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Dated visuals, bad voice acting and an impossible control scheme. Best to stick with the original game.

While the Resident Evil series was a hit for five years, Capcom saw that the genre needed a change, and that was apparent in their groundbreaking new release, Resident Evil 4, mirroring the classic success of its predecessor nine years ago.

Though French developer Hydravision, has not picked up the hint that the gaming world has moved on to bigger, better things, as is apparent by the release of Obscure. Hydravision is obviously stuck in the past with this blatant clone of the Capcom classic, with the reiteration of the same clichés.

Playing through you will get strange moments of déjà vu, if not total flash backs of you sitting at home, in a bean bag chair, eating Sweedish Fish, drinking a tub of Dew, playing through the original Resident Evil.

Survival-horror game veterans will run through this game with such predictability that the only puzzle they will encounter is if they can be patient enough to finish it. However, in an attempt to keep the game new and fresh, the game takes place in a high school and mimics the teen thrillers so popular in the 80’s and early 90’s. A regurgitated story about a hidden evil deep in the high school grounds revolves around a cast of five.

All your expected teen-age heroes are here; the geeky smart guy who likes the AV club, the stupid jock who doesn’t care about his super hot girlfriend, the tough feminist who you are positive is a lesbian, the girl friend of the jock who is a complete moron, and the problem child who is the original gangsta.

You will use all of the characters in different ways to accomplish your objectives and pass certain puzzles. One thing I found to be a nice aspect of the game, is you can switch your characters at any time, and certain puzzles require a certain character’s special ability.

Oh yes, they have special abilities. They range from the geek’s insight on if you have examined a room full enough, to the feminists hints as to what you need to do next. Though I would not call them hints, more a painfully obvious statement or reiteration of something you already knew.

Here’s an example; the school has gone to hell, as all high schools do, and a cut-scene plays informing me to find the principal. A couple puzzles later, I have a few locked doors, a chemistry kit, and puzzles right in my face. So what do I do? I look to my feminist hero for inspiration and advice on how to surpass the hell that is Obscure, only to receive from her this response, “We really should find the principal.” You don’t say lesbian! I only heard that a billion times during the cut-scene.

Not only does it suffer from an out dated game play mechanic completely cloned from a previous franchise, but the controls are the absolute worst I have ever experienced of any, I repeat any, PC game to date. In this atrocity, you don’t use a mouse.

Hell, who needs a mouse when you can go through the menus with arrow keys, and when equipping your weapon is as easy as, ctrl+shift+UP+backspace-until you find the weapon you want, then push the SPACE key, a mouse becomes obsolete! You will use the keyboard for literally everything, and not only is it annoying, it’s damn impractical.

In order to fire a gun, you need to hold up one of the shift keys, then hold ctrl, and then push ‘E’. When a monster is chasing my little teen backside, I barley have time to turn around let alone reprogram the computer. A word of advice to Hyrdavision, the mouse is your friend, it is your best friend.

Visually, Obscure falls short yet again. The visuals are very dated, with flat textures and boring lighting. In the cinematics, the animation is wonky, very unrealistic, and sadly does not get better in game. The in game cut-scenes don’t even include facial animations. The sound and music is not any better.

Musical moments are few and far between, and when music does play it is more annoying than helpful to the experience. Again copied from the original survival-horror king is the second rate voice acting. Every time I listen to the characters talk, I laugh and think, “Jill, is that….you Jill?”

So what we have here is an out-dated copy of a great classic game. It comes in short in all aspects, and in the control field, it completely fails. If the game was an amazing adventure I could have overcome the no mouse issue, and been able to enjoy it, but when you can’t control an irritating character through a bland world, in an all too familiar scenario, you lose interest, and playing it becomes a chore.


Review by Sean Tonks.