The ObsCure survival horror series embraced B-horror movies and classic sci-fi to try and go against the grain of the gaming genre.

The late ‘90s and early 2000s were times that were heavy with survival horror titles that were eager to capitalize on the current popularity of the genre. There is a lot of trash to sift through beyond the obviously popular survival horror series, so it’s always very exciting when a title strives to be different and innovative, rather than just a soulless copy of what’s popular. Despite how ObsCure attempts such a thing and is very appealing in concept, it’s ultimately a mixed bag that didn’t succeed in kickstarting a new sub-genre of survival horror, but does deserve some recognition over 15 years later.

ObsCure’s story involves a group of high school students who stumble upon a vast conspiracy going on within the walls of their school where experiments for immortality have gone horribly wrong and resulted in the faculty and student body being infected with plant-like spores. The students get closer to the truth and try to put an end to the faculty’s corrupt schemes, but they encounter dangerous mutations that continue to get stronger. This premise works well and is unique territory for the survival horror genre. Killer plants and doppelgangers are not the norm for a survival horror video game to tackle. It helps make ObsCure a breath of fresh air from the stretch of zombies, serial killers, or monsters that so typically dominate the genre.

ObsCure’s subject matter, in addition to its quirky sense of humor, really make the game reminiscent of Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty more than anything else. And seriously, who wouldn’t want a Faculty video game? The game embraces a B-horror movie aesthetic with its characters and dialogue. Names like “Leafmore High” for the school are deliciously tongue-in-cheek and there’s supposed to be a wry, self-aware sense of humor to this survival horror game that’s akin to the kind of energy that’s cultivated in something like House of the Dead: Overkill. The silly dialogue is actually really fun and adds a lot to the experience, conjuring that schlocky B-movie vibe.

It’s actually a nice change of pace that ObsCure’s characters are just normal high school students who want to help their friend. They’re not police officers or some kind of trained professionals, which is usually the case with these kinds of games. ObsCure does the whole “teens in danger” approach ages before other games like Until Dawn had keyed into the potential of that angle. Obscure plays into how much these characters should be out of their element here. To speak further to that, the first encounter with an enemy in ObsCure is genuinely tense, frightening, and overwhelming in some ways. That first enemy encounter in a survival horror title is always crucial and this game gets it right and properly sets the scene for what’s to come. The setting of a deserted, foreboding school only amplifies all of this tension.

The game lacks in actual scares, but one of the most effective sequences in ObsCure involves an old film reel of the initial experiments that were performed at the school. It’s brief, but it’s rightfully unnerving. The huge, grotesque bosses that follow aren’t much of a challenge, but they are appropriately disturbing. On that note, the lack of real boss fights, memorable or otherwise, also holds back the title. Not every survival horror title has them, but it makes such a difference.

To also keep in line with the general energy of slashers from the early 2000s time period, ObsCure’s soundtrack features tracks from Sum 41 and Span, which feel appropriate and are bands that wouldn’t be out of place on The Faculty’s soundtrack. Even the photo-negative approach to the game’s box art seems to conjure that angst-ridden attitude of the early 2000s. Not to mention how the title is needlessly stylized as “ObsCure” for no real reason. What is this, eXistenZ? ObsCure’s needle drop tracks are awkward, but the game’s actual score by Olivier Deriviere has a lot of charm and atmosphere to it. During some of the creepier moments, a choral chant track will play that sounds like something from out of The Omen. It helps heighten some of the more dramatic scenes.

ObsCure leans in pretty hard to titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil when it comes to its gameplay. The title features that simple survival horror structure where there’s light puzzle solving amidst all of the killings of monsters. Saving is achieved by finding digital media discs, which is a fun update to Resident Evil’s ink ribbons and still adds some challenge and management behind the concept of when to save your game.

The muddy controls are the biggest problem here, but there are still some creative approaches put to use in certain areas. The game allows players to combine items and weapons together, which is actually pretty revolutionary and ahead of its time. It allows for common frustrations like low ammo to become less of concern through smart playing that lets players handle their enemies in different ways. There’s even a “temperature gauge” and other incidental meters to manage during gameplay, which are all clever, but admittedly annoying more than they are realistic.

ObsCure’s “light mechanic” is also really inspired and makes this occasionally feel like an ahead of its time vampire-slaying title (or even a precursor to something like Alan Wake). Light is deadly to the monsters, but ObsCure’s interactive environments allow you to break windows so that light invades the environment and takes out the monsters, rather than you needing to personally bring the pain to them. It allows players a lot of creativity with how they handle their enemies and it’s a satisfying maneuver to pull off.

You begin with three characters in ObsCure, but can increase your team up to five people, all of which you have the power to keep safe or see succumb to the dangers of Leafmore High. The fact that ObsCure allows for such a level of casualty that actively makes the game more difficult is an appreciated detail. These characters delightfully fulfill all of the Breakfast Club-esque stereotypes, with the cast consisting of a jock, nerd, cheerleader, stoner, and conspiracy theory-embracing journalist. These clichés are enjoyable rather than exhausting and ObsCure knows how to have fun with them where often the characters and story are entertaining, even when the gameplay is not. At times, the different students can just feel like your various “lives” in a video game, but there’s more of a connection present when these characters perish.

Each of the five characters that you can choose has their own mildly different skills and areas of expertise (whether that’s the ability to pick locks, move heavy objects, advanced healing, or increased damage). This adds a nice element of versatility to the experience and it does evoke the feeling of an actual slasher horror film as a result, but it’s largely an incidental element. None of these characters or their skills are necessary to complete the game’s puzzles and they just offer up alternative, or faster, solutions to problems, which lends itself to replayability, but still feels half-baked in some ways. A game that does something incredibly similar, albeit with more stakes and purpose, is the Dreamcast title Illbleed, which came out several years earlier.

ObsCure does get creative with this rotating team member concept in some unique ways. For instance, at one point in the game, you encounter a student named Dan who’s been locked up in a prison. After you free him, you get to play as Dan, but his health is extremely low from his injuries. Not long after playing as Dan, he’s brutally killed by another mutated experiment. His death is unavoidable, but due to how ObsCure makes you build connections with these characters and foster a growing sense of teamwork, this uncontrollable death comes as a surprise and hits with greater impact. It’s a fun way to play with the gamers’ expectations, but it could do more with this.

ObsCure II continues to experiment with this idea and there are several characters that the player gets to control, only for them to later turn into monsters and become enemies that must be taken down. It’s an interesting way to mess around with perspective. Imagine if there were a Resident Evil game where an hour into things your character gets turned into a zombie, it switches to someone else’s point of view, and it’s a bait and switch. There are great ideas in ObsCure, but they’re just lost in the execution.

The one way in which this multiple character approach is innovative is that it allows for co-op play, whether with an actual second player, or the use of the computer as your support. The idea of partners and working together adds a lot more to the game and makes it considerably more entertaining, even if it’s still a flawed experience. This too is a concept that other major survival horror titles, like Resident Evil, wouldn’t fully embrace until much later. Resident Evil Outbreak existed at the same time, but its multiplayer was restricted to online play, which is not the case in ObsCure. In spite of the messy final product, there are still some ambitious and creative ideas present that could have worked better in a different horror game.

ObsCure II: The Aftermath is set two years after the events of the first game and it moves from high school to college this time around. It curiously explores the trauma that the survivors of the first game now try to cope with in everyday life. The characters require medication to suppress and control their mutations. It’s a surprisingly mature aspect to feature in the follow-up and one that often goes overlooked in horror sequels.

In addition to their trauma from the first game, ObsCure II explores these old characters in interesting new ways, like giving them children and discussing the idea of a legacy. Additionally, it mixes these familiar faces together with a group of new characters who are full of some new entertaining stereotypes. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the sequel is how it turns one of the protagonists from the game and its predecessor into a major villain. On that front, all of the enemies and bosses in ObsCure II are considerably grosser than what came before.

ObsCure II kept many of the same innovative gameplay elements from the previous title, like co-op play and the ability to combine items, although the game moved away from the deadly light aspect of the series’ lore. ObsCure II also refines the controls from the first title and delivers a more solid experience. The story suffers a little more this time around, but the narrative really flows together as one larger story between both games.

The sequel, which was released for the PlayStation 2 and Wii in 2008 (2007 in Europe) also ambitiously released a PSP version in 2009 that was able to effectively translate the survival horror game over to the handheld console without compromise. ObsCure II’s PSP release was especially exciting because it was a co-operative handheld survival horror game, which is still an extreme rarity. Sony considered that ObsCure could have had a real future on the PSP, but those plans would never come to fruition due to middling sales.

ObsCure did well enough that it wasn’t only given a sequel a few years later, but Hydravision Entertainment was also trusted to reboot the Alone in the Dark franchise for the current generation of gaming. Curiously, the concept of combining items together with weapons and environments was actually carried over to their Alone in the Dark game. Much like with ObsCure, it was one of the few innovative elements that the game incorporated. They went even further here in regards to the level of realism present, like how only items or weapons that could realistically fit in the character’s jacket could be obtained, but also how nearly any piece of the environment could be turned into respective weapons. It’s comparable to the kind of approach taken by recent titles like Death Stranding, where item management is handled in a punishingly realistic fashion. Alone in the Dark would turn out to technically be a financial success, but critically the game was a disappointment and it largely dissuaded Hydravision from continuing further with more survival horror development.

Hydravision’s final game, before they folded from bankruptcy in 2013, was fittingly a spin-off from ObsCure, titled Final Exam. The game took ObsCure into a radically different direction as a cartoonish sidescrolling beat-‘em-up which wasn’t able to revive interest in the franchise. However, it’s appropriate that Hydravision (albeit operating under their new name, Mighty Rocket Studio) could both begin and end their development careers in the horror genre of gaming.

At this point, an ObsCure III or Final Exam II seems as impossible as a spore-based immortality formula, but the original games were released on Steam in 2014, so there is some kind of an audience out there for them and these games can still be experienced. Even if the genre has evolved a lot in the 15 years since ObsCure’s release, it’s still nice that these titles have been preserved for modern audiences. The franchise may be dead, but its legacy lives on with how many of the features from these games have been incorporated into other titles. There could still be more done with the use and integration of items and weapons, plus more survival horror titles that explore unconventional monsters and find more of an inspiration from classic science fiction than horror. In the meantime, let’s just get more school-set survival horror games, please!