Obscure: The Aftermath

The Good

I am a big fan of survival horror games. But what sets the ObsCure saga apart from Resident Evil, Etc, is that this has an optional 2 player mode, which enhances the enjoyment of playing through the game.

ObsCure II was a fun, and satisfying addition to my games collection. Gameplay was fun, better and incredibly imaginative. But the story was weaker in its execution. Whereas the original had a great set up, this one gets into things a little too fast, and the camera angles were rather awkward. Kind of like Midway's prison bloodbath The Suffering, in that you have to use the right analog stick to position yourself.

The story was very different as well. While there were references to the Leafmore High experiments, much of the game had a totally separate subplot about deadly spores produced from flowers. The fact that this game determines the fate of the characters for you was also deeply saddening and unrewarding as a result. In the first game, everybody could make it through if you were extra careful. Here, this is not the case.

Hopefully, ObsCure III (if it is made) will not be as cutthroat with the characters, and maybe save a lot more of them the next time around.

The Bad

Camera angles aren't the greatest. The lack of ammo is also problematic at times.

Resident Evil meets Alien.

The Good
Obscure: The Aftermath is a sequel for the previous obscure developed by Microids. The game allow you to take control of different characters as you did in the previous game of the series. You can play the game with someone else as a second player which is something that makes the game different from other survival horror games.

The graphics are good, better than before with a new camera system behind our character most of the time. All the characters in the game are charismatic and has different personalities, they talk most part of the game and they're not like the characters of many games that don't say a word in the whole game.

The music is really good, one of the best things of the game like it was in Obscure. Composed by Olivier Derivière who made the game for Obscure too as well as other games like Alone in The Dark. The music is ambient and fitting for the occasion.

The battle system has been improved, now you'll fight better than before and every enemy has different weak points, so, you'll have to use the correct weapon for every distant enemy.

The Bad
The main problem is the game is that the good things that the game has were in the previous Obscure game. It's more of the shame thing but with a different camera style, which was a really bad choice.

Cameras are one of the worst things on the game. I've never seen such a bad camera movement in a game like this one. They'll hide important objects, doors, enemies and exits, it's really annoying to play a game with such a bad camera movement. Sometimes you'll aim to nothing to change the camera and see where you are.

Maybe because the game wasn't developed by Microids, loses the essence of the first one. Here you'll have some puzzles (which are really good puzzles, hard enough to spend a little time thinking what to do with them) but there's no sensation of graphic adventure which was in the previous game. Obscure was something like a survival graphic adventure horror game, and this one is just a survival horror game.

Obscure featured one remarkable thing, the game won't stop unless all of your characters die, so, you could finish the game with all your characters alive or just with one or two remaining. That feature was eliminated on this game, here you can't choose (most of the time) the characters, and the game is predestined from the beginning to a unique storyline which you can't modify. It doesn't matter what you do, you'll have to finish the game with the same characters and if one of them dies when he shouldn't the game will finish.

To finish with, there are many weapons but most of them need to be reloaded so soon, most of the times you'll have just 4 or 5 shots before reloading and it's annoying. Anyway, it's a minor thing in comparison with the other bad things of the game

The Bottom Line
Obscure: The Aftermath loses the essence of Obscure and become one more survival horror game, not even special and different from others. Play it if you've played the first one (which is better) and if you don't mind to have one of the worst camera movement system ever made in a game.