Review by: Brandon "Black Flower" Cackowski-Schnell

Obscure: The Aftermath, a PSP port of the sequel to the original Obscure, is a game of averages. The great visuals and haunting score create a creepy atmosphere but the game never gets particularly scary. There are plenty of playable characters, all with their own special talent, but these talents are incredibly mundane consisting of moving big objects, jumping up to high ledges and reading. The game supports drop-in / drop-out co-op but only locally. These highs and lows combine to make the game safe yet forgettable.

Two years after the shenanigans at Leafmore High, the survivors from the first game are back at it again. Now students at the nearby Fallcreek University, they find themselves wrapped up in another horrible plot involving black flowers, terrible hallucinations and mutated beasties. As you work your way through the game you'll control different pairs of characters, sometimes in pairings determined by the game, sometimes in groups you choose. As your progression through the game is dependent upon having the right players with you, the trial and error aspect to progression can be a bit annoying when you find that you need the hacker lady but only picked a pair of meatheads. When that happens, there's nothing left to do but backtrack to the common area and pick a new player. Luckily once you have your pair, switching between the two is easy enough and managing the inventory of your players is well implemented.

Picking the wrong AI partner isn't the only issue with your companions. Most of the time they're predisposed to walking in between you and the camera (bad) or between you and the various enemies that you're shooting (worse). It's a toss up as to who I did more damage to, the beasts or my partners, but luckily health drops and ammo were plentiful making it so that a renewed teammate was never more than one energy drink away. Unfortunately the plentiful supplies also made is so that I was never all that concerned for my safety, thereby negating any real scares in the game.

The camera certainly doesn't help matters much either often times requiring some serious wrangling to provide the best view of the action. When in combat you can lock onto enemies to target them, but between the wonky camera and your partner's propensity to rush headlong into the gaping maw of an enemy, taking down monsters can be a chore.

The game looks and sounds great with the soundtrack open from the main menu, a nice touch. Character models move realistically, the beastie design is well done and flashlights make convincing light trails in the darkness. When I saw the game at E3, the developers mentioned that the cheesy dialog and delivery was intentional and meant to be a parody of slasher films, however without that nugget of information it's hard to tell if the bad writing is intentional or not. I suppose that's more a condemnation of game writing in general than this game's writing, but still, without reference, bad is bad.

Survival horror has always been a dodgy genre for handheld platforms. It's hard to get sucked into a game when playing it on a three inch screen and even more difficult to be scared of a monster that's no bigger than your thumb. Obscure: The Aftermath doesn't do much to turn the tide in this regard, and if a survival borror game doesn’t give you chills, then what’s the point?