An easy little horror title.
The highlights of the game are the interesting weapons, the ability to combine items, a decent storyline and the array of characters you control two at a time. An enjoyable feature that most of the weapons in the game have is some sort of light source that damages enemies. If you time your moves correctly you can easily get through areas on the map without actually touching an enemy or using a bullet, while destroying the enemy at the same time. As in most horror titles enemies grow and thrive in the darkness and you, the unwilling protagonist, are forced to enter dark corridors and scarcely lit maps to maneuver your way out of trouble and into the “light” per say. Obscure takes that idea quite literally. Light is your most powerful and effective weapon, combining that with a few bullets makes getting through most levels a breeze. The enemies are slow moving and slow witted at times sending a noisy cloud of darkness that grows like some evil bacteria across the map towards you as ample warning that danger is approaching.
The gameplay is pretty straight-forward. You play as two of the characters in almost every level, with the exception of a few places where you play only as one, cleansing the map of wickedness as you make your way through a high-school and find a lost friend meanwhile discovering horrific secrets behind some of the faculty you’ve come to know over the years. (In the GameSpot review Obscure was compared to the film “The Faculty” and in many ways that comparison is dead on.) At times the AI can get a bit annoying, characters not following you fast enough or moving in the line of fire or the always popular just standing there and getting killed, but throughout the majority of the game it feels like you are playing the game with another person. A few times the AI actually fights off the enemy while you solve puzzles, as amazing as that sounds, it does actually work in places.
The characters are extremes on stereotypes (the skater kid, the ditzy blonde, the audio/visual guy etc) and the dialogue is exceptionally bland and trite throughout the game. The same expressions are used over and over by each character to the point of wanting to mute the game. The enemies are well-crafted for their gory genre, but are few and far between; most are far too easy to kill to even make mention of them.
Although Obscure isn’t the next generation of survival horror games or even lives up to the ones of yesteryear, it does have its good points. In general the game is entertaining, I found myself laughing at the bad dialogue. There are some tense moments created by lighting and the feeling of being trapped in certain areas which always add to a horror titles value but mostly playing as multiple characters and using light as a weapon saved Obscure from falling so far off the radar that it was overlooked. It’s certainly worth a rental for a quick game to finish in a night or two or pick it up from a bargain bin; you’ll be amused for the most part.