Customer Reviews

Obscure: The Aftermath

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I didn't expect much from Obscure: The Aftermath, mainly because I wasn't too thrilled with the first Obscure game (released what seems like ages ago) and the fact that the game carries a budget price tag. Well, you definitely get your money's worth with Obscure: The Aftermath, which for those who are unfamiliar with the first game, is a co-op survival horror excursion. The story picks up where the first game left off, finding familiar characters now in college, and once again haunted by horiffic forces at work. The first thing you'll notice is that for a budget priced PS2 title, Obscure: The Aftermath looks surprisingly good. The character models and lighting effects are well done, and the environments are well detailed. The game's music score is haunting as well, but the real meat and potatoes of the game is the co-op gameplay that really enhances what would otherwise have been a generic survival horror trip. The few flaws that hurt Obscure: The Aftermath mostly lie within the game's combat system, which doesn't always work out well. Not to mention that the game's story isn't much to look at, and the voice acting is beyond atrocious. Also, the game is quite short (you can finish the game in one sitting if you so desired), and your AI controlled partner isn't always the brightest brain in the bunch either. Flaws aside though, Obscure: The Aftermath is a surprisingly good survival horror yarn that delivers the goods, and the budget price tag warrants a look at the very least.

Obscure the aftermath is a "Sure why not!" game. Because it is cheap you can drop coin on it and not feel like you lost anything in the exchange.

As expected it takes place after the first game. 3 of the original characters survived a horrible botanical experiment gone bad and defeated a mad scentist who was experimenting on faculty and students to find a cure for his dying twin brother. As expected these experiments turned casual people in mutant monsters making you wonder if Leonard and his twin Herbert were the Umbrella execs from Resident evil that did not quite make the cut. I can see it now. Wesker saying "You are evil but just not evil enough guys and your character models look a lil dated! Maybe you can move on to star in a 3rd party survival horror game. I hear Obscure needs some villians check with them!"

Regardless after one of the survivors reflects on his past you begin being randomly put into the shoes of other characters. Because this is a co-op slash and monster fest you have to always use the skills of both people to blaze a trail to your next objective. In truth after you learn how to navigate, use items, switch between team mates, and equip weapons The Aftermath does grow on you. It is not nearly as buggy as Suffering: The ties that bind which would have been a great game had it not been so carelessly rushed by midway. At least Aftermath's programmers took time to address clipping issues and it has no abyssmal doors you walk through and fall into a pit of nothingness. Besides slow save and load times the game is pretty slick and responsive for what it is.

The actual protagonists are not quickly likeable sadly. In your first mission Corey smugly looks at his bed and says "Many girls have come and gone here! But you're different Mei at least you stayed!" Mei has every right to call him a pig.

Next up jock-smock Kenny makes a remark about blowing his load to his sexy decrpyting cohort Amy after she finds a gun in the Billard room.

It's kind of hard to feel anything for these college frat stereotypes. In some instances you may root for the monsters more than for the people you're playing as. If you stay the duration a few of the heroes and heroines do prove they have more interesting layers underneath their dense cliche outer shells but even then the character development never becomes ground shaking.

As you progress through trippy graveyard dream sequences, frat parties, libraries, billard rooms, hidden passages, and labratories you get the feeling these programmers had a thing for the movie The Faculty and thought Buffy The vampire slayer was Shakespeare. Actually Buffy was a great series but whereas its campy style of humor worked for the scooby gang it does not work for The Aftermath. Joss Whedon was a master at portraying characters as normal and flawed but still quirky and lovable. In Aftermath you do not get nearly that same level of bonding.

Believe it or not there are some neat surprises along the way. I thought it was cool how when I leveled my first monster its heart stayed behind and kept beating a long time. There is also an odd Flower reference for one of the female characters that is genuinely creepy.

Despite finding this game to not be mere garbage I have to mostly agree with how I made my earliar acessment doing my IGN review of it. The fact it is two player is a welcome change for this genre. It would definetly be a wonderful introduction to survival horror. However if you've visited Silent Hill and had tea with Alessa and Pyramid head, took tourist pictures in the ghost world of Fatal Frame, or played Zombie Head golf with Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy you have seen far better scares and far better plot devices then what are in AfterMath. That considered it is essentially a good game and "sleeper gem" that has gotten more flak than it deserves.


Pros

+ Very few bugs

+Smooth responsive controls

+Two player gorey action!

+A few neat sights along the way

+ A decent story-line that is much better then what you'll find within the typical "teen horror" genre. Not the most original plot but I've seen far worse.

+ Some of the characters are discovered to be courageous, dedicated, and good hearted deep down. It is a shame this is not immediatly so apparent at first. However it is realistic. Gaggles of friends are rarely "mature and civilized" when observed in groups.

+ A few things such as using spotlights to dispel darkness, utilizing a syringe to collect vital fluids from monster organs to replenish your health, revving up a chain saw to cut fallen trees from your path, and adjusting the security camera clarity while navigating Mei's sister Jun through the basement were neat additions.

Cons

- Ai can get abysmally dumb at certain pivotal points in which your partner actually needs to be helpful.

- The frat humor and frat stereotypes just come off as unintelligent and offensive near the beginning of After-math. The young characters in Rockstar's Bully and Atlus's Persona 3 Fes were alot more likeable at the start of their respective tales.

- Back tracking because you may have brought the wrong character for the wrong task.

-Character models look a bit dated.

- Creature designs are unoriginal however since so many survival horror games exist that have used so many ideas I can somewhat forgive Aftermath for this. Hard to break the mold when nothing new is under the sun.

-Slow save and load times.

First off let me say I'm really into puzzle/mystery games and was wanting to start playing other games from different genres.
My boyfriend and I found Obscure: The Aftermath at game trading store for about $15 and were shocked to see that it was able to have 2 players. We got it thinking it can't be that bad. From the start it reminded me of Resident Evil but a little bit softer version. The storyline is okay. Nothing really special. The backgrounds are great and have plenty of detail. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were so many puzzle like parts in the game.
The few things I didn't like is the slow save and load times (forever) and the fact that if you don't grab the right partner to come with you, you have to back track to get the right one and sometimes more than once for the same mission thing.
Overall. Good game for what I spent. A little too short. You could finish it in one day if you wanted too. It was perfect game for both me and my boyfriend. I got the puzzles and he got the monsters and all the shooting.

If you are into two-player co-ops, you definitely need to check this game out. It's like a two player "Resident Evil". It's a little cumbersome without the split screen, but there are lots of puzzles to figure out and tons of monsters to try and not get eaten by. We really enjoyed the first Obscure, as well.

What lies around the next corner in the Dark ? Just one of the suspensful emotions of Obscure the aftermath.Great game hours of enjoyment

Just finished this one after an inspired 23 hours of gaming with a friend (no we didn't play this the whole time-it only took us about 7 hours to complete it), and I have to say I was overall pretty satisfied here. But there are some minor issues that keep this one from being great. See below:

Story-3/5: The basics-stereotypical college students-one dimensional caricatures really-try to survive the horrible events that happen at their home institution stemming from the newest natural high. If you played the first one, no real surprises here. From there, we got real confused, but here's our best guess. So, it starts out as an homage to films like The Faculty, but in college? Okay, I'm in. Then, about midway through, we start treading into Wrong Turn/Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory? Alright...I'm still in. Finally, we take a major u-turn, start watching The Order or The Skulls, only to have an even weirder (almost Resident Evil) twist at the end (I won't spoil it for you)? By the end I was done trying to figure this one out. The story is drawing from way too much material, and it barely holds together. Still worth the play, in my opinion, though...let's move on.

Gameplay-5/5: This is where it hooks you. Co-op, multiplayer survival horror, smartly put together. Rather than have one character stay stationary while the other goes off and pushes the one button that will let player one move forward, you are forced to work on puzzles and situations together. My favorite part? Strategizing for combating the mutants-who gets what weapon, which enemy is priority-we had an absolute blast at that. Combat is pretty visceral, too, with baseball bats, golf clubs, and we even found a nail bat. There is also a plethora of firearms, and tools-made-into-weapons, so it rarely gets beating up baddies. Unless you are short on ammo, but that's what these games are about. But that is only part of it. The next major component is that each playable character has a special ability-strength (to move heavy stuff), hacking, cryptography, etc. You may have to do some backtracking when you grabbed the wrong character, but it's okay. It is a neat concept that plays out pretty well. I hope you don't hate the lockpicking as much as I did, though....that takes some patience.

Graphics-4/5:Given that the focus was on the Wii version, I was pretty happy with the graphics from this multiplatform game. Too often nowadays, the good ol' PS2 gets the short end of the graphics stick because developers don't want to spend the time to optimize the games for the system. But anyway, the monster models and character models look excellent, locations are sufficiently creepy (Favorite area? The hospital-one hallway does the lights on lights off trick expertly-really freaky stuff for a blinking light!) and only rarely will you find a major graphical hiccup (once during a cut scene, I noticed that the engine loaded fog after the scene had started...no biggie). It looks pretty good here. A couple of really good camera angles during early cutscenes caught my eye, too. Lots of gore, just for the record.

Overall-4/5: Though there is really no replay value here, save for unlocking one box that we couldn't get to work the first go-round, I fully intend to hang on to this one, as it is a FUN party game. It wouldn't have been half as fun without someone to smash heads with, solve puzzles (and argue over the right way to go about it), and genuinely get into this game. There were some moments where we got a good scare out of it and BOTH started blasting away like madmen trying to take out a monster. You could spend your money on much much worse; it's cheap enough that you really won't get burned for trying it out. We should really reward certain (Canadian) publishers that will take a chance to make such innovative games on an aging system.

Go order it right now.

This horror takes place in a college in Fall Creek. There are characters Corey, Amy, Sven, Mei, and Jun. Also joining are a few survivors from the previous Obscure from Leafmore Highschool. There are strange flowers that produce dark mist cause ill effects in people turning them into mutants.

In this game you can switch out your characters for another one, partnering with the AI or a friend. Each of the characters has a special attribute, like acrobatics, computers, strength, etc. It does get annoying when you don't have the right character and have to go all the way back to where your group is to switch out.

The combat is a little better than the first Obscure, the enemies seem to actually get stunned with hits. They can damage you a great deal, but not as crazy as Obscure 1. You use blunt weapons from hockey sticks, bats, gold clubs, and chain saws. You do get some guns in this game from
pistols, shotguns, flare guns, and stun guns. A bit more variety of weaponary this time around. Combat is more satisfying here.

The characters themselves, there are alot of them that are not very likable. There are maybe 2 or 3 I like out of the bunch. They all tell alot of jokes, or insult eachother during your survival. Their reaction should be a bit more when killer monsters are hunting after them throughout the campus.

Throught the game there will be a good number of puzzles to get through to the next room. This can be fun at times and challenging. You cannot use the same save point twice, so you have to be careful not to waste it.

This is a decent game, and sequel which I think is better than 1.
The game is only $20. If your really into survival horrors, and have beaten Resident Evils, Silent Hills, and Fatal Frames you might want to pick this up for the good price it's selling at.

The other reviews here are all accurate -- it's a decent game, and worth $10-$20, but that's about it. My first couple hours with the game were great. It looks good, sounds good, and had a promising set-up. I was psyched with what I saw and excited to find out where it was going. Unfortunately, it wasn't going anywhere. By the end of the first Boss battle, I thought I'd seen all there was to see, and I was right. The game doesn't get much more difficult or creepy, and there is no character development. The AI is surprisingly bad considering you MUST have two characters with you at all times. I had a horrible experience with weapon selection -- I can't count the number of times I armed my sidekick with a gun, only to see them whacking away with a golf club.

Still, I have to admit I enjoyed playing it to the end! It's an easy game. You will never throw your controller down in frustration, and the save points are well-placed and frequent. Although I didn't give a hoot about the overarching plot, I was always compelled to finish the chapter. It keeps you going in little spurts, which may be a blessing in disguise for this title... it's a great game to put down for awhile and pick back up again.

I recommend this to any survival-horror fan who wants a game to tide them over between Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Fatal Frame releases. Also recommended to anyone who may find those titles too scary or gory -- this is horror that would be appropriate for younger players.

Pros: Pacing, Ease, Save-Point Locations, Music, Graphics
Cons: Horrible Camera, Bad AI, Boring Story

When I played this game for the first twenty minutes, my impression of it wasn't exactly glowing. Crappy aiming, stupid camera, and incredibly awful dialogue threatened to spoil the whole experience. Then a miracle happened. The game became good and interesting. It was still frustrating, but it became fun. I think critics were a little quick to give this game crappy reviews. This isn't exactly a flawless game, and does its damndest to be like its fellow PS2 contemporary survival-horror game Resident Evil 4 (A game that's the definition of a flawless game). It certainly doesn't succeed in being like Resident Evil, but it's a decent game nonetheless.
WHAT THE GAME IS: A survival-horror title and the second entry of the Obscure games. The game's story is incredibly stupid along with the dialogue. It makes the old Resident Evil games look like Academy Award-winning, Golden Globe Nomination material in comparison. A group of college kids are trying to forget their past memories during High School after it was massacred by a mysterious organism. Now everyone in the dorms of Fallcreek University is getting high on a new substance made from a black flower that causes horrific nightmares for hallucinations. When the group of kids decides to go to a party at another university the flowers bloom and kill or turn the college students into monsters. Now they have to escape and kill these monsters that are now invading the town. Great. A story about stoners saving their town from a flower. Brilliant!
GRAPHICS: Bleh. This game only came out this year, what the hell is this? A PS2 game shouldn't look like this! It looks like the original Obscure that I have for my old Xbox, and that game was made in 2004! Texture problems, the environments are too dark to see sometimes (It's like watching AVP: Requiem all over again), and the fact the environments get a little repetitive at times. This darkness problem gets annoying and can get you lost. I also noticed animation stutters and weird little glitches during gameplay.
MUSIC: This is the one area this game does better than Resident Evil 4. The music is fantastic and has a rather awesome haunting melody to it which adds to the creepy environments.
SOUND: Oh God, you're gonna want to strangle these people the moment you hear them speak. The dialogue is incredibly crappy. The actors suck, and don't make the plot sound serious at all (Even during tragic death scenes). They're disastrous, but then again they're trying to imitate stoners so they do kind of sound like them.
GAMEPLAY: This area is a mixed bag. I despised the shooting controls. Why the hell would you even bother implementing an over-the-shoulder view if you can only hope your dumbass character knows how to aim, because you can't aim for yourself. The bash-enemies-to-death gameplay worked fine and proved to be of more use most of the time. The chainsaw should only be used to cut logs apart, don't use it in combat. As much as I would have loved to go Doom-style on these ***holes, you can't. The stun gun also sucks too and is pointless. The gameplay is also hampered by the stupid camera because it can get in your way. I also didn't the fact you can't just go forward if your team member dies. You get six playable character with their own unique skills (Well, actually only three have special skills, the others just suck). When your team member dies you have to go back to your last save point. I got pissed at this because only need three of these people: The guy with strength, the guy who can jump high, and the Asian chick who can hack computers. After all these complaints how did this game receive a 7.75? Eventually you get used to some of these problems and I enjoyed solving the puzzles and finding things. Those are what managed to save the experience from the depths of disaster.
OVERALL: I'd recommend a rental first because this game is frustrating. But the puzzles, the music, the three interesting characters, the gore, and certain parts of the gameplay salvage the experience. As the psychologist character from South Park would say, "Drugs are bad, m'kay?"
THE GOOD: The fantastic music, the puzzles, the gore, the three characters with unique abilities, the creature designs, and other aspects of the gameplay.
THE BAD: Stupid camera, crappy gun controls, frustrating missions and deaths, and incredibly crappy dialogue and storyline.

I'm a huge fan of the survival horror genre, but it's very hard to find a good one because most seem to be so wrapped up in making things pop out at you they forget to put an ending or an actual storyline. Then when the ending is there, many times they try to cliffhang it and leave so many loose ends or just something entirely missing. Also many times the co-op is more like Player 1 and the disposable tag-along.

I'll start by saying that any Survival Horror Duo (like my friend and i, we usually switch off controllers, but in this case we could both play) or trio or quartet will likely enjoy the co-op mode in this. All the characters you play have their own special skills, so no ones useless or just fighting to move things around or open things for the most part. You can also change the camera to follow the other character with the R2 button, so if you need whoevers skill to open whatever high up off screen thing, you dont have to blind feel around for it even if the skill owner is player 2.

The characters themselves are a bit video game stereotypey, where the girls are all the smart hot college kids who have lots of sex and the majority of the guys are all the jock-ish athletics who are giving it to them. They gradually grow on you.

On the game itself, there are a few references and reminders of what happened in the first one, including survivors, but if you hadn't read up on the first one, it's a bit hazy. But the graphics are good, the music is very upbeat in some parts and spooky when it needs to be. The story itself is pretty clear throughout. Theres very few types of monsters though.