Thank God for monsters. Just imagine what the world would be like if American teenagers were allowed to run about gleefully untroubled by the threat of being eaten alive or torn limb from limb?

By asking you to keep the little oiks alive, Obscure defies the golden rule of high school horror, which dictates that all teens must die horribly. But there's no pleasure in watching the five heroic juveniles get slaughtered when you consider that the monsters are giant prehistoric vegetables (plus that always equals Game Over). Despite a lacklustre generic plot, Obscure adds some fairly revolutionary devices to the survival horror formula. Most notable of these is the 'tag team' system that means you can take a companion along with you to add some firepower and solve teamwork-based puzzles.

While the AI for your chosen companion is very competent, their trigger-happy temperament becomes a serious drain on your ammunition. Crucially though, you'll never have to worry about them getting lost or stuck on corners - their pathfinding is excellent. You can also switch characters at any time with one button press.

But what's so pioneering about this? After all, Resi Evil 0 featured two characters simultaneously. The answer is clear when you stick another pad in port 2 and a friend takes over from the AI Best of all, Player 2 can start and relinquish control at any point (like Brute Force), letting you get back on with the game when he/she goes home.

With five teenyboppers to choose from, both players should be able to find a special ability that suits them. For example, Stan picks locks, Kenny can sprint and Shannon gives you verbal clues. Brilliantly, if any one of them gets their head bitten off by a monster, the game just carries on and you take control of one of the remaining heroes.

Essentially, this gives you five lives to complete the game, but keeping them all alive until the end is a major challenge. There's good reason to try though, because each survivor unlocks new goodies at the end of the game, plus you get a different ending.

Excluding the team-based play, Obscure still falls foul of the traditional survival horror artificial difficulty. Frustratingly, your auto-targeting only kicks in when the monsters are three feet away. This isn't a problem in the confined corridors and rooms, but outdoors it's a major ammo-waster.

Equally annoying is the insistence on revisiting the same areas twice. While nowhere near as guilty as Silent Hill 4, it's still troubling for a game of this length.

But arguably, longevity is Obscure's biggest problem. Taking only five-six hours to complete (on 'medium'), it ends far too swiftly; particularly because it's very enjoyable and polished up to a beautiful shine in a graphical and audio sense. Replaying it with a friend increases the lifespan, but you'll finish it even more quickly in co-op.

This is a shame, but not one that means you should miss out on Obscure. It's undoubtedly a fun game and one that admirably injects new life into a tired old genre. Short but sweet.

1. Graphics are very crisp and the environments packed with detail and interactive objects. Plenty to do and look at.
2. Having five characters with different abilities adds a tactical dimension. It's great that the game continues even if you lose a few.
3. AI-controlled assistants work well but having a second player join you is superb fun. Inspired.
4. Using light to combat enemies is an ingenious concept, but only really explored in the first half of the game (it's night in the second half).

1. The game is just too short with too many repeated locations. Not as bad as some other survival horror games though (Resi Evil, cough).

Would have scored higher if it had been longer. Still enjoyable though, especially with the genius two-player feature.