While the Resident Evil series might have overstayed its welcome, you can give Capcom credit for finally realizing that enough was enough. The developer ditched the franchise’s tired survival-horror conventions, said goodbye to Raccoon City, and wound up with one of the best games so far this year in Resident Evil 4. This groundbreaking release set a new standard in action-horror, mirroring the accomplishment registered by its classic predecessor nine years ago. Some people, however, aren’t getting the hint that gaming has moved on. Judging by Obscure, a survival-horror throwback best described as Resident Evil in a high school, French developer Hydravision is stuck in 1996. While this textbook copy of the Capcom classic is a competent regurgitation of the genre’s clichés, your patience will be tested by déjà vu from the moment that the first monster bursts out of the walls.
If you’ve ever played a survival-horror game, you’ve seen all of this stuff before. The only addition to the mix is the Leafdale High School setting and a cast of five teen protagonists who are grungy versions of the kids from The OC. Hydravision has designed Obscure as a veritable reproduction of the Resident Evil series, including a “greatest hits” package of story, atmosphere, and even architecture (hmm, we’ve seen that double-staircase foyer before). The story, however, is more of a ripoff of Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 high-school horror flick, The Faculty, with tentacled monstrosities reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmarish creations and mutated human zombies replacing the movie’s aliens.
At any rate, these creatures smash through walls and doors just like similar beasties did way back when. Gameplay is structured around scrounging through rooms for items that can be combined into tools and weapons, collecting keys, pushing bookshelves, and saving progress with collectible CDs (space-age technology compared to Resident Evil’s typewriter ribbons). You can reach the ending in six or seven hours, depending on your survival-horror experience. That experience really comes in handy, too, as some situations here precisely mimic those found in earlier Capcom games. A room with a missing lever and sliding shelves is a near-perfect copy of a chamber that puzzled Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil 2. Well, at least Hydravision seems to have done its homework.\
More care has been taken with the translation from console to PC where visuals are concerned. For a console port, this is a great-looking game. Leafdale may look more like a run-down hospital or mental asylum than a functioning high school, but it serves its spooky purposes nicely. Much of the furniture and assorted rubbish can be moved, too, so you’re not adventuring in front of static 2D backdrops. Animations are very well done, particularly when characters are swinging baseball bats or metal pipes in fight sequences. Moving shadows add eerie possibilities to every corridor, giving you the impression that something’s always about to leap from a nearby door or locker. The tense atmosphere is further enhanced with distant roars, banging noises that can’t be explained, and a hair-raising music soundtrack that features Latin chanting and a title track by Sum 41 (not nearly as scary, unless you’re creeped out by boy-band metal).
In the end, Obscure lives up to its name. It’s competent enough as far as blatant ripoffs of the great-granddaddy of survival horror go, but so much has been cobbled together that the game has no distinct identity of its own.
Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium 3 @ 1 GHz
Memory: 256 MB
Hard Drive: 4 GB Free
Video Memory: 32 MB
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 8.1
Keyboard Mouse
CD/DVD Rom Drive
Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2 GHz
Memory: 384 MB
Hard Drive: 4 GB Free
Video Memory: 128 MB
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0
Keyboard Mouse
CD/DVD Rom Drive
Rar Password:
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