#Obscure 2 window mode series
#Obscure 2 window mode ps2

Shooting was kind of a nightmare you need to use three separate buttons to lock on and shoot (seriously? 3 buttons? come on, guys!), and it was such a pain that I usually just gave all the guns to the AI player (I couldn’t convince anybody to play this thing with me two-player). I spent good portions of the game with the camera spinning around in circles because the Wiimote wasn’t pointed exactly at the screen. On the technical side, the use of the Wii cursor to control the camera is, in my mind, a total failure. Obscure 2 has a bunch of problems, and while some of them are technical, most of them are design problems. OK, now that we’ve gotten that part out of the way, let’s get down to business.

#Obscure 2 window mode series

And the Obscure series is still the only horror game series that allows two players at once, which is pretty cool. It’s also kind of cool that the game splits its large cast up and follows different pairs of characters independently that seems like a good way to keep the environments and play mechanics fresh without forcing the story to zigzag. There’s also a pretty nice dream sequence at the beginning of the game that is presented with a level of skill not evident in the rest of the title. There’s a section where you need to row a boat by moving the Wiimote and Nunchuck to manipulate the oars, and I liked that section in particular.

#Obscure 2 window mode ps2

I played through the Wii version of Obscure 2 (it’s also available for PS2 and PC), and I thought that most of the Wii controls worked pretty well, including the gesture-based moves. Combat is extremely routine but serviceable, and the soundtrack isn’t half bad (I particularly liked the Main Menu music). I like the half-cartoony art style and the in-game art is very nice. Actually, the technical execution of Obscure 2–the graphics, control scheme, etc–seems pretty ok. Before I get into some of the reasons that Obscure 2 is a shitty game, let’s take a second and talk about the parts that I thought were ok.

It’s atrocious on almost every level, far worse than its predecessor, and it took significant effort to see the game through to the end. Which is why I was somewhat surprised to find Obscure 2 to be a huge pile of elephant dung. The first Obscure also had some interesting mechanics involving the use of light to combat enemies, and though the content itself was a bit generic, the game was pretty well put together.

Its saving grace was its two player mode, something that has still yet to be duplicated by any other console horror game to date. The original Obscure was a fun, if somewhat routine, horror game. The worst aspects of a teenage slasher flick in game form: boring, trite, and occasionally offensive.