I
derive more enjoyment out of the strangest games than most people do from the
classics. Case in point–Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within. Not that the
game itself is insipid, it is more a case of untapped potential and not the limitations
of the Playstation but more the PSX mentality that values bombast over depth.

Let’s
begin at the end for once. Clock Tower 2 has 13 different endings. Why?
While this may sound commendable on the surface, who in their right mind would
want to play through a game 13 times to try and find the events that trigger the
different endings? Even more unforgivable are the dead ends in the game that require
you to start over from the beginning. There are trigger points in the game that,
if not set off, will cause the game to abruptly end a scene or two later. The
problem with this, besides the frustration of having

played two-thirds of the game only to start over, is that you are not sure what
the trigger point was that caused the game to end early. In one instance, it was
because I had not activated a samurai statue on the second floor hallway. The
statue then killed a principal character who was supposed to give me a key later
in the chapter. But how are you supposed to know this if there are no clues to
lead you on? If I had not found a survival guide, I never would have suspected
what I did wrong. Instead I would have had to constantly replay scenarios over
and over attempting different options and slowing piecing together the correct
solution. Sorry, but life is too short and there are too many games yet to be
played.

The
second Clock Tower is in no way related to the first installment of the
series (sort of like Phantamsagoria 1 and 2), so it can be played
without fear of being unaware of previous occurrences. Originally released in
Japan as Clock Tower: Ghost Head, all dialogues and text have been translated
from the Japanese. Whatever you do, do not read the instruction manual if you
want to know what the game is about. It was originally written in Japanese and
the is good not translation, if you catch my drift. I was so confused after reading
the manual that I felt as though I had just had a conversation with Yoda.

The
plot for CT2 is novel. You play as Alyssa Hale, a teenager with a dual
personality. Normally a quiet young lady with a gloomy personality, Alyssa has
a dark side, a cruel and merciless man known as Mr. Bates who can possess her
body at will. Alyssa’s only protection against these unwelcome possessions is
an amulet given to her by her father, the director of a major San Francisco hospital.
Alyssa has just undergone extensive psychotherapy and is recuperating by visiting
a lifelong friend of her father’s, Philip Tate, and his children. Unbeknownst
to Alyssa, Philip’s family is haunted by the Maxwell Curse: a mysterious figure
who loves to wear a devil’s mask and slaughter his victims with a large butcher
knife. If this all sounds confusing, it is, but the enigma
slowly crystallizes
as the story progresses. If this also sounds silly, it is, but it is also strangely
fascinating.

Clock
Tower 2 is an old-fashioned 2D point-and-click horror game that is sectored
into three self-contained chapters. Each chapter, once finished, cannot be returned
to. The first chapter, “Yellow Cursed Doll,” is far and away the best.
While there is a lot of to-and-fro, there are also some genuine chills as you
discover dead bodies and body parts scattered about the Tate household while constantly
being tracked by seven-year-old Stephanie Tate, who has turned into a knife-wielding,
bloodthirsty murderer. If the final two chapters could have maintained this momentum,
this could have been an excellent game. Instead, it disintegrates into a lackluster
exercise of expository backtracking. The puzzles for the most part are nothing
more than finding and using keys or keycards. The most interesting parts of the
gameplay are those that

require you to purposely transform into the hideous Mr. Bates. There are a few
inventory-based puzzles, but nothing to get excited about. To further hinder gameplay,
there are traps located throughout the three chapters that when activated mean
instant death. Not only is this unfair, but if you have not saved for a while,
well, let’s hope you have a lot of patience.

For some reason, the beginning
of a game always seems for me to be the hardest. After playing for 20 minutes,
I was already stuck beyond belief. I was in the front hallway, and there were
only two rooms that could be entered. Both were pitch-black, though, and I could
not see a thing. So of course I increased the brightness on the television. Ah
… the rooms seem to be separate bathrooms. But I still cannot do anything in
either room. Hmm. Then I remembered that the disc had already been in the PSX
when I started to play; obviously someone had tried this game earlier. I sought
out the brains of the family (anyone who thinks at this point I am going to say
“my wife” is obviously not married), my 10-year-old son Jacob:

“Jacob, were you playing this game?”
“Yes.”

“Did you get past this point?”
“Yes.”
“Well,
why can’t I do anything in these two rooms?”
“Did you turn on the
light switches?”
“Uh, no. Where are they?”
“Right
there on the wall. When you turn on the light switches, the room lights up and
then you can click on stuff.”
“Right. I knew that. I just wanted
to see if you solved the puzzle the same way.”
“Sure, dad.”

“No really, I’m the editor of Just Adventure, after all. Do you think I didn’t
know to turn on a dumb light switch?”
“Bye, dad.”

Maybe
there is a reason, though, why the Playstation is for the younger generation.
Control of the game is simple enough, as you use the gamepad to manipulate the
cursor, but in a choice that would only be present in a console game, when Alyssa
is being chased or in danger (known as Panic Mode), the cursor will flash red
and a button on the gamepad must be pressed repeatedly in order for her to successfully
escape. I felt as though I was once again pounding the keypad and running the
100-yard dash in Track and Field. Another option, the Escape Mode, is interesting
and more beneficial as it offers you a chance to hide from the enemy.

It
is toward the end of the second chapter, set in a hospital, that the game entirely
disintegrates as the boredom of the excessive to-and-froing degrades into a exasperating
sequence where a few dozen zombies have to be eliminated using a clumsy shotgun-aiming
cursor. By the time the final expository chapter has been reached, it becomes
more a matter of pride and determination, rather than interest, to finish the
game.

If
some modifications to the gameplay were made, I wouldn’t mind seeing a third installment
of this series. But gimmicks such as the Escape and Panic mode add little to the
gameplay. There is a great game here waiting to be freed, but it is caught in
the underpinnings of the developers being enslaved to a mentality that insists
puzzles be no more difficult than finding a key for a lock or blasting away at
zombies. If the plot had been fleshed out more fully and the reliance on weapons
in the second chapter toned down, CT2 would have been a genuinely scary
game. Instead, it winds down into a morass of dead ends, red herrings, and zombie
innards.

Final Grade: C-

If you liked Clock Tower 2:
The Struggle Within:
Watch: The Snake Pit
Read: The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Play:
Clock Tower