Review Obscure Developer: Hydravision / MC2 Publisher: Dreamcatcher Genre: Action/Adventure Release Date: September 2004 Platform: (Version Reviewed) Review by May 9, 2005		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Everyone who has been in high school carries some fond memories from those years. The friends, the fun, the first “serious” encounters with the opposite sex, the teachers giving you a hard time, the rebellions against those horrible parents who “can never understand”! Yes you did have some good times during your high school years - unless you were unfortunate enough to attend Leafmore High!

Strange things have been happening in Leafmore High the past few years. Students have heard awful screams and a few have even been reported as missing. Now another student disappears. His girlfriend says he didn’t show up for their date the previous night, and his sister says he never came home either. So they, along with a couple of friends, set off to find out what happened to him. In the process they will discover the atrocities that have taken place in the past in their school and it will be in their hands to end those horrific events. Some might notice similarities between this game and the movie “The Faculty” but, while the developers may have been slightly inspired by the movie, Obscure’s background story is entirely different.

Time to meet the characters. Kenny Mathews: Kenny is your average jock. Basketball is his life, and he’s got great physical strength. Shannon Mathews: Kenny’s younger sister. Shannon is very clever, and a great student, but she likes to appear less smart and older than she is, probably to fit in! She would do anything to be of help to her friends. Ashley Thompson: Ashley is Kenny’s girlfriend, and she is the popular girl of Leafmore High. Apart from that, she’s also got some superb combat skills! Stanley Jones: Kenny’s best friend. Stan is the regular rebel teenager, who is always after any kind of possible mischief. His main skill is… picking locks! Josh Carter (my favorite character!): Josh is the school reporter, who loves reading sci-fi and working on his movies. Josh has a great nose for spotting useful items and clues.

The game starts with Kenny alone at the gym. Somebody steals his bag, and Kenny gives chase - a relatively short playable sequence, that serves as an introduction to the game. Kenny will get trapped in the end, and the normal game will begin with Shannon and Ashley talking about Kenny’s disappearance and deciding to stay in the school premises after closing hours to search for him. They will soon be accompanied by Josh, who will want to film the whole thing!

In the beginning, the only characters available are Shannon, Ashley and Josh. And here comes the great novelty of Obscure! You are not asked to pick a character in the beginning and then stick with him/her. All three characters will be available to play at any time in the game – and later on, Stan and Kenny will be available as well! Also, you can pick one more character to tag along and help you. The second character will be controlled by the computer, and control between the two characters can be switched at any time. The computer controlled characters are very good in positioning themselves around a room. They rarely get in the way and will defend themselves - and you - when the going gets tough. Also, your partner can be told to follow or stay put, change weapons or give you a hint. There is also an option for a second human player to join in, but I didn’t try this two-player mode, so I cannot comment on how it works. The rest of the characters remain in a central area known as the gathering point. You will be able to go there at any time and pick different characters, unless the way to the gathering point is somehow blocked.

Each character has a special ability, which can be used in order to make things easier. When you have Josh with you, all important items in a room will flash and, by pressing the special ability key, Josh will say if there’s anything else interesting in the room or not (but sometimes he’ll miss unrevealed things, so you will always need to explore each room thoroughly). Stan will pick any lock really fast, while the rest of the characters will have to use a reel of wire that will take a lot more time. This proves extremely helpful when you got a few monsters on your tail! Ashley can perform a double attack when fighting monsters. Shannon can help by giving out ideas on what to do in certain situations. Finally, Kenny can run really fast! I found Stan’s and Josh’s special abilities the most useful and that, combined with the fact that they are the most likeable characters in the game, made them my favorite combination!

Playing the PC version of Obscure is not the easiest thing in the world. The game uses so many keys, that control is easy only to professional piano players! At least the keys are redefinable, but still, this is a game that screams for a Playstation analog pad. To make things harder, inventory manipulation is real-time! All items can be scrolled through on the bottom-left side of the screen, while weapons and flashlights can be scrolled through on the bottom-right side, without the game being paused. In order to use items or change weapons while fighting, you need to be fast and precise, cause if you take time searching for which key does what, you’ll end up with a set of razor sharp teeth firmly attached to your body!

Weapons come mainly in three kinds: melee weapons, guns and light grenades. But there is no big variety in any category. Melee weapons are baseball bats or metal bars, while guns are handguns, shotguns, revolvers and… laser guns! In regular survival horror fashion, special weapons (among other things) will be “unlocked” after finishing the game. Flashlights play a major role in Obscure. Their purpose is not just to light dark areas. All monsters are surrounded by a black aura that sometimes gets so thick you can’t see the monster. The flashlight can be used to dissolve this aura - making the monster visible - and also repel the monster as light is harmful to them (this also makes light grenades a very powerful weapon). Take heed though, cause the flashlight can overheat and it will need to cool down a bit in order to be usable again. The flashlight cannot be used along with a weapon, unless they are held together with sticky tape. The problem is that a flashlight can only be attached to a gun, not to a melee weapon. So when you are using melee weapons, you need to be very fast switching between the weapon and the flashlight. The best way to enter a new room when you don’t have a gun is by holding the flashlight upon entering, dissolving the auras while your partner attacks the monsters and then switching to the melee weapon. The keyboard of course doesn’t help at all with this, since the aforementioned will involve at least 6 keys, and that’s not counting the directional keys!

The monsters are perfectly designed to look as menacing as possible, but there isn’t much variety here either. They are pretty tough though, especially on the higher levels. There are also several “jump off your seat” moments, where monsters will jump right at you bashing through a wall etc. Melee weapons don’t do a very good job against them, especially when they come in large numbers! If a window can be broken, it is a great way to kill several monsters at once, by filling the room with light. This will save you from taking damage while fighting or from wasting bullets. There are also a few “sub bosses”, or should I say, one recurring “sub boss”. While the final boss is impressive, the “sub boss” could have been a lot better. During fighting, the characters will throw out some humorous teenage comments like “Check it out, Stan the man” or “Who da man?”! This was a really fun detail on behalf of the developers! They are teenagers after all!

Besides all the fighting, which is hard but never excessive, there is a good amount of adventuring in Obscure. Exploration of the school grounds is essential. Very useful items can be found lying everywhere. Energy drinks, which restore part of a character’s health, first aid kits, restoring full health (and triggers another hilarious line - “I am ready to rock!”), bullets, sticky tape, documents that provide more insight into the Leafmore High happenings and… CDs! Unfortunately Obscure does not stray away from the ridiculous “can’t save anytime anywhere” console fashion. And although there are no saving points, you can only save by “burning” your process on a CD. The CDs are not rewritable though so you only get as many saves as the number of CDs you collect. The number of helpful items that can be found changes according to the difficulty level – the harder the level, the less items available. Also, on easy level, guns can be found earlier than on hard level!

The puzzles in Obscure are not extremely simple, but are not hard either. They certainly don’t reach the depth and complexity of Silent Hill 2 on hard puzzle level, but they are not a walk in the park. There are inventory puzzles as well as a few logical puzzles. Experienced adventure gamers will not encounter any big problems in that area. The two-player mode could prove ideal for two people to play, one being the upfront character focusing on the action, and the other staying behind and focusing on the puzzles! There are even instances where monsters attack during a puzzle, and while one character is solving it, the other is defending him!

Obscure is a very interactive game. While the characters walk/run around they can kick or knock over all kinds of things: chairs, trolleys, bottles, cans etc! Glass is also breakable! Windows, glass doors/screens, computer screens, vending machines, mirrors, they all can break with a bullet or a swing of the bat. All that combined with the characters acting exactly like teenagers would in real life create a very believable game and helps the immersion a lot.

The graphics on the PC version are second to none! Excellent character details are surrounded by superbly designed areas. Of course, darkness prevails in most areas (the game is called “Obscure” after all!). The lighting effects are brilliant, and the flashlights shed light perfectly on any dark areas! The cut-scenes are amazingly detailed. All in all if you are after the visuals, you will be very satisfied with this game! My only gripe, the usual: clipping. Not excessive, but apparent, especially on the weapons and flashlights (placing one character directly in front of the other will make the light, and sometimes even the flashlight, pierce through his/her body!).

The sound follows the high standards set by the graphics, with deep ambient sounds or dark, unsettling music playing during the game, accompanied by sound effects like growls, screams, items breaking etc, all creating a haunting atmosphere. The characters’ voices are perfect for what they are: teenagers! The soundtrack is surprisingly good despite its “nu metal/alternative” genre, except for the final track, which is one of the worst songs I have ever heard! I specifically liked the track in the intro cut-scene, which presents the four characters in a great cinematic fashion.

Being a survival horror fan, I am very glad that despite the fact that the “big names” tried to take the genre to higher action levels, some successfully and some failing miserably, Obscure kept the good old recipe and turned out to be a great survival horror experience. You won’t find horror that creeps under your skin here, like you would in Fatal Frame 2 or Kuon for example, but you will find a game with great and spooky atmosphere and a disturbing story. Especially if you are into teenage-horror, like I am, you will definitely feel sated! Its major problem has to do with the controls, a problem that is not easy to overcome without a Playstation analog pad and can be the reason for some very frustrating situations, even after you get used to them. But, despite that issue, it’s a game definitely recommended to survival horror fans, as well as teenage-horror fans in general. Yes, Resident Evil 4, was a fantastic game, but Obscure shows how survival horror can really progress without becoming another action fest!

Final Grade: A-
(find out more about our grading system)

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP
• CPU: 1 Ghz Pentium® 3 Processor or Equivalent
• RAM: 256 MB
• CD-ROM/DVD-ROM: 8x Speed
• Hard Drive Space: 4 GB Available
• Video: 32 MB DirectX™ 8.1b Video Card with Hardware Transform and Lighting Support
• Sound: DirectX™ 8.1b Compatible Sound Card or Better
• Input: Keyboard and Mouse
• Other: DirectX™ 8.1b or Higher