Multi-player mediocrity at it's absolute best!
As the story begins, a new drug created from a strange flower is quickly spreading its influence over the University's populace. Soon enough, a small group of students along with the Leafmore High survivors have to face a horde of mutants and stop the spread of contagion before the situation becomes critical.
Like it's predecessor, Obscure: The Aftermath plays out like a teen-horror flick. It reminds me a lot of a movie called 'The Faculty'....with it's ridiculous story and campy dialogue. Obscure: The Aftermath, fails more then it succeeds; from the compressed opening video to it's story, script and gameplay.
By now you are asking, "Well, surely it must do something right!?" In fact it does get a few things right and believe it or not, it's actually somewhat improved in areas from the first installment. Although, don't get to excited because where it does happen to improve, it falls flat with pretty much everything else.
Obscure plays like it's counter-part but this time you will notice some things have changed. First, would be the camera. You have small control over it, and you'll notice how much closer it is to your characters. Then you try to move it with the right analog stick. Thus, you find the worst flaw in Obscure: The Aftermath...it's god awful camera-system. It's completely broken and you spend the entire game fighting with it. From bouncing off of walls and getting stuck in strange spots, with no characters in sight. It's an absolute mess, expect the worst camera you have ever had to deal with in a game, and this is probably either right on par, or way off! You will often have to go into the combat-ready stance to even see anything ahead of you. The games bad camera, although difficult; is not enough to destroy the experience. It will cause frustration without a doubt, but if you chug ahead you might find something worth mentioning.
Obscure: The Aftermath offers one of the best features possible in a survival-horror game and probably the one thing it does do right. Multi-player. Yes, a second player can jump in at any given second and take control of your second party support character. This is a savior! The games AI, is so bad you will even be asking your grandparents to play with you! Throughout the game you will have many characters, each with there own special abilities. Since you can only control one character at a time, the games AI will take over your second player for you. Here lies another flaw. The AI in this game is barley stable and you'll often see your support character go head-to-head with a boss, using a baseball bat or blowing all your ammo on simple monsters. This could have been easily countered with customizable AI options like we saw in 'Resident Evil Zero,' a separate menu with options like, "Conserve Ammo, Long-range support, Healing, etc." It would have made things much more bearable, but instead you must make sure at all times, that your supporting character does not have anything of value equipped because they will for sure, blow every bullet possible. You need your support-character on screen at all times and with the games camera...........
All is not lost with these major flaws however. Obscure: The Aftermath, has great item placement. The game will let you have what you need. This means that if you need first-aid kits, you will find them. Need some ammo? You will surely find exactly what you need. This is something that the first installment in the series couldn't get right. You do not have to struggle for ammo or health in Obscure: The Aftermath. It was nice to know, that I didn't have to reload my game because I used to much ammo on that boss monster...like in some other games, which shall remain nameless!
Speaking of items, that is another thing Obscure gets right. They added another great way to get health. It's so simple, yet works so well. You can extract serum from the hearts of your victims and use them to heal yourself! You can even get different qualities of serum, but this only depends on how long you can hold out without using them. So you're always waiting for the "beating" when the tension from combat is over.
The great thing about extracting serum is that it will sometimes make the games gruesome combat mechanics a little bit better. The aiming in Obscure is dreadful. By holding the L1 button, you will enter combat-stance. Following with R1 will make you attack with the currently equipped weapon. The game makes the right choice in aiming at the nearest enemy, however; that does not always mean you want to shoot the little spider before the "big momma." Switching targets in this game seems to come at random. I would often just have to mash L1 and R1 continually to get my character to look at a different monster. Combat is very fast-paced and this can sometimes be an issue when trying to save your endless-kamikaze friend. Obscures combat system, even with a gun, is nothing more then tapping L1 and R1. Halfway through the game, I just didn't care about trying to change targets anymore and just mashed until my fingers got tired.
Obscure: The Aftermath, also has a strange interface. You can equip 4 different weapons and switch to them by using the directional keys outside of your combat stance. Dropping combat stance is very annoying, but it must be done. To access healing items, you must scroll through your L2 items. You hold L2 and scroll through the items using the direction keys (Outside of combat-stance again) and to make it even worse...it's inverted. Up is down and down is up. I'm not flying a jet here people! In the middle of a fight, I want things as simple as possible on my interface and this game constantly fought with me. Using med-kits in combat is a production. Finding the item in your inverted item menu, while standing there watching your support characters portrait become engulfed in red, is unneeded tension. When you finally find that energy-drink or med-pack, a pull down menu will appear and you will then have to select who to use it on. It's just to much for such a fast-paced, button-mashing battle system. It doesn't work well at all. On two players? It would be better, but I hope your friend can fly planes for a living because the controls in the interface as just ridiculous. Thankfully, some of this madness during combat is countered by the game being so generous on health and ammo distribution.
The weapons in Obscure, are pretty standard. Melee weapons are from short-ranged items like the Baseball Bat, and the Spiked Club. To your long-ranged weapons like: Handgun, Shotgun, Hockey stick and golf club. You won't find anything in this game you haven't seen in any others.
However, Obscure puts all these weapons to fabulous use. The golf club and the hockey stick are useful throughout the entire game. It's really great when you run out of ammo, to know that your bat will be just as effective as the guns...except, with the risk of taking damage. I had a lot of fun mobbing enemies with my baseball bat and it's even more fun to have both characters equipped with close-range weapons and just whomp everything in your path. This puts great use of the kamikaze AI.
The story of Obscure: The Aftermath is just awful and I literally have nothing good to say about it at all. From the terrible voice-acting to the script, everything is just a complete waste. This game tries to hard to be cute with it's dialogue. With it's sexual puns and lame "Safe-sex" story line, I often wanted to jump in with my AI controlled buddy and just end it all! It's these things that turn people off right away. All the characters are completely ridiculous and all fit some stereo-type. The jock, the hot chick, the smart one...etc. They are all equally stupid and I didn't care for any of them.
The graphics in Obscure seemed to go from good to average throughout. Some textures were great and some were pretty ugly. The sound in the game was below average...they all seemed to randomly change volumes. You could barely hear anything one second, and the next, your jumping out of your seat from breaking a window! The sound in my opinion is just a loss. Fortunately but unfortunately, Obscure does have a great soundtrack...but you just don't hear it enough at all, and when you do hear it; it's muzzled by all the terrible dialogue that continues throughout the adventure. The characters are always talking, even when it's completely pointless chatter. They should be ashamed of not only there script but covering up such a lovely sound-track.
Final Notes:
Obscure: The Aftermath is not a recommendable game. It's presentation is just a complete mess and everything besides clubbing monsters is just highly un-enjoyable. From dealing with the frustrating camera, terrible AI and then having to listen to all the mind-numbing chatter...Obscure: The Aftermath falls flat. However, what it does get right are some decent-scares, sometimes enjoyable combat, strange but comfortable mini-games and will get your mind working with it's pretty decent puzzles. If you have a friend to enjoy this game with, it's more then worth the twenty dollar price-tag. It's incredibly short, falling under 6 to 7 hours and aside from some of the puzzles it's a very easy game.