Taking place in a small town located not far from where the events of the first episode took place, Obscure: The Aftermath reuses the big horrifying strings of its predecessor. It features a group of students, simply eager to go to an orgiastic party, where some classmates have turned into mutants because of the poisonous spores of an unknown flower. That is. If in the first Obscure of the name, the late-night nanar aspect turned out to be bearable, it was largely due to the cynical second degree that the characters echoed, but also to the creators' desire to play clearly on this aspect, without compromise. Helping multiplayer-oriented gameplay, the title allowed you to spend a few pleasant hours at the mercy of a few flashes, bringing a smile to the gloomy hallways of Leafmore High School. A distance that Obscure: The Aftermath does not have at all, letting a badly mastered first degree collide with ridiculous dialogues and a scenario already seen. The result is involuntary surreal scenes, such as the various lack of reaction of groups of students in the face of unhealthy creatures, or their tasteless little private jokes in the middle of an explosion. From a possible endearing B series, Obscure: The Aftermath quickly becomes a survival-horror that does not support its own weight.
Who turned off the light ?
Losing an identity that had been able to miss a certain classicism in the first opus, Obscure: The Aftermath reveals in broad daylight a glaring lack of innovation, both within its genre and vis-à-vis the PS2 version. If some good ideas emerge, especially the phase where you have to direct one of the protagonists through a security camera, the title of Hydravision most often acts as a sort of compilation of already existing mechanisms. Between puzzles without real challenge, a basic path without surprises and gameplay in regression, Obscure: The Aftermath only rarely succeeds in developing tension, even immersion. The fault is also partly due to the lack of construction shown by the speakers, short-circuiting certain twists visibly considered important. Certainly, it is quite possible to be surprised by simple cogs like a creature suddenly coming out of a wall or behind a door, but nothing in the process generates astonishment or excitement. This portable Obscure is the down-to-earth application of the imperatives of the genre, nothing more. Which does not lead to a bad experience in itself, but some. Once again, only floats the possibility of unearthing the monster with several people, at least in pairs via the W-Lan connection of the PSP. A principle which makes it possible to brighten up the title somewhat, the progression obviously becoming less gloomy, which restores vigor to the notion of entertainment which has disappeared. It is also much safer to trust a “human” teammate, since the AI is not very reactive. Despite everything, there remains the problem of being obliged to retrace one's steps in order to seek the friend who has the capacity to solve such and such an enigma. The game is based on a system of skills inherent to each character. A laborious system that forces you to stuff yourself with useless and painful round trips. Another concerned by the concept of the laborious: the management of the camera. The latter is very often placed in positions favoring blind spots. A desire to give a cinematographic aspect to the progression as in many survival-horror. The concern being that certain puzzles are sometimes almost invisible and that at the slightest passage in aiming mode, the camera panics and masks the action, especially in cramped areas. A pitfall which does not really affect survival, the game being easy to access but which irritates, because of the obligation to grind the angle of view before having a correct overview of the events. The concept of survival-horror thus becomes a bit artificial, mainly due to the lack of general precision of the gameplay than a real work on the mechanisms and the atmosphere. Obscure: The Aftermath can therefore be seen as a bland popcorn game, being followed without passion during a big afternoon. And that's not a compliment.
