Obscure II: The Aftermath Review

Throughout the years there have been many various survival horror games that have tried to gain the popularity that Resident Evil and Silent Hill have attained. Some have been interesting, others bad, while the rest are pretty damn strange. Then there are games that take elements of Resident Evil and Silent Hill and mixes in elements from teen horror movies. That game is Obscure: The Aftermath. I haven’t heard much about this game, or its developer Hydravision Entertainment. It’s one of those games, like most teen/college kid movies, that is alright but could have been way better. To start off, Obscure’s story feels like a cheesy teen horror movie.

Aftermath takes place two years after the events of the first Obscure game. The Leafmore survivors have moved on with their lives as they prepare to enter college at Fallcreek University. As they try to get their lives back to normal, a new drug made from a strange looking flower starts to quickly spread among the campus. Like in all college movies, they try out the new drug, not knowing what it is or where it came from. The survivors and a small group of new students come under the influence of the drug and pass out. When they wake they find that the school is in ruin and they have to fight their way through a mutant horde in order to stop the spreading of the contagion. There is nothing really special here about the story, no multination corporation trying to cover up its biological experiments, no cult in the middle of nowhere summoning demons from hell. Just students at the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong things. While, there’s nothing wrong with this formula, it just feels that the developers didn’t want to take a chance and play it safe. As the game goes farther, you’ll learn where the plants came from and why they are mutating the students.

Obscure plays like any other PSP survival horror game: fight mutated creatures and try to stay alive and escape with other survivors while solving the mystery behind the creatures' appearances. There are minor differences that are present that make Obscure stand out. For instance, each of the playable characters each have a special talent they can utilize to get past certain areas and solve puzzles. Also the game pairs two of the characters up, using the buddy system. This means that in areas of the game there will be parts that two certain characters are needed to pass to the next area. Switching between the two is easy and when swapping out characters, they share the same innovatory so nothing is wasted. There’s also a quick change function that allows health and weapons to be quickly accessed. Unfortunately, attacking in this game proves to be frequently troublesome being that you have to hold down one button to ready the attack and then press the attack button. Now when it's one enemy this is fine, when there is more than one and you want to use your other partner instead of the one you're controlling, it can be some hassle. Luckily, Obscure allows a second player to jump into battle instead of having to rely on the AI.

Characters and environments are well detailed and look really good on the small screen. However, the mutated enemies look mediocre in comparison and look like they were taken from a list of rejected monsters from Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. While the graphics of the game are generally well done, I feel that the developers too little time on trying to make the designs actually fit the scenario. Case in point, with one of the female characters, you can notice that she is wearing a G-string. Just like how a college co-ed would be in real life. As for sound effects, all the required moaning, grunts, gun shots, and death screams all accounted and present for. The original music score done by Olivier Deriviere is pretty well done and fits the tone that Obscure creates. The soundtrack can be downloaded for free at the composer’s website Olivierderivier.com.

There isn’t much replay value in Obscure other than the multiplayer mode. This hurts another wise descent game by not giving an incentive to replay the game. Like I said in the beginning, Obscure II: The Aftermath is like one of those teen/college kid horror movies that's good the first few times, but it gets stale after some time. This game takes the best horror games out there and tries to form their own game, but only succeeded in creating a very average game.

- Mike V.

article id: 805 | poster: OG