The Best Obscure Horror Game on the ps2

copyright: Obscure is property of Mighty Rocket Games

Brevity and Ethics: I have no affiliation, I'm just a fan

Welcome back, horror fans, to the bizarre and thrilling world of survival horror — where the genre’s unsung gems await! Today, we're diving into Obscure, a title so off-the-radar, they made it their literal name. Set in the gloriously chaotic 2000s — when boys rocked frosted tips, kickflips ruled the streets, and low-rise jeans reigned supreme — this game takes the wildest tropes of R-rated teen comedies and fuses them with classic Resident Evil-style gameplay. Think American Pie meets Silent Hill. It’s campy, creepy, and unexpectedly clever. Buckle up; we’re going back to school, survival horror style!

Obscure doesn’t waste any time throwing you into its creepy world. You start off as Kenny, a college basketball star wrapping up practice. After draining a few three-pointers, he realizes he’s late for a date. In a hurry, he heads to the locker room, but right as he’s about to call his girlfriend, some creep snags his bag. Naturally, Kenny gives chase, following the thief into a shadowy garden area that leads to a mysterious greenhouse. And this is where things get… well, Obscure.

The first room introduces one of the game’s signature mechanics—crafting. You can duct tape a flashlight to your handgun, making it easier to explore the murky surroundings and keep the darkness at bay. A small touch, but a game-changer when you’re venturing deeper into the unknown. The greenhouse quickly turns into something far more sinister: a crumbling underground lab filled with rusty cages and shipping crates big enough to house an adult-sized beast. Here, you stumble upon a terrified student being held captive, begging not to be injected with some unknown substance. 

Kenny, still processing this weird turn of events, tries to help. And with that, Obscure reveals its next mechanic: partner switching. It’s a cooperative element that allows you to control two characters at once—similar to what Resident Evil 5 would popularize years later. As you and your new partner cautiously explore the lab, the shadows seem to come alive, thickening and shifting until a monstrous creature, cloaked in darkness, attacks. It’s a brutal fight, and you soon realize this beast is far beyond your skill set. Before you can react, it overpowers both characters. The screen fades as you’re taken down, and the camera slowly pans up, revealing a mysterious figure sealing off the lab entrance.

(please note the steam port removed the pop punk)

Cue the emotional whiplash—a smash cut to a high-energy 2000s-style movie intro

 The tone shifts sharply as we meet the real cast of characters, each oozing classic horror archetypes. Kenny’s girlfriend steps up, letting us know that she’s not just a side character—she’s one of the leads. With multiplayer being a core focus, you’re introduced to a roster of teens, each boasting unique abilities. For now, though, we’ll stick with Josh and Ashley, two students with a knack for survival. And just like that, you’re thrust into a bizarre mix of horror, mystery, and teen drama. Welcome to Obscure.

Story:

The intro wraps up with a tense conversation between Ashley and her sister Shannon. Ashley’s worried—Kenny hasn’t come home, and she’s running out of options. Desperate, she asks Shannon if she’s seen him. As the camera pans over to the school principal, he offers a cryptic comment about “the safety of daylight,” before dismissing the idea of involving the police. Instead, he insists they should handle this themselves. Enter Josh, the resident wannabe-documentarian, filming every moment and suggesting they record the entire investigation. And just like that, the game hands you control. You’re now guiding Ashley, Josh, and Shannon as they prowl through the dark, deserted hallways of their high school, piecing together clues to track down Kenny. 

The eerie atmosphere builds as you explore the typical survival horror-style puzzles and ominous corridors. Then, the real nightmare begins. As the trio heads upstairs to investigate a classroom, the walls shatter, and shadowy beasts pour through, attacking without warning. With nothing but flashlights and baseball bats, you try to fend off the monsters. But there’s too many of them. The situation spirals out of control, and it looks like the end—until a teacher kicks the door open, smashing a window and flooding the room with light. The beasts shriek and dissolve, giving you a brief reprieve. Your mysterious savior warns that the school is crawling with creatures and urges you to get out while you still can.

But leaving isn’t on the agenda. Ashley, Shannon, and Josh aren’t looking to escape—they’re here for Kenny. Ignoring the teacher’s advice, they press on. Before departing, the teacher offers one last clue: find the principal, and he might be able to help. The stakes are set, and the hunt for Kenny is on. Welcome to Leafmore High, where something far darker than teenage drama is lurking in the shadows. The principal is holed up in his study, but getting there is no simple task—it’s a labyrinth of puzzles that’ll test your patience and wits. First up: breaking through the chains blocking the hallway door. The solution? A makeshift chemistry experiment. You’ll need to track down a room filled with acid and a stash of flimsy paper cups, each with a 30-second timer before they dissolve. Grab one, sprint back to the chains, and melt them before the acid burns through. Welcome to Obscure: where even getting through a hallway door is a race against time.

But reaching the principal’s office isn’t just about acid and chains. After winding through eerie corridors and hidden rooms, you come across an odd pair of compass needles. Using these, you manipulate the school’s map, finally unlocking the path to the study. Just when you think you’re making headway, the ground itself starts to shake—violently. The tremors build as you crash through the library doors, only to find… the principal calmly sitting in his study. He’s unsettlingly calm and cryptic, eyeing you with a gaze that screams he knows way more than he’s letting on. When you tell him you’re searching for Kenny, he barely reacts. Instead, he tosses you a key to the janitor’s closet and suggests you “speak to the janitor” before dismissing you entirely. As you head out, the sun dips below the horizon, casting long shadows across the campus, and the shaking intensifies. Something’s seriously wrong here.

You make your way to the janitor’s closet, every creak of the floorboards amplified by the unnatural tremors. Inside, the door groans open, revealing the first major weapon upgrade: a shotgun. You snag it, along with some ammo and a heavy-duty flashlight. But there’s no time to celebrate—your gaze falls on the janitor’s lifeless body, sprawled on the floor, throat slashed. Whatever’s stalking these halls, it’s already one step ahead. Moving through the adjacent rooms, you discover the school nurse, barricaded and terrified in her office. She’s been hiding out, watching security tapes that piece together a bit of the bigger picture—although it’s more cryptic lore than concrete answers. She keeps mentioning someone named Leonard. Whoever he is, he’s connected to Kenny’s disappearance, but she’s too scared to say more. All she can do is beg you to find Kenny and end this nightmare. After a tense encounter with a breaker box puzzle (the kind that would make Resident Evil blush), 

you restore power to the nurse’s station, only to find she’s more paranoid than relieved. There are no monsters in her room, just the oppressive fear of what’s lurking outside. She rambles about Leonard, hinting that he’s the key to finding Kenny. But before you can press her for details, you notice something odd: a large wheel crank wedged into the back door, trapping her inside. She could have left at any point but chose to stay. Why? With a new lead in hand, you recall a similar crank mechanism in the teacher’s lounge—a puzzle straight out of Resident Evil 2. Maybe the answers you need lie there. But as the night deepens and the shaking grows stronger, one thing is clear: time’s running out. If you want to save Kenny, you’ll have to confront whatever darkness has taken hold of Leafmore High—and it’s not letting go without a fight.

So, you head to the wheel crank room, twisting and turning the rusted machinery until—finally—you unlock a dusty old film reel. The plot thickens as the reel drips more lore into the story, but just as you’re leaving, you bump into that elusive teacher again—the same one who saved you from the shadows earlier. He’s got that same haunted look, but this time, he refuses to let you help him. Instead, he slips you a key and mutters a few cryptic directions, leading you to your next destination: the basement entrance, hidden deep within the amphitheater. Now, the amphitheater is one of the game’s standout locations. Stepping inside, you’re greeted by eerie portraits of the principal—portraits that look like they’re straight out of the 1800s. Something’s not right; the guy’s got a Benjamin Button thing going on. And while it’s hard not to draw comparisons to Resident Evil 3’s clock tower—both in grandeur and the way it serves as a pivotal halfway point—Obscure sets its own tone here, leaning into its gothic atmosphere.

Navigating the amphitheater isn’t overly complex, but it’s packed with tiny details that can trip you up if you’re not paying attention. As you rummage through creaky storage rooms and dusty passageways, you eventually find a small wooden board and a rickety elevator. The elevator only ascends, leading you to the projection room. Pop the reel into the projector, and... silence. No monologues, no grand exposition. Just grainy footage of a man, trembling and contorting until he mutates into a grotesque beast. And then—cut. The film ends. You’re left with more questions than answers, but it’s clear: whatever’s happening here is transforming people into monsters.

Now it’s time to get back down. Simple, right? Wrong. Because this is where Obscure throws its first real boss fight at you. And let me tell you, this thing is ugly—a massive, grotesque abomination with way too many teeth and a mean streak. (Cue boss fight video here.) It’s a brutal encounter, and this beast soaks up bullets like it’s made of Kevlar, forcing you to use every trick and weapon in your arsenal just to survive. But defeating it is only half the battle. Obscure then hits you with what might be the most convoluted puzzle yet—something that even Resident Evil would be proud of, if not a little envious. To break it down:

1. You need to head back down and jam the wooden board into the elevator door to keep it from closing.

2. Send the elevator back up, climb down the ladder next to the boss’s corpse, and return to the basement

3. Find the elevator’s safety switch, turn it off, and then make your way back to the elevator shaft.

It’s a mess of backtracking and overly simplistic yet complex steps, and it’s at this point you start questioning the game’s puzzle design. I mean, sure, it’s “creative,” but it feels more like an obstacle course designed to test your patience rather than your problem-solving skills. Still, once you clear this hurdle, you’re free to descend further into the darkness beneath the school, where things are only going to get weirder and deadlier. Prepare yourself, because Leafmore High’s mysteries won’t solve themselves. The deeper you go, the darker and more twisted the truth becomes. We've now reached the halfway point of ObsCure, and this is where things really kick into high gear. From here on out, there's no turning back.

You can skip some of the exploration around the school grounds, but eventually, you’ll discover a hidden passage in the middle of the school that leads underground. Down there, you’ll find Kenny—yes, Kenny has been freed. But before anyone can celebrate, a sleep grenade is thrown, knocking everyone out. When you come to, you're locked in a prison room with Kenny and the rest of the group. Fortunately, your captors left a crank behind, which you use to free everyone, bringing the team back from the brink. But the journey is far from over, as padlocks now mysteriously block your path at every turn.

As we make our way back to the nurse’s station, we uncover a grim truth: everyone has been infected with a virus that’s transforming people into darkness-breathing monsters. The cure lies in the lab, but the doors are cut off. The only way through is via the garden, which, naturally, is also blocked—this time by a coded door. Thanks to a tip from the professor who's been helping us, we head back to the library. After exploring Principal Fieldman’s office, we find a key, a map, and a movie reel, and we learn about the statues needed for an upcoming puzzle.

Unfortunately, the professor has also been infected. He steals the map just as we piece things together. After gathering the statues and revisiting the theater, we manage to unlock the garden. Retracing Kenny’s steps from earlier, but this time well-armed and accompanied by our friends, we finally make it to the lab. Much like a Resident Evil game, the lab is a sprawling maze filled with monsters and puzzles. After solving a statue alignment puzzle and battling a tough, bullet-absorbing enemy, we arrive at a standoff: the infected professor is holding the principal at gunpoint, demanding the cure.

The showdown takes a grim turn when the final boss, a monstrous plant-like creature, stabs and kills both the professor and the principal. Despite this, we’re teens with attitude, and we’re not giving up. We aim our weapons and take down the plant’s vines, causing the ceiling to collapse on the creature. It seems like the end, the sun is shining, and we’re ready to leave, but the monster isn’t done yet. In our playthrough, we had to sacrifice some of our friends to survive, though in a different run, we managed to get the good ending. Once the plant is defeated for good, our heroes inject themselves with the cure and live happily ever after.

 Mechanics:

ObsCure features a variety of engaging mechanics that elevate it within the survival horror genre. Unlike some of the bigger titles like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, ObsCure allows you to walk and shoot, strafing around while adjusting your aim with the press of a button. The game’s 2000s vibe shines through in fun ways, like using Monster Energy drinks and your usual med kits as health items, adding a unique twist to the classic survival horror formula. Being able to switch between characters is a great unique twist in coop horror games, being able to save ammo by hitting the windows during the day also helps a lot too.

The only major criticism I have for the game is the special mode adding more damage to monsters on any difficulty feels like a major annoyance rather than being just on hard mode, and the characters just no selling things that happen in front of them. it can be pretty annoying over all to find yourself immersed when the monsters that are supposed to scare you aren't scaring the protagonists. 

We did a Let's play which releases on October 24th-31st which you can watch here: