Yeah, yeah, everybody makes their lists about scary, creepy, or flat-out weird games to play each October and we’re not about to buck the trend. But we’re going to assume you’re a retro gamer who’s read enough to know the big franchises everybody else writes about. Because if you’ve picked up a controller in the last fifteen years, you know about Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Dino Crisis. You’ve played Sweet Home‘s NES translation, you’ve watched an Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem long play on YouTube, and if some scarf-wearing hipster starts harping on Fatal Frame again, you will stuff his camera where the flash won’t illuminate. Where does one go from there? Well, we’ve got some ideas with which to season your braincase if you care to join us.

Obscure/Mortfilia – PS2/Xbox/PC: A more aptly named game would be hard to find, since French developer Hydravision’s homage to teen horror films like Scream and The Faculty arrived on the scene with no fanfare and vanished just as quickly thanks to mediocre reviews when it got any attention at all in the gaming press. This is unfortunate because hiding behind the lower production values and inexperience of the development team is a budget horror title (chest)bursting with good ideas and attitude.

Won’t find THAT in the school paper…

Obscure takes place on the grounds of Leafmore, a beautiful private high school with a wee little problem: their students keep disappearing. And one evening, after a round of basketball, athlete Kenny Matthews is the next to go missing. His sister Shannon, his girlfriend Ashley, and his best friends Stan (the school slacker) and Josh (the school reporter) decide to find him themselves after the school shows no interest in doing so. Hiding out until the custodians lock up for the evening, the four set out to locate their missing friend. And because this is a horror game, they’re about to wish they hadn’t.

Oh man, the janitor’s gonna be pissed…

But these kids aren’t stupid–they’ve seen the movies, they know you don’t go off anywhere alone. So either with a second player or an AI partner (who is far more competent than in most games), you explore the school grounds. Every kid has a special skill or talent that will come in handy, and you can switch between kids by returning to a central area. Josh, with his eye for detail, notices everything–pickups sparkle when he’s in your group. Shannon’s got first-aid training–when you use her to heal another kid, that kid gains back more health than normal. Stan’s a part-time criminal who knows how to pick locks–he can do it without the ‘wire’ item, and he does it much faster than anyone else. And Ashley? She’s the warrior of the group–she hits harder with melee weapons and can double-tap with a gun.

When experiments go wrong.

Obscure enjoys fixing problems faced by many other games in the genre. The kids travel in pairs unless you order your AI partner to stay behind for some reason, and you can swap control between the two active kids at any time. The death of one kid doesn’t mean game over, it just means you operate under diminished capacity until the last one gives up the ghost. And while there are still some keys you have to find, the kids are content to pick locks, bust windows, remove vent covers, and otherwise vandalize/destroy school property to get important items. People acting intelligently in a horror game? Perish the thought! And forget about health drinks…the choice of this generation is energy drinks, baby! Nothing like tossing back a generic Red Bull to replenish the ol’ HP bar. Additionally, with a little duct tape, a flashlight, and a ranged weapon, these kids are smarter than space marines on Mars at providing illumination alongside firepower. There’s no inventory management necessary, as the characters transfer items among themselves as needed, so grab everything that isn’t nailed down. You cycle through weapons and items in real time though, so have fun finding that med kit in the middle of a panicked fight.

Leafmore’s grounds are pretty. Until the sun goes down.

Keeping in mind its budget title status, Obscure is far from the perfect game. There aren’t very many different types of enemies, and there’s not a very wide range of disposing of them either. At the same time, this is part of the game’s charm: you don’t expect to find rocket launchers and machine guns all over a private school, so having the students resorting to things like crowbars and baseball bats for weapons makes sense. And while your kids will be toting some hefty firepower by the end of the game, it’s entirely possible to miss some of the heavier weaponry because acquiring it is not mandatory. What few puzzles there are revolve around the standard adventure trope of ‘Find item A, bring to location B, and unlock door.’ Leafmore’s offering remedial classes this semester, I guess.

Wonder why they closed the boarding school part?

The pros far outweigh the cons though. The soundtrack, composed by Olivier Deriviere, is beautiful and haunting thanks to his effective use of the Children’s choir of the Paris National Opera. And the introduction of light as an effective way to fight your enemies makes for a great dynamic addition to combat, especially in the first part of the game before the sun has set, where smashing open a window to bathe a baddie in a sunbeam is a perfectly viable, ammo-saving strategy. The best part about playing Obscure is having a friend over to grab controller 2 and co-oping your way through the game. It’s a short experience, six to eight hours on your first playthrough and significantly less than that on subsequent runs, but how many retro horror games besides Resident Evil Outbreak can you name that allow a second player to drop in and save your ass when the chips are down? Exactly. For a fun action horror experience at a bargain basement price, you just can’t go wrong with Obscure.

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


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