Obscure 2 is clearly a game that’s designed with a very specific audience in mind. For one, it’s clearly not aimed at anyone without any mates – attempt to play this on your own and you’ll be spitting profanities at the screen within literally minutes of starting, as your AI-controlled team-mate exhibits all the intelligence of a bent spoon. They’ll either get in your way as often as they possibly can, or stand completely still while an enemy smashes them into a pulpy, fleshy mess on the floor.

Get over that obstacle by bringing a friend along, and you’ll have a second barrier in your path – that of the game’s insultingly awful dialogue. Clearly aimed at those with a high tolerance for horrific stereotyping – “I can’t move that, I’m just a weak girl” one character unbelievably says within the first fifteen minutes – and forehead-slappingly intrusive exposition, you’ll pass only if you can manage to ignore the chat and get on with the gameplay.

 

Assuming you’re somehow able to overlook the catastrophically awful camera and infuriatingly clunky controls, that is. Not long into the game’s first proper level (discounting a not-entirely-ineffective prologue sequence) you’ll face a large enemy who you have to kill from a distance, given that he can spell game over with two swipes of his hefty upper limbs. This is a third person game with a camera that spends most of its time pointing away from where you really need to be looking, but for this one brief section, you’ll be aiming roughly where you need to. Hold Z to start pointing your gun, then press A to lock on and B to fire. Awkward? A little, but that’s not the biggest problem. You see, failing to do the second (even when your cursor is directly over the enemy) and your shots seem to have little – if any effect. And that’s not mentioning the fact that you can press A and nothing will happen. So by the time you’ve managed to finally get a lock on and let off a couple of rounds, this mutant is busy rearranging your (static) partner’s face and you’ll have to continue from the last save point. After taking two goes to get past this git, only to face another room with two swifter enemies and the same aiming troubles, followed by a further encounter with an identical behemoth to the first, I switched the game off.

I like to consider myself a fairly patient gamer, but it’s going to take a lot for me to want to return to Obscure 2. It’s a shame, as the graphics aren’t bad, and the co-op mechanic has a lot going for it. But with a camera and controls this broken, it’s only for those with a particularly forgiving personality.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 6:51 am by Chris Schilling
Columns & Opinion, Latest Games.