(By White-haired Journalist)

Obscure 2 unexpectedly makes your heart pound faster every time you play it even if it’s not as scary as other horror-dedicated games. Why so? Well, it’s one of the wonders of this superb horror/suspense game, making even big budgeted horror games drop their jaws by the wit and psych war Obscure 2 has to offer.

The events in Leafmore High was a dark history the survivors want to forget. However, even if they already moved to Fallcreek University and start living normal lives as college students, the dark history repeated itself. A strange black flower was infecting the university and the students were having weird, disturbing dreams. And worse, when the seeds of the flowers started to germinate, strange creatures suddenly erupted and started slaying every living thing that gets in their way. Could this be another attempt of the Leafmore High principal who was trying to revive his brother in Obscure 1? What exactly will the perpetrator of this bizzare happening gain from doing this? There’s only one way to find out. And “they” have to rely on each other if they want to survive this nightmare.

Game Play:

I am so happy with Obscure 2’s game play and it really deserves to be called the sequel of it’s wonderful predecessor. The moment you play this game you know something’s wrong. The constant mysteries that shroud the whole university will keep you at the edge of your seat, trying to figure out what exactly is going on. And when you finally get close to the answer, it slips away, giving you more mysteries and puzzles to figure out.

(”Like dude, I can’t…figure out where the toilet is.)

The idea of having more than one protagonist with different personalities and mad skillz were brilliant. The fact that you have to rely on someone if you need to do something special was one of the things that kept me interested in playing this game non-stop. Let’s see your roster of people: 2 strong varsity players, a hacker that can hack almost any electronic gadget with her PDA, a girl that has amazing analyitcal skills, an acrobat that can reach hard to get areas, a guy adept in lockpicking and a mysterious girl that has a dark aura. Good team right? Now go out there and start grinding some monsters!

Umm…but it’s not gonna be that easy. Although there are a good number of firearms you can find scattered in the game, the bullets are scarce and the enemies won’t go down with a bullet or two. Most of the time you and your teammate will have to rely on fighting with melee (baseball bat, hockey stick, spiked club and the likes) or battery powered weapons. One good thing is that the melee weapons are indestructable so you don’t have to worry about not having any weapons at all.

(”I have to go wack that blob?!” “Yeah, we only have one shell left, sorry”)

Yes, you read that right: “you and your teammate.” If you have a friend, you can let him/her play as player 2 because throughout the game, you’ll be exploring places by twos. It’s definitely better to have a human player than playing with the AI for obvious reasons.

Game play tips: Keep exploring with different teams if you get a dead end while solving puzzles. The keys in staying alive here are to have good teamwork and conserve a lot of bullets. Make one the bait while the other attacks and unload your firearms only in boss fights.

Graphics:

The dark places, arrangement of things and disturbing enemies are the top reasons why the game is quite scary. The graphics coating them is good, making even make believe things like the deformed enemies seem very real. Nothing groundbreaking but its enough to compliment the game to make scenarios, places and enemies very dark.

Controls:

The controls are ok and the hotkeys are placed really well in the controller. Personally, I didn’t encounter much difficulty controlling the characters while playing the game. The auto aim feature is nice although the maneuvering of characters coudld’ve been improved as they somewhat tend to be slow in running away from enemies. Other than that, the controls are perfectly fine.

(”Alright, the toilet! Oh crap…another puzzle!”)

Sound:

Another one to be proud of in this game is the sound. Nice background music, nice sound effects, and fluid character conversations are definitely heard in this game. I like the way the characters talk with each other depending on the situation they’re in. You just have to love some of the jokes they throw at each other, sounding as if they’re not in a bad situation. Definitely one of the games I played that has the best sounds heard in game.

Overall:

An improved version of its predecessor, this Obscure game is one of the best games one should play before shelving their PS2s. Even if it’s quite short, the game play as a whole is fulfilling and the storyline is great. Personally, I’m very picky in playing horror games because I did kinda got tired with the idea of most games in the genre using disgusting stuff just to make a game look horror-ish. Obscure 2 proved that a game can be horror without that mainstream idea, delivering a well-packaged game that responds well to the idea of being unique and creative.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Game reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.