Outlast: A Throwback to One of the Greatest Survival-Horrors of All Time
If there's one thing I love doing it's going back and replaying my old games that I loved, and remembering all the reasons I had so much fun playing them the first time around. Replaying Outlast however, gives me the same level of masochistic joy that I feel like gym rats must have after completing gruelling circuit training before yelling “one more time!” at the people around them and starting again with a crazed look on their face.
Survival horror is so hit and miss, developers need to find a gratifying balance between forcing the player to feel helpless and vulnerable and giving them the chance to actually have fun. Running and hiding are your main strategies in Outlast and your weapon of choice is a video recorder equipped with a night vision mode is literally your only source of light for most of the game. Oh, did I mention it has limited batteries? Couple this gameplay style with creepy visuals, great sound cues and some incredible set pieces and you've got the recipe for one of my favourite games of all time.
Outlast, from Montreal-based developer Red Barrels, and follows in the footsteps of other great horrors such as Resident Evil, Amnesia and Silent Hill. You’re cast as Miles Upshur, a journalist investigating mysterious occurrences at the decrepit Mount Massive Asylum in Colorado. Being one of the bravest, or dumbest, journalists I've ever heard of, Miles enters the asylum armed only with a video camera. Things quickly go south and Miles is sent on a journey to save his own life, sanity as well as uncover the gruesome secrets of the asylum.
Outlast draws you in well, and it's very easy to pick up the games few, yet important, basic mechanics. Running, hiding, sliding and climbing all comes naturally and works well in the game's environment. You are also introduced to your camcorder, which is literally your only way to find your way through Mount Massive's pitch black, winding corridors. Like lantern oil in Amnesia, batteries are scattered around the environment. Scrounging for them becomes crucial, since night-vision rapidly drains your camera’s power. This is not a terribly original mechanic, but it’s an effective one; conserving battery power by only allowing yourself brief glances through the grainy green viewfinder adds to the tension created by the unnerving environments. Outlast borrows from Amnesia here and much like the Lantern Oil, Batteries are scattered throughout the game and scrounging around through draws, desks and about the floors are is an absolutely crucial aspect of the game seeing as how the cam's night vision burns through your battery worse than a 3 year old iPhone. It's not exactly the newest or most original horror mechanic in the world, but it is an effective one and forces you to only allow yourself to have very short glances through the grainy viewfinder and creates a constant tension that never truly leaves for the entire duration of the game.
In fact, Outlast's absolutely amazing use of light, or complete lack of it, is what draws me to this game so much. The constant threat of creepy nasties looming just feet ahead of you keeps you on your toes, and listening for sounds and things moving around in the blackness is both important to survival and hands down the scariest experience I've had in video games. Only too often I've allowed myself time to check the night-vision, only to find that I'm looking straight at some skinless psycho wielding an axe 5 feet away from me. On top of that Miles tends to react to his environment the same way you do, the panic in his breath as he legs it from the aforementioned beasts, along with his nervous groans as he hides in lockers and under beds really puts you in his quaking boots and adds a huge amount to the atmosphere. I would highly recommend playing this with some surround sound headphones for the full experience.
For a game with such incredible, incredible gameplay and atmosphere it's such a shame that it's let down so hard by it's story. Much like Dead Space and Bioshock it is told through various pick-ups throughout the game, in the form of notepads, diaries and other documents, as well as the occasional cut-scene. But there are so many plot-holes, loops and bad sections of dialogue that it actually sometimes draws you back out of the game's atmosphere and makes you wonder what the developers were thinking. One line in particular after defeating one of the game's major enemies genuinely made me wonder whether the writers were being serious or if they just had to finish that last section of the script before they had to go home because it borders on parody.
However as I mentioned these story inconsistencies are the only issue I have with this game and I think it was genuinely just stuck on as a side-note after Red Barrels finished perfecting the gameplay, atmosphere, sound, and overall mechanics of the game, and I'm entirely fine with that.
If you're looking for Bioshock levels of story telling Outlast isn't for you. However if you want one of the most gripping and terrifying survival-horror games of this decade then I really suggest checking it out if you haven't already.