I love a good psychological thriller. Whether it be in movie form or videogame form, a great mind-bending warp through the fragile human mind, digging in at our darkest fears and insecurities, always makes for quality entertainment. And if you're a point and click adventure game loving fan, it looks as if you'll be in heaven when Overclocked is released.

"Set against the backdrop of a catastrophic thunderstorm raging over New York, Overclocked mixes frightening fiction thriller elements with real research findings on war simulation and psychology. As a US army psychiatrist, the player is tasked with exploring the memories of several characters as he finds himself in a true psychological thriller.

Using innovative narrative structures, Overclocked charts the diffuse areas where memories and illusions, dreams and reality, perpetrators and victims meet and deals with an issue that is as topical as it is ancient: violence."

Taking the engine from The Moment of Silence and ratcheting it up to the next level, Overclocked features an innovative character animation system, improved facial expressions, more real-time camera movement, cinematic dialogues and lots of interaction. Overclocked uses a 2.5D engine, which features 3D characters on a more static 2D background, whereas the camera will move in a way so as to give the illusion that the whole game is in 3D. The engine also allows for real-time particle FX, shadows and shader FX, as well as dynamic lighting and facial expressions with Emotion FX 2. The facial expressions are particularly important, as it will make the game really feel as if you are watching characters in a movie, instead of the days when the voice work and lips moved like the equivalent of a Godzilla movie. With the seriousness of this story, plus the emotion available in the facial rendering, Overclocked is really pushing you to actually care about these characters on many different levels, and not just play through a game.

As with any psychological story, setting must play a crucial part in the immersion factor. In the game, you'll explore the minds of five kids who have been left traumatized, and you have to find out what happened. Overclocked features 45 locations to explore, 6 playable characters, and approximately 5,000 lines of dialogue. The game also features more physics based puzzles and environments, so the mindset of the player will require a little more concentration, as the puzzles can be quite difficult, choosing the option to go for more original puzzles than the usual "find where the missing key is" variety.

Overclocked was compared to the cult favorite movie Memento by the developers, but exactly whether that is regarding the plot of the game or simply the narrative look and style of the game remains to be seen. Overclocked's political psycho-thriller with a survival-horror feel is set to offer 20 hours of tension and plenty of instances to discuss the game with players after all things are said and done. Be on the lookout for Overclocked to mess with your mind when the game is released in April of 2007.