No Cure for Obscure 2


Aha! I’ve found the script!

I finished Obscure 2 last night. It was not good. You should not play this game. I wrote a review with details if you are interested.

OK, ok, I’ll provide a little more context. Obscure 2 is a game that cuts its own throat with a terrible plot and asinine characters. It’s got the right elements to make a good game, but in the end it was really quite bad. It’s too bad because I enjoyed the first game more than I expected to.

21 thoughts on “No Cure for Obscure 2”

  1. You do know all the characters and situations are intentionally cliched, right?

    I can’t understand why people can’t get their head around the fact Obscure revels in its b-movie roots. While games like Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark 5 are trying their best to prove to you that they’re works of narrative art (sadly, I was really disapointed by AITD’s paint by numbers plot), Obscure just puts out these stereotypes and lets you play out an interactive version of The Faculty.

    I don’t think you should ever hold it against Obscure for doing that. Sure, the gameplay is very tired and familiar; so it has every right to be criticised. Let’s face it, Obscure 1&2 isn’t original in the slightest (expect for the 2up mode), but it knows its limits unlike a lot of survival horror games out there.

    I’ll admit though, Obscure 2 did have writers who thought they were transending the genre somewhat with the teen suicide angle (and the obviously designed monsters based on teenage fears), but with the rest of it, they obviously knew what they were brought in to make.

  2. I understood their intent, I just didn’t give them a pass for creating crap just because their intended genre also happens to have a high concentration of crap.

    I’m not a huge fan of teen slasher flicks, but even within that genre I thought that Obscure 2 was pretty atrocious.

    Oh, and the lock pick minigame was pretty unforgivable, at least on the Wii.

  3. I pretty much agree with your review. I played through the PC version, which has really bad camera problems. The console versions are obviously much better at that point. Considering the problems with the lock picking, that you described, I guess the only somewhat playable version is the one for the PS2. I played the game on the PC with a Playstation 2 controller and the lock picking, while a little annoying, wasn’t really that hard.
    But overall it’s just not that much of a good game. The only interesting part is the dream sequence in the beginning.
    Also this game shouln’t be played alone. I did, and the second character was in my way constantly.

  4. http://racooncitytimes.blogspot.com/
    Well ive gotta disagree for once chris. For me it was a nice change of pace, and i liked that it was like a teen horror flick, if it was a film i would openly express distain, but no game has attempted the movie sub-genre without taking a comedic route and i liked that. It had some faults, but so did silent hill 2 when it came to combat and camera, adn it didnt hamper the experience there.
    For me i think the mise-en-scene and ambience saved it form me, from the opening campus, to the woods, the house, the game after the credits. I could go on but this game really appealed to me personally, it had a personality unique to itself in the genre.
    But thats just my view.

    As for bad dialogue

    “you were almost a jill sandwich”

    “this should be no problem for you, master of unlocking”

    and the pise de la resistance , after fighting through resident eivl in its entirety chris’ epic

    “so what WAS going on there….”

  5. Resident Evil does have awful dialog, but on the other hand, the poor delivery isn’t quite on the same level as Obscure 2. I mean, sure, the “Jill sandwich” line is pretty bad, but in Obscure 2, they actually thought it would be a good idea for somebody to say, “I hope I get to blow my load tonight!” That’s a whole ‘nother realm of awfulness!

    Also, Resident Evil has fantastic game play mechanics. Obscure 2 does not. I could have forgiven the horrible story and dialog if the game play had been fantastic, but as it is there’s really not much positive I can say about the game.

  6. http://racooncitytimes.blogspot.com/
    yeah, but the kid in obscure was just that, an immature college student, barry burton is supposed to be part of a crack team of the raccoon city p.d, so im inclined to think the above quotes from resident evil are more dumb, given the context of the characters saying them.

  7. Resident Evil’s dialog made me laugh. Obscure 2’s dialog made me cringe.

    Also, unlike Obscure 2, I found playing Resident Evil to be fun.

  9. I thought the game was a lot of fun. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I played the PS2 version which didn’t have the apparent glitches of the Wii version (lock-picking mini-game was pretty cool too).

    Or maybe I found it fun just because I played it with my friend? Who knows.

  11. I don’t post here too often (eg- ever) but I wanted to throw in my two cents. I think the main problem with this game is that there is no chance of liking any of the characters. Obscure 1 was a good game because there was little things in character interaction that allowed me to grow attached to most of the cast. The danger was real, if you lost a player you lost them for the whole game. But you could keep them safe if you were careful. This game I found all the likeable characters died off early, even while they created sequences that made you think they might live. Meanwhile, the characters that do survive, including the ones from the previous game that I liked, take actions in this game that I found completely unlikable. New characters are introduced to replace dead ones, which serves the dual purpose of making me feel like the party doesn’t matter and making not care at all about finishing the story. And yes, I know we are trying to immulate a slasher movie here, but based on this experience I’d say there are real big problems with making playable characters that are essentially as expendable and pointless as your axe murder’s cannon fodder. It just doesn’t work when the deaths in the story essentially have no meaning, resonance, or purpose to the player.

    That, and the gameplay sucks, and the story is terrible, and the basic level design is disjointed and chaotic compared to the first game. I thought the “trapped in the school” format worked really well for the original game. The random and jumbled locals we get here worked horribly.

  12. To be fair, I did like how the relationship between Kenny and his sister played out in the game. You could tell he always sorta hated the way his sister treated him.

    I did think some of the cut scene were more cinematic. Other then that, the game sucked.

  13. If I can rent this somewhere I might give it shot to see how I feel about it (since people seem to be combating here on how they think it fairs), but I have no intention of running out and buying it like I did before I read your review. If it were just the controls that you hated I wouldn’t be so wary, but I’m not liking many of the points you brought up about the story. Something irrational in me still wants to give it a try, but I won’t expect to much from this.

  14. I really liked the game, and I couldn’t make myself play Hellnight more than couple of hours, but it is really issue of taste ^_^

  15. Wii Obscure II just arrived in my mailbox today. I enjoyed the first one a lot, which I discovered through this site. I have only skim read the above comments to avoid spoilers. Anyway, if this in the same spirit as the first one, I imagine it will go down well. But I’ll find out if I agree with the negativity soon enough.

  16. Someone preferred Obscure 2 over Hellnight? Well, everyone’s got their own opinion and all, but I guess there really is no accounting for taste…

  17. I can’t help but like this game. I don’t disagree with any of the folks that hate it, but I like it anyway. Bad camera, lost characters, B-Movie flare. I still am having fun. Not enough save points for me, but compared to RE, it’s no problem. I am going to pick up the first one for sure, but I really do kind of like this if for no other reason than it let’s me truly play with two people.

  18. The game was okay, but I thought the first one was a lot better. I did not think it was fun knowing a character you liked was about to cop it. The first game actually had characters you cared for, even if they were stereotyped. In the sequel, only two people survived.

  20. Indeed, it was. There were loads of “Kenny” lines. I thought it was gonna be like South Park.

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