Obscure: The Aftermath

PS2 Review

Developer: Hydravision Entertainment

Publisher: Ignitioni Entertainment

Players: 1-2

The original Obscure was a sleeper-hit on the PS2, telling a great survival horror story of high school students who have to fight to survive these mutants who are out for their blood. The game focused on co-op game play and set itself apart from other survival-horror affairs. Now, we are brought the sequel, Obscure: The Aftermath. Can it work the same magic yet again?

Obscure: The Aftermath builds on where the original left off.

The game focuses on co-op play once again and the story begins a few years after the events of the original game. The survivors from the original are now in college and seem happy, recovering from the past. Things begin to take a turn for the worse though when history begins to repeat itself.

The game clearly draws inspiration once again from many teen horror films, and does so in an extremely entertaining fashion.

The game focuses on two characters mainly as you go through environments, solving puzzles and avoiding monsters at all costs.

The game features a nice array of weapons at your disposal, and also allows you to map the use of the weapons to your controls however you life. The camera works well with the weapons as it jumps right behind your shoulder once you are ready to fire, a la Resident Evil 4.

Each character also has their own special abilities to help them along. Some are better at doing physical tasks than others, who may use their brains more for the puzzles. This is where the co-op aspect comes in, as this is a great game to sit down and play with someone, working together through things.

The visuals are very respectable considering this is a budget release on the PS2. The environments are fairly detailed and the character models, although not perfect, have come together well. For a budget game, it looks damn good.

The audio features some awful voice-acting which detracts from the story. In a way though, the bad voice acting almost makes it humorous at times. The music does a nice job of setting the entire atmosphere of the game.