.
Instead, it's loaded with completely random triggers for scenes that make it pretty infuriating to play. There's rarely any hint for what you are expected to do next, and oftentimes being stuck in an area means you forgot to click on some innocuous object in the background for the third time at the right point during the game play. If you plan on playing it multiple times to see all of the different endings (I show the best ending here), you'll eventually remember all of these triggers, but this insistence on forcing you to wander around blindly clicking on everything multiple times feels like little more than a cheap ploy to extend the time it takes to finish it (and it takes forever the first time, iirc I spent a good 15 hours or so on my first playthrough of this!).
That wouldn't be so bad if the third and final chapter's gameplay didn't go completely sadistic on you. Consuming about 60% of the total game, Chapter 3 unceremoniously dumps you in a lab with little explanation and tells you to figure it out. However, the lab is four stories of doors and corridors that all look virtually identical to one another, and with virtually no weapons, you are constantly backtracking to kill zombies that you can't get past with the same fire extinguisher over and over and over again - the video would've been a good hour shorter than it is if this hadn't been necessary to continue moving forward. The threat of being killed becomes more of an extremely annoying time-sink than a tension-builder, which pretty well destroys any sense of "horror" that might've been built by the other elements.
The environments are effective enough (if you ignore their extreme repetition), creepy sounds and wiggling body parts abound, and the rumble feature is used effectively - though if you play the recommended way, with the PlayStation mouse, you of course don't get to make use of this. And believe me, you'll want to use the mouse if you have access to one - the gamepad's controls of the cursor is awful. It's too fast and hyper-twitchy, and I guarantee it's complete lack of precision will cause you to get killed several times.
It's worth checking out for fans of the series because of the similar gameplay mechanics, but just be warned - it's easily the worst of the Clock Tower games. I was so dissapointed with it when it came out. I loved Clock Tower - it was one of my favorite PS1 games. Clock Tower II is one of my least favorite - it's certainly not the worst PS1 game ever, but it's a pretty hard slap across the face for anyone expecting the brilliance of the previous titles in the series.
At least Bates is good for a number of laughs.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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