Obscure
Posted April 25, 2005
If you thought your high school was a bad place to spend your days, at least you were never stuck overnight at Leafmore. You see, there’s something going on after hours and it doesn’t involve teachers getting freaky in the lounge. There’s an evil being unleashed upon the school and soon students become missing.
It’s up to a handful of kids who get locked inside the grounds to investigate what is happening and find out what has become of their lost friends. If you think this plot sounds cliché, it is for the most part. Think of every teenage slasher movie made in the past thirty years, toss in some monsters and a seedy looking school and you’ve got Obscure.
Gameplay:
While this is a survival horror game you aren’t alone; you have a group of friends to play as. You can select two party members and each character has unique abilities to offer, but for the most part it means one is better at a certain area than another. So what if Stan can pick locks quicker and Kenny can run faster, ultimately all of the characters play similarly enough that you’ll never really notice. And yes, there are students named Stan and Kenny, heck there is even a teacher named Mr. Garrison (though there is no Mr. Hat, thankfully).
Once you assemble your dynamic duo it’s time to fight monsters with whatever you can find. The best weapon against these creatures is light, so if you have a flash light or a blunt weapon to smash a window you’re in good shape. You do find equipment like baseball bats and firearms as you explore the school, so you aren’t totally defenseless at least.
Be careful when you see some mucky blackness appear in your area, it’s the darkness these creatures thrive upon. Wherever the muck is, chances are there is a monster waiting to jump out of it. When that occurs, your first course of action should be to find a source of light, but if that isn’t going to happen you should attempt a hit and run. You can kill the beasties, but they keep coming back if there is no illumination.
Thankfully you can hand your companion a weapon to fight with, and they’ll actually use it intelligently instead of just standing there and watching you get killed. If you’re picking a lock and the darkness creeps in, they’ll cover your back until you finish your task. At other points though, the AI is bothersome as your partner will stand in your way preventing you from getting around them. It’s a love/hate relationship that can be avoided if you have a buddy to jump in and play as that second character. Yes, Obscure features a multiplayer option that actually improves the experience and is probably the best way to play the game.
You’ll be doing a bunch of fighting and doing even more exploring of the school grounds because several doors you come across are locked. That means you either have to break in or find an item to gain access to what’s beyond. It’s a standard of the survival horror genre that has been played to death and means a fair amount of backtracking and annoyances await you.
One important factor of this genre is a competent inventory management system, and for the most part Obscures’ is functional. One button is assigned to weaponry that you can equip on the fly or give to a buddy, while another is for useable items like health packs and such. You can assign objects for use, and cycle through with the D-pad, but you’re better off doing this ahead of time before you get jumped by a demon since you have to stop to do it.
The beauty of having a whole party of characters is that if someone dies, you have a backup to take their place. The only problem is that once they die, they’re gone for good. While you may not mind offing Stan and his white boy Ebonics you actually need every body at your disposal. You’re better off finding a CD and using it to save your game as often as you can, incase you get surprised when you walk into a room.
Probably more of an enemy to you than the monsters from the darkness is the camera. Often times the angle is so poor that you’ll be stumbling into a section that you can’t see. On more than one occasion the camera will shift in a room screwing up your controls and sending you in a different direction than you were going. It’s tolerable, but pretty frustrating and shows how behind the times Obscure is when compared to the rest of the genre.
Graphics:
If Leafmore High was in fact a real school, it would be shut down faster than you can say “summer vacation.” The place is so run down and looks like a busted up homeless shelter more than a place of education. The rooms are darkened with boarded up windows and look more like dank cells than classrooms. Every bathroom is disgusting beyond description and even the characters react to the “smell” coming from them. It sets up a very creepy atmosphere with dynamic light sources and dark corners, but it makes you wonder if the janitor is on strike.
There are several points of interaction with the environments and it helps elevate the 3D experience and shows that objects aren’t just stationary parts of the background. For the most part though you can only interact with what you need to, but it adds to the realism. The textures are rendered nicely as well and the encompassing darkness that the evil dwells in looks cool with it takes over an area.
Characters animate well for the most part but there are a lot of stiff motions that don’t help matters. There is nothing special about character design either, sure some of the monsters are cool looking but the kids are stereotyped to fit their personality. The reporter is dressed like a preppy, the jock wears a tank top and the girls wear low riders and mini skirts. All you voyeuristic people will enjoy making Shannon stand on your shoulders to open an air vent in the bathroom. Let’s just say that skirt doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
Audio:
With a good mix of ambient tunes and a rock soundtrack with the likes of Sum 41 the music portion of Obscure is great. It adds to the creepy atmosphere and keeps the blood pumping. Sure Sum 41’s music may not be creepy or atmospheric, but it fits with the high school theme and teenage characters.
Speaking of the teens, their voiceovers are horrible. It’s not just the acting that is poor, but whoever wrote the dialogue missed the mark completely. Ultimately there are no redeeming qualities to any of these personalities and you really don’t care if they live or die.
While the voice work leaves a lot to be desired, the sound effects are spot on. Hearing things creak in the distance or something on the other side of the wall get those hairs on the back of your neck to stand up. You’ll jump out of your seat when things come busting through the wall or scream out of nowhere.
Conclusion:
With around a seven hour play time, Obscure is pretty short in comparison to other horror games. Much of that time is spent backtracking trying to find a key you missed or going back to your starting hub to exchange characters. The story is cheesy, the gameplay is problematic at times and the characters are irritating, but the game’s action picks up the further in you get.
Arguably, a better experience awaits you if you have a friend over to play versus a single player campaign with your sometimes dumb as rocks AI ally. Survival horror diehards may scoff at the amount of clichés represented here, but newcomers to the game type may get the scare and thrill they are looking for. Obscure is a good weekend rental for the patient gamer who doesn’t care about genre advancements and wants to play an older style game.
It’s up to a handful of kids who get locked inside the grounds to investigate what is happening and find out what has become of their lost friends. If you think this plot sounds cliché, it is for the most part. Think of every teenage slasher movie made in the past thirty years, toss in some monsters and a seedy looking school and you’ve got Obscure.
Gameplay:
While this is a survival horror game you aren’t alone; you have a group of friends to play as. You can select two party members and each character has unique abilities to offer, but for the most part it means one is better at a certain area than another. So what if Stan can pick locks quicker and Kenny can run faster, ultimately all of the characters play similarly enough that you’ll never really notice. And yes, there are students named Stan and Kenny, heck there is even a teacher named Mr. Garrison (though there is no Mr. Hat, thankfully).
Once you assemble your dynamic duo it’s time to fight monsters with whatever you can find. The best weapon against these creatures is light, so if you have a flash light or a blunt weapon to smash a window you’re in good shape. You do find equipment like baseball bats and firearms as you explore the school, so you aren’t totally defenseless at least.
Be careful when you see some mucky blackness appear in your area, it’s the darkness these creatures thrive upon. Wherever the muck is, chances are there is a monster waiting to jump out of it. When that occurs, your first course of action should be to find a source of light, but if that isn’t going to happen you should attempt a hit and run. You can kill the beasties, but they keep coming back if there is no illumination.
Thankfully you can hand your companion a weapon to fight with, and they’ll actually use it intelligently instead of just standing there and watching you get killed. If you’re picking a lock and the darkness creeps in, they’ll cover your back until you finish your task. At other points though, the AI is bothersome as your partner will stand in your way preventing you from getting around them. It’s a love/hate relationship that can be avoided if you have a buddy to jump in and play as that second character. Yes, Obscure features a multiplayer option that actually improves the experience and is probably the best way to play the game.
You’ll be doing a bunch of fighting and doing even more exploring of the school grounds because several doors you come across are locked. That means you either have to break in or find an item to gain access to what’s beyond. It’s a standard of the survival horror genre that has been played to death and means a fair amount of backtracking and annoyances await you.
One important factor of this genre is a competent inventory management system, and for the most part Obscures’ is functional. One button is assigned to weaponry that you can equip on the fly or give to a buddy, while another is for useable items like health packs and such. You can assign objects for use, and cycle through with the D-pad, but you’re better off doing this ahead of time before you get jumped by a demon since you have to stop to do it.
The beauty of having a whole party of characters is that if someone dies, you have a backup to take their place. The only problem is that once they die, they’re gone for good. While you may not mind offing Stan and his white boy Ebonics you actually need every body at your disposal. You’re better off finding a CD and using it to save your game as often as you can, incase you get surprised when you walk into a room.
Probably more of an enemy to you than the monsters from the darkness is the camera. Often times the angle is so poor that you’ll be stumbling into a section that you can’t see. On more than one occasion the camera will shift in a room screwing up your controls and sending you in a different direction than you were going. It’s tolerable, but pretty frustrating and shows how behind the times Obscure is when compared to the rest of the genre.
Graphics:
If Leafmore High was in fact a real school, it would be shut down faster than you can say “summer vacation.” The place is so run down and looks like a busted up homeless shelter more than a place of education. The rooms are darkened with boarded up windows and look more like dank cells than classrooms. Every bathroom is disgusting beyond description and even the characters react to the “smell” coming from them. It sets up a very creepy atmosphere with dynamic light sources and dark corners, but it makes you wonder if the janitor is on strike.
There are several points of interaction with the environments and it helps elevate the 3D experience and shows that objects aren’t just stationary parts of the background. For the most part though you can only interact with what you need to, but it adds to the realism. The textures are rendered nicely as well and the encompassing darkness that the evil dwells in looks cool with it takes over an area.
Characters animate well for the most part but there are a lot of stiff motions that don’t help matters. There is nothing special about character design either, sure some of the monsters are cool looking but the kids are stereotyped to fit their personality. The reporter is dressed like a preppy, the jock wears a tank top and the girls wear low riders and mini skirts. All you voyeuristic people will enjoy making Shannon stand on your shoulders to open an air vent in the bathroom. Let’s just say that skirt doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
Audio:
With a good mix of ambient tunes and a rock soundtrack with the likes of Sum 41 the music portion of Obscure is great. It adds to the creepy atmosphere and keeps the blood pumping. Sure Sum 41’s music may not be creepy or atmospheric, but it fits with the high school theme and teenage characters.
Speaking of the teens, their voiceovers are horrible. It’s not just the acting that is poor, but whoever wrote the dialogue missed the mark completely. Ultimately there are no redeeming qualities to any of these personalities and you really don’t care if they live or die.
While the voice work leaves a lot to be desired, the sound effects are spot on. Hearing things creak in the distance or something on the other side of the wall get those hairs on the back of your neck to stand up. You’ll jump out of your seat when things come busting through the wall or scream out of nowhere.
Conclusion:
With around a seven hour play time, Obscure is pretty short in comparison to other horror games. Much of that time is spent backtracking trying to find a key you missed or going back to your starting hub to exchange characters. The story is cheesy, the gameplay is problematic at times and the characters are irritating, but the game’s action picks up the further in you get.
Arguably, a better experience awaits you if you have a friend over to play versus a single player campaign with your sometimes dumb as rocks AI ally. Survival horror diehards may scoff at the amount of clichés represented here, but newcomers to the game type may get the scare and thrill they are looking for. Obscure is a good weekend rental for the patient gamer who doesn’t care about genre advancements and wants to play an older style game.