Obscure 2 Basic Notes and Exploration (Beginner) (PC)

Let me start with this: this game is ridiculous.

The AI is bad and can destroy you at the worst of times, the only ammo types that you need can rarely be found except for certain areas, and there are overall many various little bugs and quirks that can really frustrate you at the worst of times. However, all of this can be exploited with enough practice and experimentation. Some of the things you can do:

-Exploit AI movement and patterns to fly through rooms and avoid combat.
-Grab only what you need and skip the rest.
-Skip through different cutscenes or pieces of dialogue that would otherwise slow you down.

Since the above is basically the definition of a speedrun, then we can definitely break and fly through this game.


Basic observations/notes:

-There are multiple boxes in the game that store various weapons in exchange for three Small Keys. These boxes count by how many boxes you have opened so far and give you the assigned weapon. What this means is that you can be at the beginning of the game or at the end, but if you open only one box you will still receive the Stun Gun instead of any other weapon. This is a heavy factor that needs to be taken into account during the run since you obtain the Crossbow that fires explosive bolts from the second box that you unlock, meaning that you need six Small Keys to get it. The location of said keys and how far behind it puts you will vary for your route.

-The hitboxes and and invulnerability frames for this game are wacky to say the least. A boss can hit you and knock you down, yet when you get back up and he leaps at you it just clips right through you. After a bit of observation, this could work to the advantage of the runner for crucial skips or timesaves.

-Your AI partner's movement and actions are CRITICAL to this run. Optimizing the movement and weapon patterns are key to running this game. You can have your partner work the spotlight, but that leaves you with three enemies that can stun-lock you and minimal equipment to deal with them.

-You can force your AI partner to use a specific weapon, but be sure not to spend too much time on that.

-Your AI partner will actually bug out sometimes during combat; they can have their weapon out but never attack until an enemy strikes. This is a terrible bug since most enemies can kill you in 4-6 hits.

-Thankfully, there is no RNG for the codes or puzzles. After playing the game once I could memorize most of the codes and solutions, and it was not that difficult to run through the game. The most challenging thing for the game that I can think of would be memorizing where to go, since multiple times the game will have you hunt for various items that are located in the most random of places (worse than RE). After memorizing the route and what you need from where, this should be a breeze.

-My initial time of 1:32:34 can easily be passed. It was un-optimized, I forgot certain things and had to backtrack, and I tried different things along the way. You will have to grab more items than I did in terms of health and ammo, but that should still pass my time with flying colors. Not to mention, this game is fairly fun to run despite its poor quality. Worth the $3 on Steam at the time of writing this.

-Something to study is that for some reason the game is highly reliant on CPU and memory performance. This may not matter to most that have decent or better rigs, but I ran the game on a B820 dual-core processor. I tried to record the game once, and it glitched out horribly. Trying to climb a crate to get onto a roof literally shoved me all the way back across the area and into a bush, breaking the game and halting the run.

-While Solo% is easier in my opinion, if you could get someone else that was willing to run the game you could easily get sub-1:15:00.

-1 good Shotgun blast is equivalent in damage to 3 Pistol rounds, sometimes 4.

-1 solid Crossbow bolt is equivalent in damage to around 2(?) Shotgun blasts, sometimes more.

-Minus the cannon fodder, most enemies take a minimum of 5 Pistol rounds to kill, while some of the heavier guys take around 9. This may not seem like much, but with the abnormal ammo spread across the game this can turn into a real problem, and don't be fooled by the 20 or 30 rounds that you may have; that can disappear in an instant.

-There are spots in the game that almost guarantee problems. I've lost two runs to the same rooms because of accidental clipping into the wall when climbing a ledge. Beware when you climb! 

This is not all of the things that I will post, and I will post a route with notes after a few more runs, but this should get anyone looking at running this game started. Best of luck!
-Yoshii

I337yoSh11

ObsCure II (The Aftermath)

PlayStation 2

PlayStation Portable

ObsCure

Issue with rowing the boat.

Stunlock on Kenny 2

100%?

theenglishman

Farloon

Sanzn

OwlLukas