“An All-New ‘Goryline’ of Thrills-And-Chills!”

“You’re not my father!”
Spooktacular art by @remyripple.

For a while now, I’ve appreciated the Clock Tower franchise from afar. I’ve considered myself a “fan” of it, despite the fact I couldn’t honestly make the claim that I had actually played more than a couple minutes of any entry to the series. And yet, I’ve watched full playthroughs of every installment; bearing witness to every alternate path and multiple ending, and loving every second spent not actually having to play the games myself. Don’t get it twisted here: It’s not that I’ve been too scared to take control.** It’s just that… Well, these games have never seemed all that much fun to actually play?

Take the original 1995 Clock Tower on the Super Famicom: In terms of atmosphere, presentation, and ability to fill players with a constant sense of dread, it’s near-perfection. The decision to design the game around finding hiding spots and temporary defenses rather than engaging in outright combat was a bold one, and one that seems to pay off in terms of keeping the stakes high at all times. All that being said, the part where you have to sit on your hands while you wait for a small boy to drag a pair of scissors from one end of a room and back to the other just doesn’t strike me as something I need to experience first-hand. Also, controlling a mouse cursor with a directional pad? Ew.

So yes, I must report that 1998’s Clock Tower: Ghost Head – or as it is better known outside of Japan, 1999’s Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within – is the first Clock Tower game I’ve actually played through myself. I knew going in it wasn’t going to be easy, as I already knew that it’s regarded as the worst in the series. That, and the fact that I had already seen someone else play it through to completion in the past, and recalled thinking to myself at the time “this seems terrible.” But I went and did it anyway, because I felt that playing through it myself would serve a sort of “rite of passage” to becoming a true Clock Tower fan.

I am never going to play a Clock Tower game ever again.

Look, I’m not going to lead all y’all on into thinking that my thoughts on this game might end up going either way: I’m telling you straight up that this game was an absolute chore to play, and not an experience I would suggest to anyone. But in this modern era of Let’s Plays and longplays, where it’s possible to experience whole games without having to actually play them yourself, a question still remains: Is it at least a game worth watching? Like the game’s own inaccurate portrayal of a fractured psyche, we’re going to try and separate the good from the bad in The Struggle Within, and determine whether or not it at least qualifies as a suitably spooky viewing experience.

** Not to come across as some “more macho than you” braggart, but I am rarely [if ever] actually scared by horror games. It’s the thing where I know it’s all a game and that nothing that might happen will cause any real harm to me. That being said, I still love the genre, and figuring out for myself how different games work in different ways to build tension and elicit fear from an average player.