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+--- Thread: Outlast (/showthread.php?tid=7041)
Outlast - Sacred Jellybean - 29th April 2017
...fuck. FUCK! Fuck. OH JESUS! Shit.
I find myself saying that a lot during this game. It's probably the best survival horror I've played since Silent Hill bit the musty ol' attic dust. The premise is that you're a freelance investigative journalist who travels to a remote insane asylum, hearing of abusive practices in the place. You get an anonymous tip from a man who worked at the facility as a software contractor for two weeks. Possessed by ambition, you drive out to the place with your handheld camera to record what you find and break the story.
Before long, you're trapped inside the asylum with no escape. Equipped with nothing but a video camera, you have to explore and find your way out. Along the way, you build the story by gathering files and recording the horrors you witness. It's a very simplistic game: there's no fighting, no puzzles, simple objectives... the bulk of it is exploring, running, hiding, and surviving.
You're pursued by various inmates who, through dream therapy and hallucinatory experiences, claim they've found a new god. Their messiah is Father Martin, a man who finds you and decides to guide towards salvation. He separates from you but leads you along, giving you direction from time to time, usually through trails of blood to show the path.
Aside from that, he leaves you to your own devices. Which are, of course, your video camera, and batteries you must collect. The batteries are needed for night vision; there is no shortage of dark rooms and corridors in this game, so you'll need it. In true survival horror fashion, resources are scarce, so you have to conserve the batteries you find as much as possible, leaving you quite literally in the dark.
This game almost gave me a heart-attack in the beginning. You have to go to the basement to start the generator and get the lights back on (yeah, yeah, horror movie cliche). There's a man stalking about the rooms with a stick with nails hammered through the end. As he patrols the rooms, the only way to avoid him is to hide from him, and sneak past him when possible. The game isn't particularly merciful in letting you spy on the man (remember, you have to save battery and use that night-vision sparingly), and audio cues of his whereabouts are limited. I found myself hiding in a room from him (easy enough), but once he walked about out, there was no way to know for certain where he was. Once he spotted you, the only option left is to run back to the beginning, or into another room (and outrunning him is NOT easy). Once, I was able to flee into a room and slam the door and hide under the bed, just barely getting away. (The man in question is obvously not bright; apart from seeing God, he couldn't figure out to check all the hiding spots).
Before I got used to the controls, any time I was in a chase, I found myself screaming and running into walls of tight corridors, frantically trying to turn the camera's night vision off so I didn't waste it, then switching it back on when I needed it again. Once I gave the guy the slip, I just sat back to catch my breath. It was a real love/hate relationship that only a good horror-masochism can provide. Now that I'm more used to the controls, it's a little easier... and unfortunately, also less scary. But that's okay! No more heart palpitations. And it's still scary enough to keep me hooked. I wanted to wait until tonight to pick it back up (to enhance the creepy), but I couldn't wait. I find myself not playing much more than an hour in one sitting. Too tense.
Apparently there's a sequel out (I almost typed SQL, fucking day job) called... Outlast 2. Which was my inspiration in picking up this one. I actually tried it (the first Outlast) months ago at a friend's house, made a note to download it, decided I was too cheap, and let it go. It's supposedly a short game, so it's only 20 bucks... but damn it, my friend got it on XBone for like 10 bucks through some promotion! I wanted that too! Another 10 dollars? What do I look like, an adult with a job?
I don't know the premise of the second one, but I'm eager to see it, plus there's also some DLC on this one. Happy trails, I'll let you know what I think when I beat it.
Outlast - Dark Jaguar - 30th April 2017
I'd say it's a pretty good American style asylum horror game, which is to say there's a whole lot of over the top character designs and speechifying. I'd say it's enjoyable for what it is, but the worst possible thing happened when I tried to play it the first time. P.T. came out. It kinda killed all interest in actually finishing Outlast for me, because I looked at what subtlety looks like, and I looked at the "Batman's B villains" characters in Outlast, and I realized just how campy an affair Outlast actually is. Maybe I should get back to it though. P.T.'s very existence shouldn't keep me from finishing it at some point, should it?
Outlast - Sacred Jellybean - 6th May 2017
Fair point on the villians. I felt a little disappointed when the priest came out. It stretched the credibility and broke the tension. It was scary enough to be trapped in a place where patients were subject to medical torture, leaving them bitter and deformed. All of which escaped their cells, wreaked havoc and captured the doctors and hospital staff to exact revenge on them. All of which the main character merely gets swept into and has the escape the fallout. I love the idea that your courage ambition becomes your undoing. You play your hand too far and are punished.
This premise is all great on its own and doesn't need a supernatural spin. Adding that in there actually makes it less scary.
I also don't care for the main character's notes. It sounds like they were written by a hard-boiled detective, not a journalist. It breaks the tension by trying to be funny. I mean, they are funny, but it's not appropriate to the experience. E.g.:
Upshur Wrote:I'm already beat all to hell, picking broken glass out of my scalp, couple cracked ribs. Nearly killed by a deformed giant, looks like somebody tried to fuck-start his head with a cheese grater. He throws me through a wall, knocks me unconscious.
I wake up and some doughy old man with a face like an alcoholic kiddy fiddler in a homemade priest outfit calls me his Apostle. Not a job I asked for.
There are words scrawled in blood everywhere. I'm getting an ugly feeling in my gut that the "Priest" is writing them, and for my benefit.
Story aside, I'm still loving this game purely for adrenaline rush and aesthetic, both of which are excellent. The story can take a back seat in this case.
Quick note: I really liked a part in the game where you're being pursued by maniacs who chase you into a room. You manage to lock the door in time, but they're beating on it and shouting, and you know it won't be long before they break through. Then you hear a voice calling to you, saying you seem normal, "not like one of them". It's coming from the corner of the room, where there's a dumb-waiter. The voice, coming from above, urges you to come through. You squeeze through the thing and are lifted, just as your pursuers break through the door and nearly catch you.
The man from above lifts you up, and you think you're gaining an ally. I hadn't realized how lonely and terrifying it was to not see another normal face throughout the game. Unfortunately, the man turns out to be a sadistic doctor, just as deformed and grotesque as the rest of the inmates. The notes around the area suggest that he used to be a patient, not trained in medicine at all, but all too eager to teach himself through experiments on the now-captive hospital staff.
Going back to play more. It's been close to a week, and I need my fix.
Outlast - Sacred Jellybean - 12th July 2017