Obscure Hands-On

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When fighting the dark and creepies the characters can take hits, but there is no health bar. Instead, the damage is reflected in both the characters change in stance (clutching a stomach is bad) as well as their appearance in the character selection screen. Let the situation go too far and get ready to find another partner.

There are more reasons than just a new costume for keeping the people alive besides some bonus features. Each of the characters has a special ability that can be activated with the square button. An icon appears in the top of the screen to show just when these abilities can be used, too, since many of them can be location specific. For the jock, Kenny, that ability is the crucial one of being able to run faster. For others it can be a special attack or even something more strategic like being able to find items in a room easier or even just having a hint for what to do next.

In playing with the few different characters the basic controls are pretty easy to pull off with the attacks and the gunshots being fairly intuitive. So far the action has been mostly about attacking little dark critters with exposed ribcages in order to cleat the way. One cool trick is that if there is a window in the area it's possible to kill the creatures simply by knocking out the window covering with a bat and letting the sun in. If the monster gets in the light it gets fried up and it's one more point for the teenagers.

Besides having other characters for backup it's important to have someone else around to solve some of the puzzles. One puzzle, if you can call it that, is the problem of getting from one bathroom to another via an air duct. First it's necessary to get a screwdriver to open it and that can be found after a quick investigation of a classroom. After that there's another problem of actually reaching the duct. The solution is to have one character lift up another in order to open it up and crawl through. While this one is pretty obvious there should be some more challenging puzzles ahead where two heads are better than one.

The dynamic for two people playing the game is that the action always follows the main player. Whoever started the game is the one that the camera follows. The other character is still free to run around the immediate environment, but if he or she goes off screen, then there will be a pointer indicating his or her location. And if a player goes into a new room, then both get zapped to the door and go through at the same time. This means that it's possible for one player to fight off enemies while the other works hard on lockpicking a door and getting through to the next room which is hopefully safer.

While it's still a little early to get a definite read on the quality of the AI in Obscure what's already on display is pretty good. The characters move around without getting in the way too much and aren't too trigger happy with their weapons either. The developers assured us that the AI manages to hold up for the whole game and do a good job, but we'll believe it when we see it in the full version.

As for Obscure coming to America, what's left is the localization. There are currently some odd phrases that come from badly translated French, but with the game already in existence somewhere else in the world it shouldn't have a problem hitting its March release date.

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