The sequel to Obscure serves up some scares, but the clunky combat bogs down the experience.
Obscure: The Aftermath is the follow-up title to a relatively unknown little survival horror game from earlier in the PS2's lifespan. This PSP version of the game actually arrives nearly a year after the sequel had arrived on the PS2, and having played both versions of the game, I can safely say that they're pretty much identical in how they play, and the story represented.
The Aftermath follows a group of students who get caught up in a mysterious event with a strange flower that carries over certain ideas from the first game. The flower causes monsters to spawn (or some really nasty hallucinations), and the kids in the game are caught up within the school grounds trying to figure out what happened and how to survive the current events. You don't need to be familiar with the first game to get a grip on the story here, the opening cinematic of the game gives you a quick overview to catch up with, but the story in general isn't particularly convoluted. The game itself plays like an older style of survival horror, so those of you more familiar with Resident Evil 4 or 5 might not care for the older control and combat set-up here. To be fair, fighting monsters in the game isn't particularly fun, its clunky and easy to get hit, and much harder to dodge or block than it should be. Where the game does manage to shine is in its atmosphere and musical selections, and the PSP doesn't lose any of that in the translation to the small screen.
The version of the game I played was a digital download from the PSN service, just to give you a quick heads up. Loading felt pretty minimal here, and I've heard some complaints of loading from the UMD version of the game, so I thought it was worth mentioning. I remember the PS2 version of the game having somewhat lengthy load times as well, so that seems to be slightly alleviated from the DD copy.
As the game begins, you're introduced to the co-op aspect of the game, at pretty much every point in the story you'll be in direct control over two teenagers, and can switch between them on the fly. Each character has their own special skill, like the ability to push heavy objects, jump to out of reach places, and so on. There's a large number of puzzles or obstacles that will require you to make use of these specific combinations throughout the course of the game, so switching between the two is constantly mandatory. The game does have an ad-hoc mode for two players, which works pretty well, and adds a little more fun to the experience.
Combat is where the game really stumbles, at the beginning you're stuck with melee weapons, and after just a few encounters you'll realize how ineffective these weapons tend to be. It's hard to read enemy patterns, and in enclosed areas (which the majority of the game tends to be in), it can even be hard to see enemies entirely. The game locks on to enemies automatically, which helps to keep you from missing them, but at the same time it's troublesome when you want to target the same foe your partner is. Also, a lot of enemies take a ridiculous amount of hits before going down, even with a gun equipped, so it's almost impossible to avoid getting hit. Health items aren't necessarily rare, but you feel like you shouldn't be using them after every single fight. If you can get past my grumbles with the combat, the game has a great atmosphere to it, and the puzzle stuff is fun, but man, I hate fighting anything in this game.
The atmosphere is very reminiscent of an early Silent Hill title, in part due to the soundtrack, but also with the visuals. There's not much in the way of jump scares like RE titles, but there are monster variations that are reminiscent of Capcom's long running series. However, the overall mood of the game feels like Silent Hill, but the psychological horror isn't as pronounced. Overall, it's a good mix between the two series, and I think fans of the earlier versions of both games would get some enjoyment out of Obscure.
There are some story issues, the game seems to want to be a teen horror flick, and at times it evokes that feeling a little too well. The dialogue is hokey, and the voice acting is a little on the poor side when it pops up. It's hard to tell how intentional that is, but for the most part, the game seems to play itself straight, which makes me feel like it's a quality issue instead of something done on purpose. Because of that, it's hard to really care for the characters you control and what happens to them, taking a little bit of the edge off of what would otherwise be a tense set of events.
Still, the game is worth checking out in my opinion, in part because there's not a lot of decent survival horror titles in the pipeline that aren't from the two major juggernauts in the genre. It's not a great game, and it has some issues, but it gets enough right about the genre that fans shouldn't pass it over. That said the price seems a bit much to ask considering the exact same game on the PS2 is cheaper at the moment, so you might want to wait for a price drop. That said, the content makes the transition without a hitch, so if you're just looking to try the game out again, or missed out on the first time, there's nothing wrong with checking out the PSP version of the game.
