Obscure is a passable horror survival game that brings one or two nice touches to the table but mostly follows old conventions of a genre that has moved on and evolved. Obscure tells the harrowing tale of a friends in a high school that discover some diabolical goings-on after (and apparently during) school hours.

Obscure is a teen drama themed (think of the film The Faculty combined with the cast of a WB teen prime-time drama) horror survival game revolving around a group of friends play off every stereotypical personality you'd imagine in a prime time teen soap opera - you have the jock, the nerd on the fringe of being popular, the brainy but pretty girl, the AV nut, the wanna-be bad boy etc. All of these characters are forgettable in terms of story but as playable characters they are affective enough. Each character has special abilities but most of the time you won't notice or won't care to use them because the differences between them are paper thin. But use them you will as you go two-by-two into the dark recesses of your school and try to figure out just what the hell is going on.



We mentioned The Faculty because it's a similar concept driving the game; students are disappearing, and a small group of teens have figured out that something nefarious is going on in deep inside the darkest corners of the school. These quirky teens decide that they must investigate just what's going on, even at their own peril. brave or stupid we won't say. And of course all the evil forces causing this chaos are lining up to take them out.

The gameplay in Obscure is good except for a few problems which you can read about below. Basically you control one main character and one support character that you can switch out whenever you feel the need. Players will traverse the school and it's surrounding area searching for clues, weapons, keys, health items and the occasional save device (in this game it's a CD) as they unravel the mysteries of the school and the monsters that plague it at various turns. Obscure also uses an interesting gameplay mechanic where the screen gets dark when an enemy is in the vicinity (usually attacking you). This has a number of affects including making it hard to kill the monster and attempting to add a slight bit of tension. Luckily the monsters are not big fans of sunlight or artificial light so using a flashlight or breaking out a window is a simple enough way to get an edge over them. Sunlight from a broken window tends to kill these baddies off pretty quickly, while the flashlight (which you can combine with a gun using good old duct tape) works great at hilding them off.

Players will find themselves battling these bad guys with everything from guns to baseball bats, but in between those times they be finding an important tool or a key to gain access to new areas. Player can also interact with the environment in a few ways, like pushing objects to reveal secrets, breaking windows, collecting important clues and finding bigger and better weapons. The game doesn't try to mix things up in terms of the horror survival gameplay that fans of Resident Evil aren't familiar with. This is obviously a good thing for RE fanatics who will have an edge over newbie gamers because they already understand how the system works. Of course, newbies will quickly learn how to juggle inventories, equip weapons, etc pretty quickly simply by reading the manual or doing it in-game. Either way the gameplay should be quick to pick up no matter what your experience level.

While the gameplay doesn't go outside the boundaries and conventions set by RE and other titles, it does offer a nice cooperative feature where two players can team up and take the game on together. Sadly the game's camera focuses directly on the main player, which means that the second player will have to stay within visual range to avoid going off screen. Tag teaming makes things a lot easier because the AI doesn't do a very good job of using weapons or defending or helping you when you are fighting the monsters. Plus it doesn't hurt to have a human backing you up with a weapon or aiding you in those tough monster battles, or even searching for clues and items. Another cool part of the co-op play is that a second player can jump in and out at any time and it doesn't affect the firt player in any dramatic way. The co-op mode is by far the best feature in the game.

I do have a handful of complaints about Obscure, chief among them the way the camera works. The camera is always in a locked position and almost always controlled by the game - and not the player. This can make for some awkward situations, with players often getting the wrong kind of view at just the wrong moment in time. For example, players will often times find themselves moving with the camera directly in front of them, unable to see just what it is they are moving towards - never a good thing any game but an even more devastating prospect in a game where monster can jump out at you any time.

The other problem I have with the game is its settings and characters. What are a bunch of middle class white kids doing going to school in South Central L.A.? If you look at the school in this game you'll be asking yourself the same question. This school is dilapidated and run down that it actually makes a numbered school in New York's school system look like an ivy league prep school. Just where did Hydravision do the research when they put the game together? Iraq? Seriously though, the backdrop works great for the game but it's hard to suspend belief when there's a bunch of white rich kids trying to be cool.



And speaking of our gaggle of heroes and heroines, these kids are the kind that would get beat up outside of Beverly Hills. From the ghetto speaking bad boy to the AV guy with Hollywood haircut in play, these characters are just plain silly. Thankfully their in-game play isn't affected by their "winning personalities."

My final complaint about Obscure is that it doesn't really take any chances. There's the usual assortment of scary moments in the game, complimented by some cool sound affects and decent music, but the gameplay is largely a throwback to early iterations of the Resident Evil series. It would have been nice if Hydravision had added some gameplay elements that would have shocked us or made us get into the game more. Instead they delivered a solid, albeit uninspired horror survival game.

With Obscure currently selling for $20 at EB Games and similar retailers, I can't argue that it's worth picking up and playing. If you like Resident Evil then you'll probably enjoy this game. The gameplay is a little too short, and the character dialogue is cheesy, but the gameplay when combined with the cool tag team co-op play is fun. If you're on the fence about Obscure, give it a rental, but there are worse crimes than spending $20 on a solid, yet formulaic game.