zippdementia's Obscure: The Aftermath review

Good review. I've seen other people commenting about the 'wackiness' of the characters as well.

Something that's weirding me out is that I always thought the game was just called Obscure II. That's what it says on the front of my wii copy, and how I've always heard it described (at Chris Survival Horror Quest site, for instance). I never heard of this 'aftermath' stuff til I saw this review. But both here and gamefaqs only have listings for Obscure: The Aftermath. They're definitely the same thing, as my manual also has the 'sweet as sour candy' thing in it.

That's funny, because I didn't know there was a Wii version... again, due to the name differences! Poor naming practices, I guess.

I'd be curious to know how the Wii version controls. I can see them going all happy in the face with all the puzzles and what not.

The Wii port was rather obscure, Zipp. I'm not surprised that you weren't aware of its existence. ;-)

-rimshot-

In case anyone's in danger of not interpreting HG's statement punnily... I should point out that when this game was coming, a bunch of us survival horror nerds had got word it was basically in development for the Wii. The first real review I read, halfway through last year, was also for the Wii:

http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/info.php?name=Obscure+2

I knew of Obscure 1, but Obscure 2 was, well... obscure!

I'm no slouch in the Survival Horror genre. Not just myself, but pretty much all of my friends love the genre and I'm always getting word of what's coming out next.

But none of them had heard of Obscure 2. The Wii is an... interesting system. It releases so many random or half-baked games that I think sometimes things get lost amidst its massive pages of advertisements. Like, if you flip through a gaming magazine, there's usually two or three times as many quick blurbs on Wii games as there are on the other systems.

Of course, the other systems get the big write ups. So it creates this situation where people (probably rightfully) view the Wii as a system which gets a lot of small fish coming to it. The main games that my Survival Horror buddies were looking at for the Wii were Dead Space Extraction (though I shiver to call that survival horror), Cursed Mountain, and Fatal Frame (now not even coming to NA).

Yeah, I'd say I really agree with this review. It has its suspense/scare moments and some plot twists (ie: deaths) that do provide a good shock when you first experience them and you really want to like it, but it's just so clunky that you can only give it a lukewarm (at best) recommendation.

Like, after whatshisname mutates into the monster you have to fight like three times. During that first battle, I died a gazillion times just due to the clunkiness of things. He's at one end of the room firing black smoke pollen shit at you and occasionally jumping forward to do a ground-shaking attack. It SHOULD be kinda easy to just run back and forth across the screen firing at him between dodging his shots (and then going to the far back of the screen when he prepares to jump). But it seemed like I'd get hung up on my worthless partner and would take a cheap hit due to them that would get me frustrated and lead to me making more mistakes.

It's sort of like a superior Rule of Rose (or whatever the hell that game was called). Both had their share of intriguing moments, but both were let down by blah gameplay. Especially Rule of Rose, where you controlled a teen girl who fought......like a not particularly athletic teen girl, leading you to basically run past enemies and only fight when you had no choice in the matter.

Funny you should mention Rule of Rose, was about to bring it up. Creepy as heck but the game so clunky that the effect is almost (but thankfully not quite) ruined.

Thanks for reading OD! I really liked your review of the game and kind've held it up as the standard that I had to meet while writing mine.

Now, me personally, I only died once in Obscure 2 and it was because I tried to use the Chainsaw (which ironically sucks). On the Spider Boss, I just pretty much stood still and fired shotgun blast after shotgun blast. Boring and silly, but it worked with minimal loses. I wrote the review from the extrapolated viewpoint of someone who hasn't played as many poorly controlled Survival Horror games as I have.

I've played enough Survival Horror to know how to handle these crap systems. But I know most people will go in and die so many times they'll be cursing the day this game was made. Because there are no options in the game except to fight. And that's not very... nice. Or good design.

Rule of Rose was one I wanted to play for the creep factor but was turned off mightily by videos of gameplay.

That's right! The chainsaw! Isn't it only useful for those scripted areas where you have to chop a log out of your path? But utterly worthless in battle? I had trouble understanding that. "Okay, this thing is perfect for chopping down a tree, but it won't damage enemies noticeably. That'll trick them damn know-it-all players!"

Yeah, I was really tempted to mention the Chainsaw in my review, but after reading the section it originally was in it was hard to recapture the thread of the review, so I left it out.

It is, nonetheless, the stupidest weapon I've ever encountered in the game. First of all, it's some kind of plasticy rechargeable battery chainsaw that means the characters probably bought it at Costco for $9.99. When I first got it, though, I was excited. After all, it's a fucking chainsaw. As OD points out, you use it to chop trees in half... IN THE GAME.

So when this monster charged me a little later on, I whipped it out, pointed it forward and held down the power button. And got my ass kicked. I don't think it hurt the monster at all.