Publisher: Playlogic
Developer: Hydravision
Genre: Action Adventure
Release date: Available now

A mysterious black flower has sprouted up all over the campus at Fallcreek University. One of the students finds out that inhaling the flower’s spores will induce hallucinations, and soon everyone on campus is getting high off of the school’s supply. This illicit drug use has ramifications worse than any of the students could have expected, however, as the flower causes mutations in most of the students, leaving the school and surrounding area filled with monsters. In Obscure: The Aftermath, you control a group of students trying to escape the carnage with their lives.

The game starts off with two students hanging out in a dorm room, waiting to leave for a party. As they meet up with their friends, they all take turns inhaling a crushed black flower. When they get to the party, they find blood everywhere, and mutants roaming the hallways. While making their escape, the students will go to several locations, including forests, a hospital, and a warehouse. The controls are pretty common for the survival-horror genre and are very easy to get used to on the PSPgo. The game also features a co-op setting, in which you and a friend, with another PSP, can control both characters on screen. This is especially helpful in combat, when you are fighting multiple monsters at the same time.

In Obscure, you control two of the eight characters at a time. Each character has a special ability which you will need to access the various locations. These special abilities include strength, computer hacking, decryption, control over the black aura created by the flowers, and jumping. While some of the abilities are basically automatic (lifting heavy objects and jumping), some of them require the completion of a minigame in order to succeed.

One of the highlights of the title on the Go is the visuals, and the music is eerie enough to create just the right mood. The mutant variety is fairly minimal as you progress through the game, but the weapon selection makes up for it. Players can employ several different melee and ranged weapons to fight off the mutants they encounter, including bats, hockey sticks, pistols, shotguns, tazers, and crossbows. The combat is pretty standard for the genre, and there are a variety of ways to heal yourself after you get mauled.

While the dark, bloody visuals and eerie music strive to immerse you into the environment, the voice-acting and dialogue yank you right back out. The voice acting is pretty bad all around. The lines sound forced, the delivery is poor, and the timing is often off. The dialogue, itself, is filled with clichés and sarcastic sexual remarks, and sometimes so corny that you have to wonder if it was written this way on purpose. At one point, while helping the well-endowed blonde character climb up a ladder, you’ll comment on how you hope that you don’t get your eyes poked out.

While Obscure: The Aftermath doesn’t bring anything new or innovative to the table, it still plays like a pretty solid, yet dated, survival-horror game. The voice acting is so bad it makes you want to turn the sound off, but the music is good enough to force you to leave it on. The game is filled with “Wait… what?” moments in regards to the plot, but getting from point A to point B is a fairly enjoyable experience.

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Our Recommendation: