Style: VGM
Primary Emotions/Themes: It perfectly channels the terrible acting of b tier horror movies into a game
Thoughts: "It sounds crazy, but it looks like they were killed with a giant pair of scissors." "One after another the horrifying murders continue. Will they make it through this game of murder alive?"
With a poorly narrated intro like that you know you're going to be in for a fantastic soundtrack. Clock Tower is one of the infamous "tank control" horror games from the PS1 era. In it you play as a young woman trying to escape from a murderer with a huge pair of sheers looking to cut you in half.
The acting is terrible. The story is ludicrous. The music is fantastic.
The music is obviously going to be the focus here. The half an hour or so run time of the entire soundtrack contains mostly shorter songs that range from horror soundscapes, to lullabies, to mystery noir type tracks. You know, the normal PS1 horror game soundtrack stuff.
What Clock Tower does well is know when to lay on the horror motif thick and when to back off. So much of the soundtrack is actually melodic, whereas so many of the other games of the era really focus in on the noise aspect to terrify the player more.
I find that the Clock Tower approach works better as an album for listening purposes. I'm not sure if it works well in terms of game play, but then again I haven't really played this game in over two decades so I can't really comment one way other other.
This was the first unofficial release that I ever got in the video game scene. It left a great impression on me as the music sounded great (still does), and it had one of those cool holograms that make the shape of the scissors on the A side when you shine a light on it. It may not be the best soundtrack in my collection but it certainly is one of the most important. It's a great listen, and one that ends up getting spun every few months just to remind me of the video game vinyl scene that I used to be part of if nothing else.
Written June 30th 2024
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