[JemyM]

ObsCure
Survival Horror meets Teenage Horror in this very average title.

Story: Highschool horror
Kenny have gone missing and his girlfriend, his sister and a journalist end up locked into their school, Leafmore High. Soon enough they begin to uncover the schools horrible secret. Do you need a greater explanation? One familiar with the movie genré Teenage Horror wouldn't be unfamiliar with the styles and the themes found in this game, especially not if one have seen "The Faquelty" by Robert Rodriguez. Yes, there is a story, and it's progressed through encounters with school employees and finding clues, but the end where everything is explained isn't much of a surprise.

Engine: Graphics & Sounds
ObScure is a PS2 game that been hotted up for the PC. Do not get me wrong, this is ofcourse a game from 2004, and it looks like it, but in higher resolution it looks fine for it's age. It uses no modern gee-whizz effects but it's not ugly either. The monsters are, in my opinion, do not have the disturbed design that we have seen in games like Silent Hill and most of them doesn't make much sense either. At least there's a cool effect with a kind of "spreading darkness" around the monsters that color the area around them greenish/brownish.

Like most teenage horror flicks, ObsCure have some pop music, such as The Sums Still Waiting in the Intro, but most music uses a choir singing in what I believe to be latin. In many games the choir fits in, but not in ObsCure that have no divine/hellish stuff in it whatsoever. The voice acting is average to bad.

Gameplay
There are 5 characters you can play and they can even die and you will still be able to finish the game. You pick the character you want to play and then you have to recruit a 2nd character among who's left. Each character have an unique ability but they are mostly useless. You can swap team at any time by going back to a meeting place. You do not have to play the game alone, ObsCure is one of those games that encourages you to get a buddy to play the other character, but it doesn't make much impact on PC (and my cohabit shuns horror stories like the plague). Luckily the teammate can also be played by the computer. Besides the co-op mode, ObsCure plays out just like other Survival Horror games such as Silent Hill or Resident Evil. The school is littered with weaponry and ammunition (American highschool eh?) and you will find keys and items to be used in puzzles. You can actually pick locks around the school. Unlike other similar games you can also use a flashlight as a weapon. This flashlight can actually be taped to a weapon, but for some reason it cannot be taken off again so you better keep the best flashlights until you are sure you have a good weapon to combine it with.

I ran the game on normal and I felt the combat difficulty to be from extremely easy to very hard. One area took many retries to get through, but then there were large chunks of gametime without any danger at all. The end boss was annoyingly difficult compared to everything I met throughout the game. Despite the problems, it didn't take me very long to finish the game. The puzzles are quite easy and it feeds you hints all the time to make sure you know what to do next.

Final Thoughts...
ObsCure was one of the survival horrors I got left to play but I could as well have skipped it. It's unique in being the only "teenage horror" game out there, but in everything else it's an inferior copy to the greater survival horror series.