Remothered: Tormented Fathers

It's not surprising that people want more games like Clock Tower. While exceptionally clunky, it was a pretty unique blend of adventure, stealth and some survival horror elements that, unlike most horror attempts at the time, was closer to the slasher or Italian giallo thrillers in mood and themes, rather then zombie, monster or gothic themes. So quite a lot of people were excited about Remothered: Tormented Fathers. It is a surprisingly competently made for being a first project. The controls are pretty well thought out, the basic mechanics are quite well designed. The game map is a several store mansion, that's good enough to not get lost in easily, despite not having an in-game map. And the stalkers are genuinely creepy with their voice lines, while the whole escape and hide or use a defense item idea is rather solid. Sadly, most of it fails flat. The stealth aspect is pretty terrible, as the sound mixing in this game is just dreadful and it's usually impossible to understand the source of sounds. In addition, noise/distraction items are mostly useless, stalkers can see you in pitch dark rooms even if you're not moving, while escaping from them via hiding or using defense items is incredibly easy. The story and storytelling in the game are just dreadful. Most of the game dialogue barely makes sense or has character consistency, the cutscenes are directed akin to old FPS demos of late 90s and while some of the themes and ideas behind the story are pretty curious, it doesn’t feel like “first in the trilogy” as much as a bunch of scenes given out of context. Mercifully, the game is pretty short and it's possible to stealth your way without rushing in under 5 hours. Should you spend those hours on it? I'd say no, unless you absolutely need a new Clock Tower fix or plan to design a similar game and wish to learn on mistakes of others. Hopefully, if the series indeed continue, the next game will be better.

This game is very well developed technically: It has some good graphics, very good music & sound-fx, excellent voice acting and an immersive atmosphere. Yet, the actual gamePLAY and game design is so frustrating that I threw it into the bin after 10 hours... I really gave it a long try! Right from the start I noticed some sort of "gameplay disappointment": VERY slow character movement, too many locked riddles without any signposting whatsoever, no autosaving or permanent saving option available (only at mirrors with metronome which there is two of them in the entire house)... A plot that is mainly driven by pieces of paper and text passages - which is super boring in a scare game. I want to PLAY and experience the plot, not read it. When working on a riddle, yet even solving the riddle, it is super frustrating to be rewarded with the fact that the very same riddle is not solved and just continues .... at another place. The player is obliged to keep walking up and down, from the basement to the top and back again. Just to keep solving the very same chain of riddles. There was never a sense of achievement or an engaging feeling of success that motivated me to continue.... It was just frustrating game design. The reason why I eventually closed the game was that you do can die in this game ... which is not a bad thing per se but in this case you need to start all over again because the only two saving points are so far away. In essence: There are much better horror games out there that are worth their money. Remothered however looks technically awesome, intriguing from its outside appearance. But it has very little/nothing to offer from its inside.

They had something good here. And it isn't terrible, but it is flawed. First off, the stalker AI. They seem to know where you are almost constantly and once they are on you it can be very difficult to shake them. Sometimes overly so. Then there is the save system. There is only like 3 save mirrors and they are pretty far away from each other. There is no manual or auto save either. I get what they were going for but it felt really archaic. The quicktime events. Now there isn't a ton of these and generally I am one of those weirdos that enjoy them. The problem here is they are so tacked on and unnecessary and failing one is usually instant death. I died so many times during this one section near the end game in a sewer area that I was genuinely annoyed and frustrated. The qtes in this section are so sudden and they change the button every time and being 1 millisecond off the mark and it is back to the start of the section with you! The only saving grace is it is one of the only parts that checkpoint you at the start of the section instead of sending you back to a mirror. Last but not least is trial and error, particularly the final stretch is big on this and it is so frustrating to keep dying over and over until finding out the one obscure way the devs intended for you to pass it. The story is not terrible but it is a bit convoluted for my taste. I love the cinematic presentation and the atmosphere and stalkers were for the most part genuinely creepy and unnerving. I simply wish the gameplay had been polished more and executed better. The graphics are pretty good as well and music and sound design is quite decent. Overall I would not pay $20 for it. If you want to give it a try buy it on sale.

...it isn't a direct facsimile. Clock Tower is a point and click adventure game that has scripted points where a stalker will pop out to hunt your character and you then have to hide. It's a simple design anyone can pick up and play - and it's one of the big reasons why I liked that series. Remothered instead has a twin-stick over-the-shoulder camera/movement scheme. The stalkers are rarely scripted and are instead out and looking for you at almost all times, basically turning the whole thing into a stealth game, complete with crouch-walking, peeking through doors and throwable distraction items. Though some fans of Clock Tower might not like this, I think It's done competently enough -- and the killers at least don't teleport around the environment as is the case with similar horror-stealth games. Adventure game inventory item based puzzling is present, and never gets too ridiculous. Only problem is, the OTS camera can make it easy to miss key items in the environment, which I did multiple times. Design-wise, the game's stalkers are never get anywhere near as iconic and threatening as Clock Tower's Scissorman. Your first foe is is a naked old man in an apron, with a sickle, who (when unaware of you) repeatedly complains that he can't find his pills and it's borderline comedic. The game ups the ante from there, but it's not a good first impression. A more serious issue I have with this game is it's almost antiquated use of QTEs. There's a particularly bad section where you have to move down a tunnel and perform a series of randomly timed QTEs to not get killed, while the button prompts are also randomized. Game loses a star just for that. What saw me through to the end though is the story. It can be a bit hard to follow but it sets up a good mystery with a pretty great twist. I'm intrigued to see how the sequel will work with it's loose ends and iterate upon the game's design. I'd really rate this 3.5 of 5, but I'll round it up to 4 as I'm feeling generous.