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Booze, babes, botany, and blood. That's Obscure: The Aftermath in a nutshell, the follow-up to 2003's aptly titled Obscure. This survival horror sequel takes place in a college setting, where young men and women find themselves in a world gone more awry than Wayne Newton's face. While Obscure: The Aftermath dusts off every survival horror cliché in the genre's bruised and battered manual, its one distinguishing feature is cooperative support with a friend. Does the old adage "two is better than one" hold up? Or is it simply a case of twice the misery?

Animal House

The storyline takes place two years after the events depicted in the original game. Leafmore High is now a disturbing memory for the few survivors, who have moved on to bigger and better things. This means attending classes and partying hearty at the remote Fallcreek University, where the latest rage is to snort strange pollen. The hallucinogenic flower power sends students on a trip they soon won't forget. Some are transformed into hideous, hungry beasts. Others become tasty snacks. The entire community is under attack, forcing a group of friends to grab some nearby weapons and attempt to stop the insanity.

The action takes place from a third-person perspective behind pairs of students instead of a single protagonist. You can freely switch between the two throughout the game, or a friend can join in at any time. As in nearly every survival-horror title before it, the object is to safely make it through each area while battling monsters and solving basic puzzles. There are only five main types of creatures in the game, and none are particularly original. Small, spider-like enemies are inspired by the face-huggers in Alien; big-bellied brutes seem modeled after Silent Hill 3's insane cancer creatures or Kirstie Alley; flying torsos look something out of Castlevania, and so forth.

Teenagers in Love

The six playable students don't really move as much as they lurch forward like zombies. There are no distinguishing attributes between the teens, other than one basic "talent" used for getting past certain obstacles. Most of the time the game automatically pairs off characters. The few times when you get to "choose" who to take, you have to pick characters with specific skills, like whiny Corey's ability to jump to higher areas. The scariest thing is not the encounters you'll face, but enduring the hideous dialogue and voice acting. Sexual innuendo is in nearly every item description, observation, and attempt at conversation, and it's embarrassingly unfunny. We get it. College kids are horny.

Walk Slowly and Carry a Big Hockey Stick

Combat is slow and awkward. While you can equip items like baseball bats, hockey sticks, pistols, crossbows, and shotguns, the weapons aren't fun to use. Battles involve holding down the left shoulder button to whip out the weapon, which shifts the camera to a fixed viewpoint on the closest enemy. A small blue circle shows which creature you’re attacking, but there's no real skill or technique involved with fighting other than making sure you hit the button to shoot or swing instead of accidentally switching characters. The latter isn't a bad idea, since the AI likes to get in your way or stand motionless while taking a beating when they should be fleeing for their lives.

Puzzles generally involve manipulating items within the environment and using each character's inherent special skill. The game holds your hand throughout these activities, telling you in not-so-subtle terms which character can "analyze" the scrap paper's message, "hack" the computer coded lock, or is "strong" enough to heave the giant crate. The hacking part is the most interesting puzzle mechanic, since you are given a jumbled ring of letters and have to form names of famous people to unlock the code. The problem is this type of puzzle is only used four times in the entire game.

The Horror, the Horror

Obscure: The Aftermath seems to take pleasure in trying to torment players, but not through its familiar take on horror. The save system relies on touching one of 24 flowers located in various regions, and each can be used only once before it disappears. Some save points are spaced a good thirty minutes apart, so it can be annoying if you die near the end of a particular area, forcing you to trek through the same puzzles or battles you've previously cleared. If a partner dies this time around, it's game over, which adds to the frustration. The original let you continue onward at the expense of losing a teenager for good, which increased its playability. Here, progress is completely linear.

Once Obscure is finished, there's no incentive to replay it again. No multiple endings, no hidden characters, no additional difficulty levels, and no branching paths leading to different outcomes. While the game's $20 MSRP is certainly a plus, it's a seven-hour romp through dated play mechanics that were done with far more skill in earlier survival horror games. Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill 2, and Fatal Frame can all be found for the same price and offer more entertainment, thrills, and playability. At best, Obscure is worth a rental solely for co-op play with a friend. The voice acting, dialogue, and silly looking enemies are surely good for some laughs on a weekend when there's nothing better to do.

Review by: Scott Alan Marriott